Overheard recently at ‘B2B Wholesalers and Distributors R Us’:
“Please step inside, Madam, and have a good rummage around my store for hours trying to find the products you want and getting more frustrated. There are literally thousands of them and they are hard to find, so I hope you have a lot of time on your hands.
No, I won’t be able to give you any personalised recommendations. No, the pricing isn’t accurate for you, we operate a ‘one size fits all’ policy here. You’ll need to get in touch with our call centre or wait until your agent is free later in the week and they can check the agreements and discounts we have in place with you and work out your pricing.”
You could be forgiven for thinking that the above dialogue sounds more like a sitcom from the 70s/80s than anything from real life. But actually this scenario is far from fiction for a lot of B2B wholesalers and distributors. It is, in fact, a typical online shopping experience for many of their resellers.
But times are changing and B2B buyers now expect a lot more. At home, they are used to Amazon-style online experiences and will get frustrated with clunky sites which are little more than an online brochure. If your site isn’t up to scratch, they are likely to give up and go elsewhere.
The technology for an intuitive, personalised, hassle-free buying experience is here and being used to good effect in B2C retail, so why are companies with B2B customers still running the online equivalent of Grace Brothers*?!
I suspect it boils down to the same two reasons which put many good ideas on the backburner: time and money. Quite a few wholesalers and distributors I’ve spoken with have shared their fear of biting off more than they can chew. Worrying that they’ll start an eCommerce project which then spirals into ever-increasing layers of complexity, pushes budgets sky high and takes eons to complete.
What if you could give your resellers, and their customers, a B2C-style eCommerce experience for a fixed price and implementation time? No risk of scary surprises, a fixed scope of functions and essential services all bundled into the same package. So you could know exactly what you’re getting upfront, for how much and by when.
My talented team at Greenlight has developed exactly that. A software-and-services package based on the powerful SAP Commerce Cloud and incorporating our extensive knowledge of B2B and B2C retail. It’s called ‘Hylight Commerce for B2B Wholesales Distribution‘ and it gives you all the eCommerce features necessary to drive online sales and improve the reseller and customer experience. If you want to increase online revenue for you and your retailers, let’s talk. Get in touch with me or one of my team and we’ll show you what’s possible.
*For those of you younger than forty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Are_You_Being_Served%3F
