The B2B e-commerce market is growing rapidly. Forrester predicts it will reach $1.8 trillion by 2023, accounting for roughly 17% of all B2B sales in the U.S.
In a 2018 article for Demand Gen Report, Manish Dudharejia, founder and president of digital marketing agency E2M Solutions, points out that 93% of B2B customers would prefer to shop online. “Be sure that your website is supported with a comprehensive, international e-commerce platform that provides these important features and focuses heavily on the CX,” he says.
B2B companies in wholesale, health care, financial services and other industries stand to benefit from implementing e-commerce. Abby Adams, manager of global program marketing at Cook Medical, a medical device provider, told Demand Gen Report that e-commerce is something they are heavily considering in the future.
“It’s something that we’ve talked about being a future avenue that we can see some of our products going down. People just aren’t interested in having to jump through organizational hoops for products that they’re buying en masse or having to place orders frequently. We all want our purchases to be available at the push of a button.”
E-commerce will not replace sales reps, according to Steve Casey, principal analyst at Forrester. Instead, it can serve as a platform to provide sales reps with more time to better serve customers and quickly identify which ones require the most attention.
“We have to get out of that mindset of this is binary and either going to be digital or it’s going to be human. Don’t view these things as distinct and in competition, but as complimentary,” Casey told Demand Gen Report. There are lots of products that people will ultimately purchase through a digital channel, but that doesn’t mean they’ll never speak with a sales rep along the way.”
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