Salesforce is a multipurpose tool that unites various capabilities and technologies. From customer relationship management to artificial intelligence, the platform can meet most of your business needs. Moreover, if you’re an online retailer, you can use Salesforce as an e-commerce platform. Retailers can use the Salesforce platform to enhance customer experiences, streamline operations, and drive business growth.
That’s where Salesforce Commerce comes in. However, it’s essential to draw a line between Salesforce B2C Commerce and Salesforce B2B Commerce. The former focuses on those smaller-scale transactions between a business and an individual consumer. The latter serves for larger operations between entities.
As such, the two solutions differ a lot. Salesforce B2B Commerce handles bulk orders, custom integrations, and relationships that go beyond just clicking “add to cart.” At the same time, it provides the same slick, intuitive shopping experiences as its retail counterpart.
In this article, we’ll explore Salesforce B2B Commerce, its advantages, and implementation peculiarities in more detail. We’ll also discuss some success stories to help you decide whether this product is right for you.
Understanding Salesforce Commerce Cloud for B2B
Salesforce B2B Commerce is a cloud-based solution specifically designed to cater to the complex needs of businesses selling to other businesses. It’s built natively on the Salesforce platform. Compared to B2C Commerce, it has a separate technology stack tailored for the hefty, recurring purchases typical of business transactions. It’s more complicated, so for a smooth start, opting for Salesforce Commerce Cloud consulting is a smart move.
Business-to-business trade is evolving as purchasers’ demands keep rising. In fact, B2B companies continue to perceive e-commerce as a major investment potential. According to statistics, global same-site B2B e-commerce sales skyrocketed by 95% between 2020 and 2022. Similarly, most e-commerce industry professionals predict that digital sales will account for more than 50% of total income within the next two years.
What businesses can survive amidst market fluctuations? The answer is those that can reduce expenses, optimize workflow, and create more robust and long-lasting procedures. B2B Salesforce Commerce Cloud can help with that.
With capabilities like managing multiple storefronts, offering self-service options, and providing a consistent experience across various channels, it’s no wonder that companies are flocking to this solution. With Salesforce, you can create engaging, branded storefronts and handle complex shipping and payment needs.
Core Features and Capabilities
As we already know, online business buyers require different capabilities than retail customers. These clients might order hundreds of things for a combined sum of millions of dollars. Salesforce Commerce Cloud comes with the following characteristics for these kinds of deals.
Catalog Management and Contract Pricing
B2B companies can provide customized experiences without overdoing it, thanks to increased client visibility, a plethora of AI-driven solutions, and strong automation. Users can access unique personalized catalogs, product recommendations, and custom negotiated/contract pricing based on past purchases, browsing habits, and other available data within the Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud.
Salesforce streamlines the buying process, taking into account previous information to present you with a dynamic, personalized catalog. This isn’t just convenience; it’s a strategic advantage that ensures buyers across multiple channels receive consistent, personalized experiences that keep them coming back.
Seamless CRM Integration
The Salesforce Lightning Platform natively supports B2B Commerce. Being a part of the whole Salesforce ecosystem, SFCC immediately combines Service Cloud, Sales Cloud, and Experience Cloud data with CRM.
Thanks to this convergence of CRM and B2B Commerce data, essential details are readily available to sellers and buyers. That’s why the largest international corporations select the Salesforce platform when they choose to sell online.
All B2B Commerce activity is visible to sellers (the businesses offering goods or services on the website) through their Salesforce sales dashboard, including B2B Commerce activity like:
- orders, carts, and sales;
- service items like opportunities and cases.
Buyers, on the other hand, can use CRM data to display the negotiated price instead of the list price for a particular customer. Additionally, businesses making purchases through the site can view information about past orders, service cases, and other account data straight from their websites.
Advanced Order Management
Writing code for all the complex logic for B2B business processes (bulk orders, recurring purchases, complicated pricing schemes, and so on) is a difficult undertaking. The Salesforce platform does a great job managing this and enables users to fill in the gaps.
For example, it provides additional options on the checkout page, such as shipping groups. They allow you to divide an order into various batches and deliver them to different locations on multiple delivery dates. Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud features are versatile and powerful, ensuring the process remains smooth no matter how intricate the order is.
Analytics and Insights
Salesforce Commerce Cloud B2B offers comprehensive customer analytics to measure your marketing campaign’s performance and identify areas for improvement. Key metrics include:
- website traffic;
- conversions;
- customer behavior;
- purchase history;
- return on investment (ROI).
The customer account data is accessible through an online interface. Your sales team can use it to create high-performing sales strategies, resulting in higher customer satisfaction, more conversions, and revenue growth. This information is also critical for personalizing marketing efforts based on consumer pain points, preferred sales channels, and individual behavior patterns.
What Makes B2B Commerce Salesforce a Good Option for B2B Businesses?
The argument that by opting for B2B Commerce Cloud, you ensure a seamless journey within the ecosystem could have been enough to persuade you to pick this solution. However, it’s not the only benefit. Let’s overview some more reasons to start selling products to business buyers via this tool.
Engaging Business Buyers
Your partners expect more than products or services. They want a customer experience that’s on par with what they’re used to in the retail industry. The Salesforce B2B Commerce architecture is built with these consumers in mind. The software is packed with a suite of tools to meet modern buyers’ high expectations, namely:
- AI-powered personalization (Salesforce’s proprietary Einstein AI technology);
- headless commerce architecture to develop omnichannel experiences;
- flexible and customizable solutions to level up store design and functionality.
They enable businesses to:
- tailor shopping experiences to each customer’s behavior;
- offer smart product recommendations and predictive search functionalities;
- build a headless PWA for a mobile app-like user experience;
- adapt to traffic peaks and allocate extra resources.
For example, an energy systems manufacturer, GE Renewable Energy, took a massive catalog of complex products and spun it into a user-friendly B2B storefront, mimicking a B2C shopping experience. Now, its customers can purchase orders faster thanks to detailed product searches and status checks.
Expanding Reach Through Multiple Channels
Today’s B2B consumers navigate their purchasing journey across a spectrum of touchpoints:
- social media;
- mobile apps;
- websites;
- face-to-face meetings, among other channels.
And they anticipate a user-friendly and uniform customer experience. That is, they expect to start their product search on one channel and finalize their purchase on another hassle-free, be it online or offline. B2B Commerce makes it possible. You can communicate with clients through a variety of channels while maintaining a high standard of service.
Speaking of the technical part, the ability to develop several touchpoints is the result of the advent of headless commerce architecture. This architecture, coupled with the all-encompassing Salesforce platform, facilitates a genuinely integrated ecosystem.
This ensures that customers can chat with your brand and purchase wherever and whenever they prefer. With a great experience comes brand loyalty, more revenue, and opportunities to scale the business.
Apart from that, B2B Commerce Cloud allows you to go direct-to-consumer (D2C). Its B2B2C solutions let businesses do things like:
- quickly launch new storefronts;
- create intelligent, personalized shopping experiences;
- build deeper connections with end consumers;
- expand their market reach and presence.
Driving Efficiency and Reducing Costs
The goal of B2B Commerce Cloud features is to enhance the comfort and happiness of B2B consumers. Additionally, both you and your customers alike will pay less for transactions made on an optimized e-commerce site. Why? Because there will be fewer steps to checkout, improved speed, and clearer information, which means the following for the seller:
- less time spent on each sale;
- reduced overheads for maintaining the e-commerce platform;
- fewer resources expended on customer service per sale.
For the customers, it could translate into lower product prices, cheaper shipping, or more favorable terms. Salesforce B2B Commerce API automates and simplifies bulk order management and complex pricing structures. This reduces operational costs and frees up your teams to focus on building relationships and strategizing for growth rather than getting bogged down by manual tasks.
A case in point is McKesson, a major pharmaceutical distributor. Its average order time has dwindled by 90% thanks to investing in the B2B e-commerce solution that integrates with sales and fulfillment operations.
Another stunning example is AMMEX, a global distributor of personal health, hygiene, and safety equipment like disposable gloves. Having faced an unprecedented 670% surge in demand during the pandemic, the company decided to connect the B2B Commerce Cloud to handle the traffic deluge. The achievements:
- 90% of customers are ordering through AMMEX’s digital commerce site today;
- the sales team was liberated from manual order entries and could double down on fostering relationships with customers.
Implementation Insights
So, you’ve decided to go with Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Take note of the following tips for selling products there with ease:
- Start with pinpointing customers’ needs: Are there any glitches in the purchasing experience? Identify issues to plan your next steps. Is it the lack of transparent pricing, the cumbersome process of placing bulk orders, or perhaps the inability to track shipments effectively?
- Start small with a phased approach: Focus on a specific segment of your customer base or a particular business unit to roll out your initial e-commerce strategy. After that, it’ll be less risky to scale, as you know that the platform is already fine-tuned to meet broader demands efficiently.
- Incentivize and integrate: If you collaborate with implementation partners, encourage them to utilize the existing capabilities of Commerce Cloud. You can access lots of integrations and apps on AppExchange, such as third-party solutions for inventory management, order fulfillment, and customer loyalty programs. Use them to enhance the platform’s functionality without exceeding the budget with custom technologies.
- Keep an eye on KPIs and qualitative insights: These include spending, speed, agility, opportunity costs, customer service requests, etc.
- Customize: Your business is unique, and your e-commerce solution should reflect that. The Salesforce platform allows for deep customization, from the user interface to the complex back-end logic. Adjust page layouts, declutter checkouts, and deliver custom storefronts for different buyer segments.
- Leverage support and resources: Connect with the Salesforce community to share insights, troubleshoot issues, and discover best practices.
- Choose the right partner: To manage the complex B2B e-commerce business, you need a connected ecosystem of implementation partners. A trustworthy agency can help your company reduce long-term expenses and provide a specialized, scalable IT product or services for your particular requirements and future growth.
Salesforce Commerce Cloud: Wrapping Up
Salesforce is among industry leaders when it comes to CRM software. It also provides commerce solutions under its Salesforce B2C Commerce and Salesforce B2B Commerce Cloud products. If you want to sell to other businesses rather than individuals, you can benefit from the tool’s integration, scalability, and customization opportunities.
Weigh up Salesforce B2B Commerce pricing, engage customers, and focus on the specific needs of companies. Deliver personalized experiences, free up your teams with automation, and let your online store succeed!
Andrej Fedek is the creator and the one-person owner of two blogs: InterCool Studio and CareersMomentum. As an experienced marketer, he is driven by turning leads into customers with White Hat SEO techniques. Besides being a boss, he is a real team player with a great sense of equality.