What do selling partners need from an online B2B selling solution?

E-commerce has changed the way organizations conduct business in the last decade, with estimations of online B2B opportunity reaching €2.8T* by 2024, across Germany, France, Italy, Spain and the UK.

To empower your company to ride the growth wave of B2B ecommerce, it is important to understand how to grab attention of the procurement executives and how switching to online procurement will shape the future of B2B selling.

Businesses embracing this emerging trend will have more success in defining their online presence and be more effective when growing their B2B channel. Amazon offers features and services to all selling partners, and we have developed a specialised set for B2B businesses.

Whether you are just starting your B2B selling journey or you are a settled business that would commence to expand your sales out of your home country, we can support you in your development path.

Selling partners already comprise more than 50% of Amazon Business’s $10 billion annualized global sales. Are you ready to grow with us and grab your share? These are four tips from the Amazon Business team to move your entire organization forward.

1. Understand your audience

We understand how important it is to be able to rapidly identify and reach your target audience, so you can create an efficient, streamlined selling process. To support you in targeting business customers, we created B2B Central – an easy-to-use dashboard, which enables you to get all the intelligence you need to make informed decisions for your B2B channel.

You may be curious about the comparison between different customer segments, especially the split between traditional consumers and business customers. That is why we have developed Sales Snapshot, which enables you to compare B2B and B2C sales, monitor year-on-year growth and understand the difference in the number of sold units for each segment.

On average, business customers tend to have a larger basket size than B2C customers, and you can benefit from understanding which products are attracting their attention. To make this process more efficient, we have created performance widgets, helping you to understand which industry verticals are the most interested in your catalogue, as well as your top performing B2B products. 

2. Tailor your offers to the B2B customer 

Business customers are often buying in bulk, both due to convenience and price, and they have different post-purchase requirements. To help you accommodate these expectations, we are working on making the business selling partners' processes simple yet powerful. 

On average, orders with Quantity Discounts contain three times more units. You can either set the Quantity Discount – which will then be available to all registered business customers – or you can accept a buyer request, enabling you to respond in an agile way to customer demand. 

To create a competitive advantage and increase your sales conversion you can also offer ‘Business Only’ exclusive prices. These prices will be set lower than retail prices and even though both customer segments can see your listing, only registered business customers can purchase at the B2B price. 

Businesses tend to base their purchase decision on the VAT-exclusive price, so having such a price will increase the visibility of your offer. You can display VAT-exclusive prices on your offers by using the VAT Calculation Service (VCS). 

3. Simplify your bookkeeping

The VAT Calculation Service does more than enabling you to set up VAT-exclusive prices. It enables you to rethink business operations that hold you back, helping you focus on driving your business forward rather than spending time on complex, manual processes such as invoicing. 

You can simplify your daily operations with VCS and automatically provide business compliant VAT invoices for all your B2B orders. Once you have activated this feature, business customers will see a ‘Downloadable VAT invoice’ badge on your offers. This badge communicates an invoice guarantee to business customers, who require invoices for their reporting duties. Such a mechanism fosters trust between you and your customers and increases sales conversion since procurement leaders can filter only offers with an invoice promise. 

We are aware that alongside your customers, you also have reporting duties for your organisation, so we are supporting you with detailed VAT reports. This helps you save time and energy while reporting your business performance to relevant authorities. 

4. Target B2B customers across different countries with in-demand products

We have designed our seller account to offer you a seamless overview of your B2C and B2B activities across the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, using a single account. This enables you to have the necessary information at your fingertips, and reach decisions much faster, leaving additional resources to use in other business areas.  

Are you wondering how to determine which products will be a good match for these different marketplaces? 

Our business selling partner benefits include two types of selection recommendations that show you products with an observed demand from business customers: recommendations similar to your selling history and suggestions for products not yet on Amazon. You can access these weekly recommendations in your Seller Central account. 

Start your seller journey to get an access to Seller Central or visit our website for additional information.

* Michael O’Grady, “Online B2B Forecast, 2019 To 2024 (EU-5),” Forrester Analytics, July 2, 2019