When preparing for trade shows and wholesale markets, many manufacturers and sales agencies are so focused on showcasing new products that sometimes enhancing the buyers’ experience is forgotten.
The top challenge all buyers face during any wholesale market is time management. With so many B2B marketplace venues – including the Dallas Market Center – expanding the resources they provide to maximize each buyer’s visit, offering time-saving tools to these buyers is more important than ever. Here are some top suggestions that buyers say will make their experience at market more productive:
- Be ready on opening day. There’s nothing more off-putting than arriving at the front of a showroom or booth and seeing exhibitors still rooting through boxes to finalize displays. Buyers don’t want to interrupt this frenzy of activity and will immediately leave, intending to return later — but will they? Most likely, they will run out of time seeing other sources on their list and forget to circle back.
- Have a digital tool that makes ordering quick and easy. Yes, there are still some manufacturers using pen and paper to take orders, but fortunately most are looking for faster solutions such as an a wholesale order writing app that uses barcode scanners and portable tablets. MarketTime’s mobile app for iPhone/iPad/Android not only makes placing an in-person order quick, but also provides the buyer with order-tracking and other valuable tools to save everyone time.
- Go paperless. Buyers love to have instant access to new products to show customers; however, all of those catalogs from each vendor are heavy and cumbersome to carry around. Plus, manufacturer catalogs often go missing in a retail showroom, either taken home by a customer or misplaced by staff. With a B2B order writing app, you will not only reduce all of that printed paper better for the environment but having the catalog online to instantly show customers on demand is a time-saver.
Adding even more convenience is the new Hotspotting tool from MarketTime, through which buyers can just press on an image in a digital catalog, have the specifications and details pop up in an easy-to-read box, and then click to add it to their order. This Hotspotting tool allows a manufacturer, brand, or sales agency to offer a clean, modern presentation of its products and write more orders.
- Give more than expected hospitality. Buyers say offering a drink or snack is convenient, but what would really be appreciated is having easy-to-access guest wifi services so they can check their emails while waiting for an appointment or during any spare moment in your show space. It’s a simple way to help them maximize their time.
- Offer real-time order tracking. Buyers hate calling up customer service departments every week asking when their orders have shipped. If they can cut out just one or two of those calls by having an order-tracking system they can monitor themselves, this would free up their time and win major loyalty points with that manufacturer, even if other vendors have similar merchandise at a lower price. The MarketTime commerce platform comes with super-convenient, 24/7 order-tracking capability that will save your buyers time and aggravation.
- Be open when they need to buy. Trade shows and market centers are larger than ever and packed with new resources; nothing is more frustrating to buyers than needing to see 10 more showrooms or booths within one hour before the venue’s doors close. Simply put, it can’t be done — on foot.
MarketTime offers a B2B ecommerce solution that is fast and easy to access 24/7 via a laptop, tablet, or smartphone. MarketTime’s digital tools allow buyers to virtually visit all those wholesalers they couldn’t see in person at the show, whether they ran out of time or were not able to travel due to COVID-19 concerns and restrictions. They can view high-resolution product images and videos and can even shop directly from the wholesaler’s website.
For manufacturers and sales agencies, MarketTime’s powerful analytics and rich data allow for easy and convenient access to customer order history and updated contact information. The platform also enables sending targeted “shoppable” promotions to a curated selection of buyers. MarketTime also provides full back-office functionality including commission-tracking to help speed transactions and communication between manufacturers and sales representatives for a nearly effortless process.
- No website, no problem. Trade shows, market centers, and other wholesale marketplaces are highly beneficial for buyers seeking creative and unique wholesalers and new products. Many of these smaller brands, however, do not have the staffing power or financial resources to build a website or have an IT department monitor it. MarketTime offers these wholesalers a white label ecommerce tool – a B2B eCommerce website – that is powered by MarketTime and levels the playing field by allowing smaller companies to have the digital presence and capabilities of much larger manufacturers.
MarketTime customizes these “Private Marketplace” sites to dovetail with each brand’s look and feel, achieving a seamless buying experience for their customers at a much lower cost than if they were to implement such a system on their own. In fact, MarketTime customers have generated over $40M in sales on their B2B ecommerce websites in 2021 so far.
In the end, what makes buyers happy today is the same thing that has made them happy for decades partnering with manufacturers, brands and sales agencies who make it easy to do business. Fortunately, in this fast-paced world, there are omnichannel commerce and B2B order writing apps like MarketTime available to both manufacturers and buyers for mutual success.