If you aren’t running a digital wholesale storefront, you’re missing out on an incredible opportunity to drive sales and improve customer service. According to our first annual report - The State of Retail Buying 2020, nearly 50% of retailers would end their relationships with a brand if the customer service experience was poor. What’s more, disappointing customer service (often attributed to faulty communication, slow response times or difficult salespeople) is one of the most common reasons why a buyer parts ways with a brand.
Here are five reasons why you should consider making a B2B digital storefront part of your wholesale strategy:
Selling 24 Hours a Day, 7 Days a Week
Whenever you sell to a wholesale buyer offline, chances are that someone from your sales team initiated that purchase. Imagine increasing the frequency of inbound sales. The digital storefront engenders these transactions, presenting buyers with a photo and video-rich environment that makes it convenient, easy and attractive to shop fully-searchable catalogs and custom linesheets on their own schedules. Buyers can even place self-service orders directly via their iPads, iPhones, or upload offline orders via excel order forms.
Certainly, as you expand your wholesale network, you’ll increasingly find that the majority of your clients likely live in other time zones. Your digital wholesale storefront is open 24/7 - complete with all of your desired marketing material, so you can wake up to see new orders and wholesale payments were made while you slept. Integrations with ERP & PLM systems put buyers at ease knowing they’ll receive exactly what they ordered. Meanwhile, you’ll find ease via accurate data, insights and real-time inventory updates.
Faulty communication and slow response times are two common customer service woes concerning retail buyers. Expanding your hours of operation to 24 hours a day, and introducing a digital platform into the relationship means you can maintain accurate records of communication, respond with greater speed and allow buyers to shop at their own convenience.
“It makes it easy, is super results-driven and [it’s] just a great tool to make merchandising, selling and generating revenue much easier.”
SHINOLA
Selling Between Appointments and Trade Shows
While trade shows and in-person appointments remain relevant for meeting potential clients, maintaining pre-existing relationships, and facilitating in-person line presentations, the digital wholesale storefront makes it possible to offer a rich and seamless sales experience at any time and from anywhere around the world. For instance, the entire world is monitoring updates on the new coronavirus, COVID-19. In an effort to minimize the virus’ spread and safeguard the public, numerous conferences, trade shows, and other major events continue to be canceled or postponed; many buyers who attended Milan or Paris Fashion Week were required to return home early for two weeks of self-quarantine. Whether due to an unforeseen circumstance such as COVID-19, or simply the desire to purchase in-season products faster, fully-branded B2B e-commerce platform portals make the difference.
Executing Eco-Friendly Business Practices
The digital wholesale storefront is great for the planet. Wholesale e-commerce tech allows you to improve your travel-associated carbon footprint and reduce paper waste. It also allows you to produce engaging digital marketing material- including shoppable, customizable, digital lookbooks. It’s finally possible to go 100% paperless. Then there’s the issue of excess inventory. Sharing personalized linesheets and selling immediates every season are two excellent strategies for helping your retailer partners reduce excess stock (a bane to your brand, the environment and retailers’ bottom lines).
Streamlining Global Sales
In addition to the aforementioned benefits of selling remotely and running your storefront around the clock, the digital wholesale storefront is an incredible tool in this ever-globalized age. Wholesale buyers enjoy access to international currency and language support, putting global clients at ease.
Increasing Upsell Opportunities
Finally, the catalog element of the B2B digital storefront greatly increases the number of opportunities to upsell to clients. There are many ways to make it happen via the platform, including sending custom linesheets, offering capsule collections to select retailers and executing insights-driven email marketing campaigns. There’s also an element of ease that encourages more frequent in-season orders and even one-offs from retailers deciding to take a chance on your brand.
“We’re getting a great reaction from our accounts, especially the accounts who have never seen it before. It makes our company look stronger as a whole, and it’s a very useful selling technique.”
THEORY
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