B2B Sales: What Is It And What IS The B2B Sales Process

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Even before the crisis, the b2b market was developing strongly and was demonstrating significant growth. With the beginning of the pandemia, sales of goods and services in this segment moved online. To know more about b2b sales and its specifics, visit the Agora blog.

B2B Sales: What Is It

The b2b sales are the sales of goods or services in bulk from one company to another. Purchased products can be used as a raw material for manufacturing, to provide services, for business needs, or further resale. Some features of sales in b2b determine the specifics of the relationships with customers making purchases:

  • The majority of customers are regular ones, and cooperation with them is based on individual communication. According to the Pareto principle, 20% of customers provide 80% of the profit here. Sales managers spend a lot of time handling requests from the rest of the customers.
  • The buyer needs individual terms of cooperation, personalization of the catalog assortment, the minimum volume of the order, and the terms of cooperation.
  • Several payment options are required: pre-payment and post-payment, postponed, partial payments, batches of a certain volume, or barter.

The stages of the b2b sales process

Online e-commerce solutions have facilitated the interaction between buyers and sellers in the b2b market. The stages of the b2b sales process with an online platform are the following:

  • The customer analyzes information about products in a personalized catalog, searches for analogs of missing products using "smart search" features, and reserves the necessary products in the warehouse due to integration with accounting systems.
  • The contract and invoice are automatically generated by the system, and the responsible persons receive a notification about the need to certify the documents with a digital signature.
  • The client calculates the cost and terms of delivery, selects the nearest warehouse using a logistics calculator of a partner company.
  • Monitoring debts, order status, exporting the electronic catalog, or ordering promotional products are conducted in the private account. Additional products can be ordered there, as well.
  • The system collects information about the customer's behavior on the site, generates analytical data, and sales reports for a specified period.
  • The last stage involves selecting marketing tools to stimulate sales based on this data, and the cycle repeats.