By 2025, 75% of B2B buyers will be Amazon-obsessed, digitally centric millennials. Does this mean that B2C consumer retail tactics—such as product reviews, Prime-like fast delivery, and deep online personalization—are necessary for success in B2B Ecommerce?
Or is B2B Ecommerce different, and it is more about digitally-enabling the sales force, operating contract pricing arrangements, and enhancing traditional B2B approaches such as drop shipping?
Team B2C Experiences
Kelley Bennett , Vice President, E-Commerce Adhesive Technologies at Henkel
Tim Nelson, Senior Principal, Unified Commerce at Kibo Commerce
Team B2B Experiences
Stephanie Pike, Global E-Commerce and Marketing Executive at Ingram Micro
Greg Snodgrass, Vice President B2B Distributor Sales at CommerceHub
Key Takeaways
B2B sellers should target roles, not people – unless they have the necessary capabilities.
Stephanie Pike pointed out that at companies with 500 or fewer employees, the average number of decision makers in a company for a given decision is 7. Because you’re really selling to a group-buying decision, you should be personalizing to the role, not the individual.
Tim Nelson noted that being able to transfer that 1:1 relationship from salesperson to digital is becoming crucial and as technology advances, the more specific we can get in their profile. But oftentimes the difficulty with building that relationship is having the technical ability to capture the detailed personal information and use it in a way that drives conversion.
You can use B2C tools to generate B2B loyalty
While a couple of the contenders argued that you can’t rely on FAQs or chatbots in B2B because they price for being wrong is too high, Andy disagreed. He said that these tools are about building transparency and trust. He used to hear B2B people say they don’t want any negative reviews online. But research has shown that having negative reviews mixed in with positive reviews creates more trust in the positive reviews. Everyone wants to be able to trust that the company they’re buying from is worth buying from.
B2B Purchases Will Increasingly Be Self-Service
Kelley Bennett said that you definitely can make a lot of the sales process self-service, and that there’s an expectation that this is what customers want. Plus, sellers get a lot of great data that will allow them to personalize the selling experience. Pike added that any company that’s smart is already automating small tasks (like order status). Selling is complex and how you influence all the stakeholders is challenging. McKinsey found that 84% of sales reps will be “hybrid reps” by 2024, so the world is continuing to move toward self-service where it makes sense.
Contract Pricing Will Not Go Away
Greg Snodgrass said that distributors usually have an 80/20 rule where 20% of buyers are delivering 80% of the business, so they want to be able to offer contract pricing to them. This goes back to building trust. Through the negotiating process, customers want to feel like they’re getting the best price. But Bennett disagreed, saying that because B2B buyers are also B2C buyers, they have an expectation of price transparency, so she sees a shift to transparent marketplace pricing revving up in the coming years.
Offering B2C-like omnichannel techniques (like BOPIS) can drive conversion
Nelson said that there’s a psychological perception of how you’re interacting with your customers, that you’re accommodating them by offering BOPIS, even if they don’t use it. Even with low usage, it’s very valuable because customers perceive companies that offer it as being customer-focused. Pike agreed, saying that supply chain is the heartbeat of eCommerce. In B2B it depends on how customers get the product (whether they need installation, for example). It’s all about letting customers get the products they want, how they want them.
B2B can learn lots from B2C about dropshipping
According to Bennett, this isn’t even a question – if you look at what’s happening in the B2C, they’re killing it and raising the bar for everyone else about delivery expectations. From a distributor side, you don’t want to hold the inventory – it’s more efficient to dropship. Whether or not it started in B2B it’s debatable, but B2C has taken it to a whole new level.