By Kali Kasprzyk, Director of Marketing at Echidna
It’s a fact that the B2B landscape is changing. Business buyers increasingly expect a personalized, omnichannel purchasing experience wherever, whenever and however they want. The B2B buyer wants the B2C experience!
Did you know?
- 94% of B2B buyers conduct online research at some point in the buying process.
- Industry peers influence over 90% of all B2B buying decisions.
- 59% of buyers prefer to do research online instead of interacting with a sales rep.
The obstacles are that most B2B commerce solutions are unable to address fundamental organizational selling needs such as;
- Offers that include complex configurations of products and services.
- Complex pre-approvals from various internal parties.
- Contract pricing or quoting before an order is placed.
- Pricing that is dependent on geography, quantity, currency or previous contracts.
It used to be that you won a sale by being in the right market with an excellent product and service. Or, you stood out for being the lowest-cost producer. No longer. Now companies need to create a competitive advantage and a solid foundation for future growth by putting customer centricity and experience at the heart of their business strategy. This requires striking the right balance between digital and human interactions with the business buyer. Complicating this evolution into a future-ready B2B commerce organization is that there are many approaches and options for the business process and technology.
Evaluating the gap areas in your sales, support, and marketing processes will allow you to identify where to focus your strategy. One of the top weaknesses within the B2B market is the inability to serve customers how and where they want to be served. This is due to a lack of a streamlined, efficient, and effective way to provide the self-service, online experience that customers want. Overcoming this challenge by leading with a customer-centric mentality will empower your business well into the future.
The path forward doesn’t require creating an entirely new solution. Instead, work towards automating tasks that are currently preventing your team from developing deeper client relationships. Using the e-commerce foundation you have built, you can integrate your commerce solution with CPQ technology to extend your offers to include richer, B2B sales scenarios. This will allow you to optimize efficiencies and experiences in one. With the sales journey generally longer and more complex with B2B transactions, integrating your e-commerce and CPQ technologies can offer the fluidity and transparency for both the sales representative and customer to have improved experiences.
Sales representatives would then be able to:
- Spend time building trusted relationships with accounts.
- Personalize their outreach and become more innovative.
- Decrease order error rates.
- Have anywhere, anytime transactions now and in the future.
Customers would be given the opportunity to:
- Streamline the buying experience, matching that of a B2C with in-depth search and configuration options at their fingertips.
- Buy online faster with pre-set customer discounts and unique product configurations.
- Buy smarter by using questions to find the right solution faster.
- Utilize personalized promotions tailored to match their business.
Striking the right balance of human and digital interactions can be complicated in the B2B market and can make digital transformation efforts a unique challenge. Allowing B2B customers the flexibility to purchase on their own terms and enabling a seamless CPQ selling experience will be among the keys to success.
Learn more on this topic by downloading the B2B Merchants Guide on e-commerce and CPQ technology with details on the Oracle Commerce Cloud and Oracle CPQ integration.
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