Best Practices to Launching your B2B Commerce Storefront

As more and more businesses embrace the B2B ecommerce model, buyers’ expectations are currently mirroring those of B2C clients. 

B2B buyers presently incline toward ecommerce self-service options at each phase of the funnel - from awareness to intent to purchase.

B2B eCommerce earnings are considered to twofold this year, with 55% of B2B buyers completing at least half of their online purchases. Buyer inclinations are continually changing and acclimating to patterns produced by digitalization, and B2B buyers are no special case. 

So it is nothing unexpected that in 2020 the online sales channel and online customer experience (CX) will represent the principle territories where B2B businesses will have the option to create differentiation.

The ease and accessibility advantages of online commerce have extended past the consumer market and into B2B, or businesses selling to other businesses.

Understand the B2B Ecommerce Essentials

The foundation for a successful B2B ecommerce business is critical to its functionality that ensures optimal usability and positive customer experience. 

Before you begin searching for an ecommerce platform, understand what these highlights are and why they’re important. Additional capabilities can always be incorporated after your site is live, but every B2B site should initially begin with the accompanying fundamental components:

• PIM: This product information management solution is crucial for all the significant product information and content for your selling channels. PIM sources, standardizes, and exports data to different channels and partners, and ensures clean, accurate product information is delivered consistently and effectively to provide a true omnichannel experience. 

• Site search: A state-of-the-art search tool utilizes algorithms that allow vendors to direct the outcomes that display on their site during a user search. Advanced search capabilities such as auto-complete suggestions, configurable search, and a navigation bar with faceted attributes provide more focused, relevant search results for buyers, which lead to a quicker and easier path to purchase. Site search speed directly affects the adoption of any eCommerce site.

• Shopping cart: With an extensive shopping cart set up, buyers have an adaptable and secure approach to shop and transact online. In addition to providing live product pricing and availability, shopping cart tools should meet the different needs of your buyers by offering shared carts, shipping alternatives, and multiple payment methods, including credit cards and purchase orders.

• Content management system: A robust CMS  takes into account simple updates to web pages and content, yet it additionally empowers to build SEO for better site visibility and create personalization options like product recommendations for customers. Your marketing team will take advantage of the CMS to create promotional pages and add content to support campaigns.

• Mobile: With more buyers utilizing their cell phones to research and shop for products, an ecommerce site must be versatile and cordial. Responsive website architecture adjusts a site's design to ensure that the substance and structure of the webpage stay predictable overall for buyer devices,  creating a seamless customer experience. 

• Taxonomy: This classification methodology classifies products in a way that bodes well to buyers and leads them to products in as few clicks as possible. A proper taxonomy defines the hierarchy, attributes, and classes within a product catalog to create a better framework and boost a site’s search and browsing capabilities.

• Event management: Many B2B companies – especially wholesale distributors – offer training classes, new product exhibits, customer appreciation days, and other events that help them connect with their customers and educate buyers on the products they carry. An Event Management module allows companies to build an ongoing calendar of events and oversee online enrollments easily.

• Punchout: Many B2B customers – especially those in government, higher education, and larger buying groups – will necessitate that you provide punch out capability. These online orders are sent directly from the customer’s procurement system to your website. You will need an approach to effectively configure punch out for each customer’s system.

You can spare a great deal of time and cash and dodge pointless complexities if you can get every one of these parts from a solitary vendor. The expense to integrate divergent frameworks and train your staff on different UIs and product abilities can be restrictive. Numerous B2B organizations select the "one throat to stifle" model with regards to the vendors in their ecommerce ecosystem.

How Ecommerce Platforms are equipped for B2B Success?

While numerous B2B organizations are hip to the advantages of keeping up an ecommerce site, others, despite everything, demand progressively old courses—exchanges via telephone or by means of email, for example. 

Actually, it's far easier to run discount and affiliate exchanges through an ecommerce site. It makes it simpler for the client, and it permits B2B organizations to spare time and sell more products. 

Not all ecommerce platforms are prepared to deal with B2B exchanges, so choosing a personalized ecommerce solution is fundamental to the success of your B2B online endeavor. 

Here are the means by which to create a buying experience that retailers can't get enough of:

1. Offer specials that bring retailers better-than-wholesale prices. Building twofold savings into your offerings every day, week after week, or month to month deals will put you at an upper hand and assist you with moving your product all the more rapidly and without any problem. 

B2B buyers will look for these specials and welcome the additional savings they get when they deal with your organization — which implies more orders for you. Like any retail foundation, wholesale businesses can likewise offer extraordinary deals, past the underlying discount rebate. You can likewise offer motivators as discounted prices for bulk orders.

2. Provide first-class customer service. Always treat your buyers with courtesy, be willing to go the extra mile for a retailer who purchases your products, and never be reluctant to lose an occasional “battle” in order to win the B2B “war.” 

Treat each retailer with sympathy and comprehension — regardless of whether sometimes you need to sweep a request. This kind of treatment will go far toward making firm and higher-volume wholesale customers.

3. Make wholesale ordering, delivery, and billing as smooth as possible. Automate your order management and product distribution processes as much as you possibly can. 

The utility of automation is that it smoothes out complex fulfillment processes and diminishes the requirement for manual work, empowering you to provide better, increasingly effective customer service from ordering to payment and shipping.

4. Streamline your operations. Business owners that run their own companies effectively look forward to the equivalent from their suppliers. 

This means that you have a responsibility to maximize operational efficiency in your own business. Integration of inventory, finance, shipping, logistics, etc. In an intelligent inventory management system, B2B or ERP, it is a win-win for both the customer and your company.

5. Make order recommendations. You might need to propose an additional product dependent on the order put by the retailer, a procedure that can either be automated or dealt with by a live customer support delegate. This is what could be compared to selling additional items in retail deals. 

6. Security: Selling online requires an elevated level of information security. At the very least, plan to make sure about your site utilizing SSL declarations, provide user authentications, and set up consent rules. If you handle online payment exchanges, work with your card processing services, and be certain you are PCI (Payment Card Industry) compliant.

The advantages of ecommerce don't only lie with consumers. B2B businesses with eCommerce capacities beat their peers by pretty much every metric. 

Top-performing B2B organizations are 70% bound to utilize digital technologies to automate processes with clients, suppliers, and accomplices. In a domain where the sales cycles and connections are longer than B2C, ecommerce frameworks and digital technologies enable businesses to be progressively proficient, provide customized client support, and utilize analytical data to educate sales reps.

Can't wait to enjoy the benefits of Salesforce B2B Commerce and wish to quick-start the process? Docmation has just the right product for you:  the Salesforce B2B Commerce Quick Start Package. 

Using our Quick Start package, you can have a full-fledged ecommerce experience in less than 2 weeks! And what's more, is that it is an affordable investment that is guaranteed to increase ROI and brand loyalty.

So, what are you waiting for? Get in touch with us today!

5 Tips for Successful Salesforce CPQ Implementation

Shorter sales cycles, sales efficiency boosts, and hikes in appointments – this is the ultimate fantasy of each Sales VP and Head of Sales Enablement.
It turns out that automating your workflow using a Salesforce CPQ (Configure Price Quote) tool is the right answer. In fact, a Salesforce study shows that the CPQ platform allows 36% faster quote generation and results in 27% fewer billing errors. Plus, it helps increase sales by 22%!

What is Salesforce CPQ?

CPQ represents Configure, Price, and Quote. As the name properly recommends, Salesforce CPQ is a platform that helps its users in arranging the services or applications structured on the platform, evaluating the equivalent in an appropriate way, and providing this cost estimate to their customers in a viable way.
Salesforce CPQ is helpful for sales representatives as it makes their procedure of estimating and citing a lot quicker by mulling over variables; for example, discretionary highlights about the concerned application, customizations identifying explicit customers, overseeing quantities, and contemplating discounts.
Salesforce CPQ likewise utilizes the client database of business in permitting the business group to move toward explicit customers with explicit quotes. This decreases the degree for blunders and automates the, in any case, repetitive strategy.
Salesforce CPQ is basically a cloud-based platform that permits your sales team to work the equivalent from any digital device.
This likewise expands the adaptability of errands being proceeded as the representatives can sign in whenever and from wherever with all the information being enrolled in the system in real-time. It also helps you in settling on solid business choices by connecting your CRM data with the CPQ platform.

5 Tips To Implement Salesforce CPQ Successfully

It is critical to experience trusted Salesforce CPQ control in order to ensure the foundation of Salesforce CPQ is executed effectively in your business organization.t legitimately manages the issues identifying with valuing and salesforce cpq pricing.
You can never afford to mess up with issues that relate to the costs you quote to your customers as those issues have long-haul suggestions. Here are a few hints for effective CPQ implementation:

1. Understand the Positioning of CPQ in Your Business Processes

If you are anticipating implementing Salesforce CPQ and Billing, it is essential to comprehend where it will fit into the previously existing business processes within your organization.
Make sure you experience all the information and data on all the significant stages and import the data you require before the implementation begins.
It is likewise critical to see how existing tools and platforms will be influenced by the implementation of Salesforce CPQ, as this stage is intended to incorporate numerous systems and applications.
You can guarantee that none of your existing business processes are hampered, and if there is such an issue, you could approach your Salesforce Consultant and/or your developer right away.

2.  Verticalize the CPQ design

As a component of the design process, we emphatically suggest that you verticalize the salesforce CPQ solutions with your business’s needs. Our experience of doing this for manufacturing, CPG, and retail sections, among others, has obviously indicated that the customer behaviors and desires from the solution shift definitively with the subtleties of the business.

3. Know Your Customer

The way to become successful is to know your clients extremely well. Do your clients shop across different channels? Do you need the global implementation that bolsters clients and sales teams far and wide, or is it restricted to a geographic location for location-based ordering?
The 4 key results of this activity are:

• Laying out a product model that best backs the client’s purchasing behaviors.
• Consider whether or not your clients lean toward bulk orders over purchasing singular service.
• Keep costs competitive by assessing whether to turn out promotions or set up discounted pricing.
• Recognize dependencies in client association to design an endorsement work process concentrated on limiting procedure delays.

4. Know Your Configuration

A significant piece of your CPQ usage flourishes with an adaptable and instinctive product model. Developing a "sellable" product from granular configurable parts is fundamental to CPQ success. Best practices for progress include:
Cautiously planning your product model to make "offerings" explicitly intended to address buyer needs.
Granting reps the capacity to determine "what" the customer needs and uniquely join products/services that take into account explicit customer needs.
Empower discrete item determination in a sales catalog that includes a more extensive marketing strategy.

5. Be Ready For Change Management

Regardless of how consistent your business processes are and how seamless Salesforce CPQ execution turns out, there will be sure instrumental changes in the manner your business division will work.
It is essential to recognize this change and plan sufficiently so as to adjust to the equivalent. Here are a couple of significant contemplations to make while wanting to change the executives:
Ensure you have a logical execution plan set up that expects tests to be conducted. This will assist you with understanding the ramifications of CPQ in your system and dispose of any bugs that may have pained you later on.
Compose all the relevant departments as per the roles they will play in the implementation and working of Salesforce CRM, guaranteeing all the undertakings being performed smoothly.
Related Post: CPQ + B2B Ecommerce - Cart to cash

Top Mistakes of Salesforce CPQ Implementation

Learning how to expand viability isn't all you need to know. Potential troubles and approaches to defeat them in a convenient way are fundamental to limit dangers.

a) Lack of collaboration

The principal challenge suggests getting help and participation of all divisions in the organization and all the representatives.
Take the Product Management and Engineering Department, for instance. They ought to give all data about their end-products, alongside the data about parts and components that comprise those products.
Since the CPQ framework requires all the access data, it very well may be a test to gather it since it involves teaming up between all departments.
Do you see the point? A solitary division or group can't do it alone. Any CPQ usage will succeed only if all divisions take an interest at all levels; otherwise your CPQ framework is bound to come up short.

b) Using irrelevant data

This is one of the most trying pieces of any Salesforce CPQ implementation. The entirety of the information that you give to your CPQ framework ought to be:

• Updated
• Accurate
• Kept up in a split second at whatever point vital

In case you're attempting to play out a configuration of an up-to-date product, yet the information is just accessible for the earlier year, you put your organization under the danger of being considered not reliable.

c) Product-idea misconception

The complete product doesn't rise to a sold product. Also, if you trust it does, your CPQ implementation will never lead you to success.
Great CPQ isn't just about item depictions and their pricing; it is substantially more.
All in all, what does the complete product incorporate? It incorporates all the subtleties of the product development cycle:

• Installment plan
• Conveyance
• Post-sales service, etc.

Your clients will never confide in you again if you vanish after the primary buy. In addition, it can end up being the last one. You ought to deliver the worth: request input after delivery, illuminate discounts, make sure to send birthday messages by offering some custom promotions, etc.

CPQ tricks and implementation tips learned the hard way

Did you realize that Salesforce CPQ is working to be both Lightning-enabled and Mobile cordial? Along these lines, you don't have to stress if your reps will have the option to quote while moving.
When setting up your bundles, if you have done everything accurately but then the values are not being conveyed from product/product option to cite line, utilize the execute scripts button accessible in the bundle settings.
When moving images utilized in Quote Templates, starting with one organization then onto the next, make sure you update the picture IDs in the Quote Template Sections and formulas also.
At first, this probably won't cause any issues; however, once your engineer and test associations are decommissioned, your reports may unexpectedly quit opening.

In the End

Automating business processes in a CPQ implementation is important to help sales adequacy. A business proposition gets good for nothing whenever stuck in postponed approval process durations. Here are the accepted procedures on workflow automation:

• Make a solid CPQ design that adopts smart workflow approvals that consequently scale or raise to limit process inefficiencies.
• Structure sales procedures to manage prospects and qualify leads for an opportunity.
• Decrease authoritative errands via automating business processes where pertinent.
• Automate activated events like follow-up messages, warning messages, action assignments, email endorsements, and so forth.

About Docmation: As a Salesforce Silver Consulting Partner, Docmation acquires the best class CPQ aptitude to accelerate your project and reduce risk specializing in delivering multi-channel CPQ success. Docmation has a long reputation for implementing strategic CPQ solutions for organizations with incredibly complex business prerequisites.

Source: https://docmation.com/5-tips-for-successful-salesforce-cpq-implementation/
This Blog First Published on Docmation.com