The CRM market is crowded. But it’s the more “generic” CRMs that are saturating the market. These CRMs focus on providing multi-purpose functions that can loosely fit a wide range of business operations. But this can quickly develop into complications for certain types of businesses. Particularly for Wholesalers and Distributors, this will more than likely evolve into a lack of specialisation in key areas where Stock-Aware functionality is required. Of course, bespoke solutions are an option, but not all businesses (particularly SMEs) can implement such a system due to the sheer cost and complexity that’s typically associated with it.

Whether it be any of the traditional CRMs on the market or a bespoke solution, what they fail to deliver on are the 2 key challenges B2B Wholesalers, Distributors and Manufacturers face daily to make their business profitable; re-spend and retention. 

We’ve seen it before – businesses who sell products, implementing a CRM system that fails to facilitate their unique processes. The result? They don’t see any value in it. People who should be using it simply don’t, because there’s no buy-in. So, it begs the question: as a B2B Wholesaler, why implement a CRM that limits its focus on simply acquiring customers, and disregards the things that are critical to your business’ success?

Acquire (pretty much all CRMs)

Whilst most generic CRMs focus on acquiring customers, this tends to be their limit. Of course, acquiring customers is obviously a critical part to the start of your sales pipeline, so it’s important it can record all your customer interactions and keep track of sales opportunities (the stuff you’d expect). But for businesses who sell lots of products to other businesses, it's not enough. 

Re-spend (Stock-Aware CRM)

Take this example – a Wholesaler, who sells coffee beans to a coffee shop. Sure, securing new business is going to be important to them, but the sale of a kilo bag of coffee beans likely won’t make them a profit. In fact, they might be selling it at cost, or even (and it’s not uncommon!) make a loss. 

To mitigate this, customer-facing staff should have the power to easily increase average order values and secure repeat business using CRM functionality. A CRM that’s designed for selling products should automatically and intelligently prompt them with relevant upsell, cross-sell and must-sell products at the point of sale, based on items already in their basket and through leveraging their existing, rich sales history data. 

Retain (Stock-Aware CRM)

OK – so we know that increasing average order values can boost new business, but when it comes to businesses that sell products, retention is critical for long-term profit gains, particularly in B2B.
 
Whether it be reducing friction in the purchase process to deliver ultimate convenience by selling products the way your customers want to buy them (e.g. single, small box, large box or pallet), or having intelligence at your fingertips to know exactly which customers to prioritise now (like who’s buying less or stopped buying entirely) – a CRM solution that’s built to retain your customer base is absolutely essential in growing your business…and your profits! 

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Want to grow your Wholesale, Distributor or Manufacturing business faster than ever before? Chat to our team about our Stock-Aware CRM today!