Some companies see their ecommerce site as a marketing tool — an attractive new selling point designed to reel in new customers.
And they’re right to think that. But it’s not the whole story.
If you’re launching a B2B ecommerce site and you’re not thinking about your current customers, you’re missing out — and so are they.
Here’s what you need to know about getting more customers started with your new ecommerce portal:
In this blog we will cover everything you need to know about getting more customers started with your new ecommerce portal:
If you’re fresh from the launch of your new ecommerce site, most of your customers will still be buying offline.
And if you’re making the case to move customers online, you might face some resistance from the decision-makers in your company:
“Nearly all of our customers are buying without it. We’re getting repeat orders and regular revenue from them — so why should we spend the time and effort to move them over to our ecommerce site?”
Here’s why:
When you move customers online, you can reduce your sales admin by up to 66%.
So what does that look like in practice? With more of your customers buying through your ecommerce site, your sales teams can save huge amounts of time on:
And as a bonus:
The switch to ecommerce makes you less reliant on the personal relationships between your customers and your sales teams. So if your sales staff resign or move to a new job, your relationship with your customer stays the same — and your business is protected.
But there’s one other huge reason that’s easy to overlook:
Many of your customers already want and expect it.
They’ve seen the benefits of ecommerce ordering — and they’re already using it when they buy from their other suppliers.
So if you want to give your customers the modern service they expect (and keep up with your competitors), the move to ecommerce becomes an easy choice.
There’s no magic number that applies to every business. And for some industries and customers, you might never be able to get 100% of them buying through your ecommerce site.
But from our own experience with the merchants we work with, we can say this:
Most companies should be aiming to earn 30–60% of their revenue through their ecommerce site — with 10–50% of their customers buying online.
Now that you’ve got a target in mind, it’s time to think strategy. And the first step comes from understanding why your customers should be getting excited about ecommerce.
If you want to get your existing customers to start using your ecommerce site, you need to know exactly how it benefits them.
You’ve got to put yourself in the shoes of the people affected. And that means you need to distinguish between the two types of stakeholders within your customers’ companies:
The end users are your customers’ employees — the individual staff in each branch that do the actual buying.
They’ll be less interested in the high-level organisational benefits, and more interested in how your ecommerce site makes the buying process simple, fast, compliant, and efficient.
Here are the benefits you need to get across to them:
Your customers’ decision-makers have a different set of goals. While they will be interested in how your ecommerce site benefits the end users, they’ll also want to know how moving online helps them manage their buyers and reduce their organisational costs.
Here’s what the upper management like to hear:
So what’s next?
Now that you’re armed with the selling points you need, it’s time to put them to use. And that all starts with the first introduction:
There are two main ways to introduce your customers to the idea of switching to your ecommerce site — and the method you choose will depend on:
Here’s how the two methods work:
The most natural way to plant the idea is through direct conversations between your sales teams and your customers.
With a personal approach, you’ll be able to make it:
But that doesn’t mean the personal approach is right for everyone:
It’s a time-consuming method that could involve multiple calls and emails. It’s highly dependent on the strength of your individual sales reps — not just their people skills and confidence, but their knowledge of your ecommerce site and the specific messaging you want to convey.
So who is it good for?
If you’re a merchant with a small number of clients and a strong sales team — or you want to test the waters before you roll out on a large scale — the personal approach could be the right choice.
Tip — We always recommend that merchants start with the personal approach. You’ll get experience and insight into onboarding process, and you’ll be more confident in your methods when you start to onboard at scale.
Tip — We always recommend that merchants start with the personal approach. You’ll get experience and insight into onboarding process, and you’ll be more confident in your methods when you start to onboard at scale. |
If you’re rolling out your ecommerce site to a huge number of customers, the personal approach can start to be come inefficient. Instead, you can use the content you produce to reach a far larger audience — creating emails, videos, and webinars to introduce the concept and convey the benefits to your customers.
With the mass-content approach, you’ll be able to:
But despite all the positives, there are still some downsides:
The mass-content approach lacks the personal touch of a direct conversation, and could be taken as more of a sales pitch than a useful recommendation. It’s difficult to tailor your messaging to the needs of each customer — and it’s harder to gauge your customers’ reactions and receive valuable feedback.
So who is it good for?
If you’re trying to convince a massive set of customers — or you need to keep a tight grip on the messaging you send out — the mass-content approach could be the right choice.
The way you start your ecommerce rollout depends on your own company and its short-term goals — there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach.
But no matter how many customers you’re trying to draw in, we’ll always give the same advice:
You shouldn’t be trying to move all of your customers at once.
It’s rare for a merchant to pull off a perfect rollout on a large scale from day one — and you should be ready to deal with a few teething problems along the way.
Your sales teams will need some practice before they can perfect their pitch and deal with potential objections — and you may need to work through some feedback from your customers before you can see the smoothest path forward.
So start small, and choose wisely:
Pick a small number of customers for your first ecommerce rollout — looking in particular for the customers that:
Once you’ve picked the perfect team of first users for your ecommerce site, you’ll be ready to get them started.
Tip — For most merchants, we recommend choosing around 5 customers to start. It’s enough to get valuable feedback and data, but small enough to stay manageable and reduce the risk of complications. |
First, let’s deal with the good news:
If you’ve picked the right customers and conveyed the benefits clearly, most of your customers won’t need an extra incentive.
There’s already a real demand for ecommerce buying in the B2B space, with 32% of B2B sellers saying that ecommerce is now their most effective sales channel.
But in case some customers need a kick to get them started, here’s what you can do:
Of course, these special discounts and deals will only be possible if you’ve got an ecommerce platform with those features built in — like the personalised pricing and discounts that come as standard with Apparatus.
If you want your ecommerce rollout to be a complete success, it’s going to take effort from both sides. And that means your customers aren’t the only ones that need an incentive.
So what can you do to motivate your sales teams — to get them fully on board with your ecommerce initiative? Here are a few ideas:
But no matter how you motivate them, remember this:
The switch to ecommerce doesn’t replace your sales teams.
Data from Gartner shows that the most successful transactions are ‘rep-assisted’ ecommerce orders — with sales teams actively assisting their customers as they place orders online, and continually producing content and comms that encourage, guide, and educate those customers in ecommerce ordering.
It’s not a ‘fire and forget’ situation. It’s an evolution of the relationship between your sales teams and your customers — and they’ll still have an active role to play during and after the switch.
Setting up your ecommerce site is only the first step. And moving all your customers doesn’t happen overnight.
So no matter how you go about it, get the expert strategy and planning you need for a successful rollout and a high adoption rate — talk to one of our ecommerce specialists to find out more.