Recurring sales are the cornerstone of B2B business growth and an essential metric for Customer Lifetime Management. By automating recurring orders and enabling repeat purchases, businesses can feasibly expect to generate up to 80% of their profits from loyal customers. To help sales teams set up recurring orders seamlessly and maximize returning customer revenue, Zoey offers an intuitive tool that reduces friction and streamlines the process.
What Are Recurring Orders?
One of the defining features of B2B Ecommerce, from SaaS to hospitality, is that once buyers have identified a product or service that fulfills their business need, they typically require large volumes of it with some regularity. The precise order volumes may vary according to seasonality or external economic factors, but a consistent supply becomes integral to ongoing growth.
Although these kinds of orders are not “set and forget,” they are recurring (at least until they no longer fulfill their initial business purpose). They differ from subscriptions in that the quantity or per unit cost may fluctuate. A medical center, for example, will need to adjust the supply of its personal protective equipment (PPE) depending on government health guidelines. With recurring orders in place, there is no need to set up the purchase from scratch each time, saving time for both sales and procurement teams.
3 Benefits for Your Business
When sales teams know that an individual purchase is likely to become a recurring order, several benefits come into play.
1. Efficiency & Time Savings
The business enjoys a boost through greater efficiency and time-saving. Without the drain on resources of manually onboarding new customers and processing each purchase, sales teams have more time to add value in other areas, such as new customer acquisition or support.
2. Increased Sales & Better Forecasting
With the prospect of an order becoming recurring, there is a stronger business case for offering discounts or more flexible payment terms that can accelerate sales. Recurring orders offer a smoother path to increased sales and more accurate demand forecasting since they remove many of the variables that affect cash flow. As a source of data, they also offer valuable insight into the business about what product lines resonate best with each customer segment.
3. Product Quality & Consistency
From a buyer’s perspective, suppliers are more likely to offer a consistent, quality product when there is a guaranteed market that warrants ongoing development and investment. It is the recurring orders that become 2.0 versions, upgrades and product enhancements.
There is, of course, a flipside to recurring orders. If a business does not have a robust system in place for automating and streamlining its most valuable repeat sales — or allows human error to enter the process — buyers will inevitably gravitate towards a supplier who can deliver. Particularly in the context of online ordering and secure self-service procurement, systems matter as much as sales teams.
Accelerate Orders With Zoey
A solid roster of recurring orders is the sign of a healthy business, even more so in Ecommerce where 39% of customers will switch to another brand if an item is out of stock just once. When customer loyalty is so hard to guarantee, B2B businesses should focus their efforts on taking care of existing buyers as a priority. The cost of their acquisition has already been covered.
With recurring orders or Quick Orders, your B2B Ecommerce store can make the lives of repeat buyers easier and differentiate your business from the competition. Request a demo of Zoey today to see how we can help you move past these issues:
Nick Marshall is a freelance writer from the UK covering B2B marketing, emerging tech, payments and Ecommerce. He lives on a tiny island with slow internet in the French Caribbean, but was formerly an agency copywriter in the UK.
