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In a perfect world, sales would be easy. The customer walks in the door and instantly buys your product or service. This would mean that the buyer has only one goal in mind - which is to buy, not minding any of the pre-or post-buying experience. But in the constantly evolving consumer landscape and online marketplace environment, that’s not the case. So, if you don't approach it with a strategy, sales can quickly become difficult without even realizing why.
Whether you're selling wholesale or retail you need to ensure your negotiation strategies are well-chosen especially when as a supplier, you may want to negotiate factors such as delivery time, payment terms, inventory value, or order size that can be placed.
To provide these strategies a supporting hand, we at F2FMART offer better sales processes, improved efficiency, & more for your wholesale business. But more on that later.
Since the B2B distribution dynamics are ever-changing, most suppliers are overwhelmed negotiating for mutually beneficial offers. There are many negotiation strategies that wholesale suppliers should implement while doing business with retailers; especially online.
So, let's look at 7 negotiation strategies for building better B2B relationships that will help in achieving your business & revenue goals.
- Negotiate from a position of strength.
You'll never get the best deal when you don't have options. Be sure to create alternatives when trying to secure a deal. The more value you add during negotiations, the more likely it will be that both parties see the negotiation as successful in achieving their goals.
Be ready to provide profitable deals and ready to take a step back for when you realize the possibility of long-term gain vs short-term losses This will be a positive step towards building a long business relationship with buyers especially new customers.
Associating with a wholesale marketplace can prove to be cost-effective. Wholesale marketplaces facilitate market research, save time, money and contribute to consistent sales growth. Wholesale buyers are spending their valuable time sourcing products that they can trust, so suppliers should focus on catering to the market demand and trends.
- Offer Deals
As we said above, the position of strength would be for you to be able to provide alternative deals. Now, these just don’t include discounts, seasonal offers, sales but also something that would increase your goodwill with the buyer.
Offering a small bonus product with the purchase of your main product, offering free shipping for a certain period. In short, small gestures can be beneficial in negotiation and building rapport.
- Calibrated MOQ's
MOQs have an impact on both buyers and sellers in the B2B market, so it's essential to understand how a strategized approach can be mutually beneficial. The right approach with your MOQs can lead to a healthy consistent cash flow to meet the expansion and development of your wholesale business. A sound way of doing that would be to offer flexibility between low & high MOQ's catering to buyers of all bandwidths.
Associate with an established online marketplace that supports calibrated MOQ offerings is a negotiation strategy that one should be associated with.
Keeping the minimum order quantity based on your business strategies allows customers to get clarity before placing the order with you.
- Seamless Fulfilment Process
A supplier doesn't just offer products but also an experience of buying. A sound negotiation strategy includes, a supplier understanding the impact of a seamless and quick order fulfillment process. Smoother the process, the better. No number of good deals, offers, discounts would help if you as a supplier cannot fulfill an order on time.
Wholesale marketplace providers have a strong network hold of delivery partners, with fulfillment support to remote destinations across the country. Allowing you to focus on growing your business and not sweat the small but also important stuff.
- The 80-20 Rule.
As a supplier, you would understand the 80/20 rule, which argues that your top 20% of customers account for around 80% of your sales. This 20% makes the most of your revenue and which means, to pay more attention to these top customers, providing them with perfectly timed, exclusive offers like gifts, free samples, new catalogue previews, free shipping, and more.
- Use a referral to open the door.
This strategy builds on the 80-20 rule, where you put the 20% of your top customers to work. It's common practice for suppliers to have a buyer network with established connections with certain companies and key decision-makers. It’s, therefore, crucial to leverage these connections by incentivizing all key players in the equation by encouraging referrals for new business opportunities, with added benefits in place if referrals are converted.
An established online marketplace already has credibility, with its verified network of buyers and sellers. Which as a wholesale business you can use it to your advantage, where customers consider referrals as an encouraged business practice when they have experienced a smooth buying process.
- Trial and Error > Recommendations
No strategy is perfected the first-time round, as outcomes are unique to each business. It’s there crucial to test out a few theories at the same time to understand what works and what doesn’t.
The ‘Trail and Error’ phase while important can be heavy on the pocket for start-ups especially in an offline environment.
Online wholesale marketplaces can therefore be the perfect addition to the strategy, as you can start by supplying in small quantities and gauge the market reaction. By partnering with an online marketplace and with a nominal investment you get easy access to customized dashboards, data analysis tools, and reports, that help in identifying the opportunities with your products and offers. Thereby giving you the flexibility to make feasible changes at fraction of a cost.
Wrapping it up
Overall, consider how to fit online marketplaces as a strategy into your current business growth agenda to leverage the ease of access they provide, with customer buying behaviour shifting to digital.
Now how to do it right with F2FMART
Combing the 7 negotiation strategies we have mentioned, this is what buying and selling in bulk across India through F2FMART have to offer:
- Having effective range accessibility, pan India. Especially when the supplies need to reach Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities.
- Market competitive rates of fulfillment that enable easy Door-to-Door fulfillment
- Elimination of any unnecessary middlemen, resulting in larger margins on products purchased from F2FMart.
- Low and high minimum order quantity (MOQ) ordering made possible with slot pricing option.
- Get return and refund policies that protect buyer and seller interests.
- F2F's dedicated team personally ensures suppliers get the right bids from suitable buyers
At the end of the day, these suggested strategies combined with F2FMART’s industry experience, our agenda is to ensure you obtain growth and profit-maximizing outcomes for your business. We look forward to curating growth solutions for you.
