TOC Sales Portal Features of Sales Portals Pros of Sales Portals Cons of Sales Portals B2B eCommerce Websites Features of B2B eCommerce Sites Pros and Cons of B2B eCommerce Sites Clarity Can Help KEY TAKEAWAYS A sales portal is a centralized platform that primarily focuses on facilitating sales processes, streamlining order management, and providing access to product information for sales teams and authorized partners. It is typically designed for internal use or restricted access. B2B commerce websites are customer-facing platforms that cater to a broader audience of potential buyers. These websites aim to attract and engage customers, provide a comprehensive product catalog, enable self-service ordering, and support various stages of the buyer's journey. B2B commerce websites often include features like personalized pricing, customer-specific catalogs, and robust integration with CRM and ERP systems. While both sales portals and B2B commerce websites contribute to B2B sales, their primary focus and intended users differ, with sales portals targeting internal teams and authorized partners, and B2B commerce websites targeting external customers. Differences between Sales Portals and B2B Commerce Websites Comparing sales options for business-to-business companies There are so many ways that businesses can go about marketing and selling their products and services to their clients, whether retail or wholesale customers. Two of the most common ways for business-to-business companies to go about it are to use a sales portal or employ a B2B eCommerce website. Both are able to get the job done, but one may work better than the other depending on your business, employees, and clients. Sales Portal A sales portal is an online interface that contains information and tools that are useful, especially to your sales team, but also to the rest of your employees as well. The goal of a sales portal is to enable your sales force to better and more effectively inform and sell to your clients and customers. Features of Sales Portals Depending on how your sales portal is built, you can have many different features. With a sales portal, you are able to control who sees what content. Search, sales, marketing, and social media tools are also some important features in most sales portals. Some portals even allow you to create small stores within your portal for your customers that can be customized with their logos, specific pricing, easy reorder options, and information that is pertinent to them. Pros of Sales Portals One of the biggest benefits of using a sales portal is being able to access all of your sales collateral and tools in one place. If a salesperson is looking for a specific piece of marketing material, they can easily find it without having to ask the marketing team to send it to them, interrupting and slowing both of their tasks. Everyone can see order history, order status, price lists, etc. Another positive of a B2B eCommerce portal is that you can customize the portal to your specifications. You can also store more sensitive and extensive information in a sales portal because your staff is usually the only people that have access to it. Portals can be specialized; some companies need a HIPAA-compliant patient portal or a distributor portal. Cons of Sales Portals Sales portals do rely on marketers to keep adding and updating information, so if you don't have a strong marketing team, your sales portal won't be as beneficial. To make the sales portal work, salespeople must actually visit it often and pass on the information from it. If your sales team doesn't know how to use the sales portal or doesn't take full advantage of it and all of the tools it has to offer, then it is not going to have an impact on your sales. B2B eCommerce Websites Business-to-business (B2B) eCommerce sites are publicly-facing websites where companies can buy products or services from another company online. They are usually a combination of a content management system and an eCommerce platform. Features of B2B eCommerce Sites B2B eCommerce websites can have numerous different features depending on the type of business that is being done. Some of the possible features of a site include user registration, real-time inventory, product catalog, customer-specific pricing, and dealer locators. Pros and Cons of B2B eCommerce Sites A positive of using an eCommerce website is the fact that all of your information is consistent. What one client sees or reads on your website is the exact same thing that the next client will, unless they are logged in and have content specific to customer accounts, such as customer-specific pricing. Additionally, anyone is able to visit your website, not just your employees that have access to it or the business that you have created a store, which means you can drive new customers to the site with SEO. A good custom eCommerce platform is built with SEO in mind. The eCommerce site could also be customized, but it cannot be as highly customized as a sales portal. One of the negatives of an eCommerce site is that it is harder to cater to each specific client, what everyone else sees is generally what they see. All of the processes are standard and not adjustable for each and every visitor. Clarity Can Help At Clarity, we know full well that there is more than one way to get a task accomplished to aid sales reps in their goals. Our team of developers is highly skilled at solving business problems for our clients with our customized applications that deliver top-ranking customer satisfaction. We have built numerous sales portals and B2B eCommerce sites for many of our clients and would love to build a custom solution for your business. To find out more about sales portals and the other services that Clarity offers, call or click to contact us today! FAQ What is a B2B sales portal? A B2B sales portal is an online platform that facilitates business-to-business transactions by connecting sellers and buyers. It provides a digital marketplace where businesses can showcase their products or services, manage sales processes, and communicate with potential clients. B2B sales portals often include features like product catalogs, place orders, pricing information, customer support, and secure payment options. They streamline the sales cycle, enhance collaboration between businesses, improve the customer experience, and enable efficient and convenient transactions within the B2B sector. How do I create a B2B portal? Creating a B2B portal involves several key steps. First, define the portal's objectives and target audience. Next, design the user interface and consider essential features such as product catalogs, place orders, and secure login/authentication. Develop the portal using web development technologies and integrate necessary APIs for functionality like payment processing and inventory management. Ensure the portal is secure and user-friendly. Finally, test the portal thoroughly and launch it, followed by continuous monitoring and improvement for a better buying experience.