Last updated - January 5, 2024
A properly managed wholesale business can be very profitable for a wholesaler. All you have to do is follow the ongoing trends to run a successful wholesale business.
Wholesaling has changed a lot in the last few years, especially after COVID-19. Customers have become smarter so you’ve to enhance your strategies to facilitate customers.
Let’s discuss the strategies that effectively grow your business in 2024.
Improve Customer Service
Customer service shows how much a company values its customers. Customer satisfaction should be the top priority of your business.
You should provide a service to your customers of very high standards. A positive customer experience leads to positive word-of-mouth for your business.
If you’re unable to provide good customer service, customers are going to switch to other brands.
According to a study by Khoros, 65% of customers switch to another brand due to poor customer service.
Now, let’s study these factors in detail on how to improve your customer service:
- Automate chats with chatbots on your website
- Communicate with your customers politely
- Facilitate 24/7 customer service to the customers
- Provide complete information to the customers regarding their queries
- Resolve customer complaints
- Show empathy to customers on their pain points
- Use different mediums for customer support such as calls, emails, and live chat
B2B buyers are now demanding better customer service.
Since you’re dealing with businesses, you’ve to take a different approach. You’ve different agreements with different buyers. And you need to deal with every buyer on a personal level.
B2B decision-making involves multiple entities who decide after thorough research.
B2B buyers are well aware of all the aspects of the industry. So, be professional in your customer service with your buyers to improve your conversion and retention rates.
Flexible Pricing Options
During the COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns, people were out of jobs, and businesses also suffered heavy losses.
This reduced the buying power of people. So, to strengthen your B2B relationships, understand the problems of your customers. And provide suitable solutions to your buyers.
Add flexibility to your price offerings. Create different pricing tiers for your buyers so they can choose from them conveniently.
You can offer different discounts in bulk buying.
We’ll explain to you an example of different pricing tiers:
- If you buy 5 units, you pay $20 per unit
- If you buy 10 units, you pay $15 per unit
- If you buy 50 units, you pay $9 per unit
- If you pay 100 units, you pay $4 per unit
This is just an example of pricing tiers. You can add suitable pricing tiers to facilitate your buyers and generate reasonable profits at the same time.
Tiered pricing facilitates B2B buyers and lets them make better decisions. This is also instrumental in increasing sales for your wholesale business.
Automate Operational Tasks
It’s better to streamline your operational processes if you’re not doing it already. The advancing technology has made it easier for us to complete our tasks.
Software companies have stepped forward and developed many useful tools to run your businesses smoothly.
These tools are essential in resolving your operational tasks effectively. These business tools are revolutionizing wholesale businesses today.
You can save a lot of time and money by automating your tasks. You can invest that time in other tasks. And you can also increase your productivity and customer base.
Let’s discuss these in detail.
Customer Relationship Management Tools
CRM tools help to generate leads and store the information of all of your customers. CRM tools manage your customer data and store your interactions with customers.
CRM tools help to:
- Promote your marketing campaigns
- Provide reports and metrics of your relationships with customers
- Create and share documents with your colleagues
- Analyze current market trends and forecast the future outcomes while advising necessary steps in this regard
Email Marketing Tools
84% of B2B companies use email marketing as per research by Sagefrog. It’s because email marketing is very effective in converting leads.
Email marketing also generates a very decent return on investment (ROI). According to Litmus, email marketing drives an ROI of 36 dollars per dollar spent.
Today, there are so many email marketing tools that provide different email templates. You use these templates to use in your email marketing.
These tools also help to generate leads. You can segment your leads and create customized different marketing campaigns targeting specific segments.
This segment lets you implement personalization, which has increased the email open rate for 82% of marketers, says Instapage.
Your subject line should be catchy with a call-to-action (CTA) phrase. The purpose of CTA is to trigger a sale. CTA encourages customers to take immediate action. An example is “Buy quickly at discounted prices before the offer expires.”
Inventory Management Softwares
Managing inventory is a very huge challenge. You have to count all of your stock. You have to count it time and time again. And still, it’s not accurate. You may still make errors in counting.
It results in losses and waste of time. It delays your order fulfillment and annoys your customers.
The solution is an inventory management system, which automates your inventory management.
You enter the data of your inventory in IMS. IMS accurately counts your inventory. It prevents issues such as stockouts, overstocking and dead stock.
The benefits of IMS are that it:
- Notifies the need to add up more stock when stock is about to expire
- Highlights the highest-selling products
- Forecasts the required amount of stock to add
- Scans barcodes on warehouse racks to easily search products
- Manages sales and purchase orders
- Provides useful metrics and reports regarding the sales of stock
Outsourcing Order Fulfillment
Order fulfillment is the process of completing an order which you receive from your buyers.
It is a lengthy process that involves you picking products from warehouse racks. You pack these products into product bundles. And then you have to ship these orders to the customers.
You have to carefully pick, pack, and ship orders to ensure that customers safely receive the products. It’s a big responsibility to fulfill these orders.
So, you can streamline the order fulfillment process by outsourcing it to 3PL (third-party logistics) companies.
Noted 3PL companies ensure safe and quick fulfillment of the orders. 3PL companies have fulfillment centers where they store your inventory. They ship your orders directly to the customers.
Shift Business To eCommerce
Post-COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a rapid evolution in how businesses operate. The restrictions on traveling have led businesses to switch online.
B2B eCommerce is now rising with sales increasing as years are passing. Wholesale websites and marketplaces are now trending very fast.
B2B buyers are now increasingly diverting towards eCommerce. Gartner’s study reveals that 83% of B2B buyers prefer to buy and pay online.
So, you need to begin moving your business online. You can avail two options:
- Run your business both online and offline via a brick-and-mortar store and a website
- Completely switch your business to an online website or online marketplace
Let’s first talk about setting up your own wholesale website. You’ve to implement the following steps:
- Buy cloud hosting service and domain name
- Use eCommerce website templates
- Upload product catalogs
- Add sidebar options to navigate products on your website
- Add live chat features to provide customer support
- Test your website
- Launch it
Setting up your website has many benefits such as having complete control over running your online store.
However, you need to invest in building it. You also need to spend time promoting it and reaching a wider audience.
If you can’t afford it, then the alternative is to sell on B2B marketplaces. Marketplaces automate your workflows and streamline tasks such as payment and shipping.
These benefits to buyers and sellers attract a wide audience from the B2B community with minimum effort. You can easily grow your audience and increase your sales.
However, you don’t have complete control just like you do on your website.
So, it depends on your budget and preference on which medium is more suitable for shifting online.
Promote Your Business Online
Marketing is also evolving along with the growth of eCommerce. Digital marketing has become more effective and popular than print and outdoor marketing.
Traditional marketing techniques are getting out of fashion with time. So, it’s better to reach a wider audience with digital marketing.
According to McKinsey & Company, B2B buyers use more than ten digital channels to connect with suppliers.
Leverage your digital marketing efforts by using these mediums. These mediums include emails, search engines, and social media platforms.
And reaching out to more buyers via these mediums is easy. All you need to put in is very little effort.
You need to spend some amount to boost your website or your business page. And you’re all set.
Conclusion
The Internet has made our world a global village. Everything is going digital. And so are businesses.
It’s important to use digital technology to grow your wholesale business. It’s the future of the B2B industry.
So, start using technology right now and be the future champion of wholesaling.
