Commerce Made Easy via Digital. Supports Demand Generation

For years I’ve talked to clients and communicated on ElectricalTrends that eCommerce is not about buying online via a website. That it is about is doing commerce (business) electronically. It’s not a branch (some used the term eBranch and tried to sell the ROI that way), it’s eBusiness.

Because “business” is about interacting with your customers how THEY want to interact with you.

You need to meet your customers where their needs are.

Yes, you can seek to solicit ancillary, new, business, but for the vast majority of electrical distributors, eCommerce is a service to serve existing customers. It

• Ease of business, which generates commerce, whether this is asking questions, gathering information, or placing orders
• The customer to be self-sufficient when they want to be.
• Can improve their productivity … and your teams’ productivity
• Provides two-way improved accuracy of information.

The end-result is a more satisfied customer. Research shows that it can lead to more frequent orders, higher average gross margin, higher average order size, and a broader product mix.

It’s all about digitizing demand generation for distributors. In fact, we’re conducting a distributor digital demand generation survey for forthcoming white paper and would appreciate your input (all responses are confidential). Respondents will receive an advance copy and are eligible for complimentary 30-minute consultation. The survey is open until February 14^th.

Two of the most effective, quickest, customer-beneficial, and cost-effective paths to providing electronic communication tools to drive demand for distributors is:

1. Deploying a text messaging platform that provides a single number to customers and aggregates information into a queue. It gives customers instant access (and you can respond quickly) and can enable another channel for outbound targeted communications (if customers opt-in.) A key component is staff, especially inside sales staff, is no longer using personal phones AND there is not a historical log of activity.
   • A comprehensive, cost-effective, tool is Prokeep, which also includes additional functionality that enables companies to monetize their investment (I’ve written about them previously and how they can help “capture the screen” of electricians) … not solely act as an inbound communication service for customers. And if you are a Schneider Electric distributor, there are marketing funds that can support help minimize your investment … up to 100%! If you want to learn more, let me know.
2. Launching a website, and especially in phases.
   • Phase 1 should be beyond brochureware to be effective to your customers. It should include a robust catalog that facilitates product selection and information gathering. Now, more than ever, this is feasible, cost-effective, and can be launched relatively quickly. A viable option for distributors <$100 million is BigCommerce, who has partnered with Distributor Data Solutions, to offer a turnkey solution. Email me if you’d like to talk to them and click here for a video of a webinar they did together.
   • And once you are up and running you can integrate with your ERP system to offer customer-specific pricing, provide inventory availability, integrate account management information, and allow for transactions (for payment to account receivables, via credit card, or by PayPal … and they offer very competitive merchant rates.

Both of these services are cost-effective and can be additive to the customer experience for distributors as well as manufacturer representatives (reps wouldn’t add transactional information to their website but they could add stocking information for distributors if they wanted to.)

At the end of the day, “e”Commerce is about digitizing the customer experience to make it more productive and easier for your customer. In reality, the time has now come that this is a customer expectation. The key is how to achieve this in the least intrusive way.

If you’re a distributor, please contribute to our digital demand generation survey.