It has been proved that the B2B buyers are getting more interested day by day to shop online and reduce their need to interact with a salesperson or call to customer service for their Orders. Though this is just a start and it’s expected to grow in many folds in the upcoming years.
Since B2B customers are getting more interested to available B2B ecommerce facility so it’s important for Manufacturers/B2B traders to provide them lucrative offers, flexible and simple buying experience, easy and convenient payment terms to increase their buying capacity and willingness for payment. Here are the B2B Ecommerce Trends to watch closely in 2018!
In this blog, I will try to talk about maintaining flexible credit options to attract your customers online and increase their purchase capacity, at the same time controlling the risk of bad debt.
Credit Limit | Line of Credit:
Setting credit limit is more likely to be an art and not science. Often, the credit limit is assigned from a gut feeling and not through calculation. However, I recommend setting the credit limit by a mathematical approach and it should be reviewed time to time. E.g. Once a new customer will join then after initial verification and agreement, assign 20% to 25% of total credit value of an existing customer. It should get increased based on the future payments behavior of that customer.
Buy Now and Pay Later:
B2B customers love to see the concept of buy now and pay later along with some payment terms like Net30, Net45, Net90 etc. In this way, they can buy goods and sell it to their customer which will increase their capacity to maintain the cash flow in the business.
Improve Relationship:
As I said before, increased credit limit to your customers plays an important role to improve your relationship with the customer. The purchaser understands that you trust them to pay you back. Trust is a very important factor in business because this trust will develop the long-term relationship between the Purchaser and seller.
Multiple and Combined Payment Methods:
I would recommend having multiple and combined payment methods for your B2B customers. Let’s assume Customer “X” is having a credit limit of $20000 out of which he has due invoices of $16000 so he has the credit remaining of $4000. Now he tries to place one Order for $6000 which exceeded his credit limit and might ask to reduce his order amount. I would recommend using a combined payment method which should calculate the Order value and remaining credit limit and allow the customer to checkout with multiple payment methods. Like, the purchaser can make the payment of $2000 through other payment methods (Credit card, PayPal etc).
Personalized Notification of Pending Invoice Instead of Blocking them from Placing Order:
You know your customer and I would recommend you to have feature for personalized notification of pending invoice instead of blocking them while placing orders. If you want to allow some of your customers to place orders even though they cross their credit limit, then you can use this configuration and give them a gentle reminder for paying the pending invoices with a clause that the goods will be delivered after making the payment of due invoices to adjust their credit limit. This feature will help you to get the order and will create logical pressure for payment of pending invoices.
Finally, I would like to say that allowing credit will surely help to increase revenue but don’t take this lightly and you should review it time to time and change it as per customer’s payment. nature. While it can push your business to achieve new heights, in turn extending credits to every customer who comes your way can push you out of business if you don’t control it properly.
Now, you can easily integrate your business applications including ERP, CRM, Ecommerce, Marketplace, Shiping and POS Systems under one platform to automate the business process!
You may also like:
7 Effective B2B Ecommerce Trends to Watch in 2018
Webinar Recap: Scale your B2B Business without any Restriction
7 Prolific B2B eCommerce Lead Generation Strategies to Double the ROI of your Business
