7 Effective Strategies for Enlisting Competitors’ Vendors onto Your B2B Marketplace

Every B2B marketplace has sellers. 

But, the most successful wholesale marketplace is one that can entice, attract, and accelerate growth by successfully bringing onboard competitors’ sellers.

The thought of welcoming powerhouse sellers from competitors might likely have been on your brand’s agenda while planning strategic business growth. 

The actual execution, however, never took off due to the complexities involved, right? 

Ready to give your long-forgotten vendor onboarding strategies a revamp? 

Let’s get you started with some effective, ethical and win-win strategies to onboard powerhouse sellers from your competitors.

Before we dive deep, let us first understand the current B2B marketplace trends and how these can be employed to strategize your vendor relationships for business growth.

Key B2B Marketplace Trends for Building Winsome Vendor Relationships

The dynamic B2B ecommerce landscape is pulsating with innovation, disruption, and unprecedented growth opportunities. In such thriving market conditions, your wholesale marketplace needs strategies aligned with buying trends, vendor growth and customer experience to unlock its true potential.

To strategize a win-all growth approach let us evaluate the data-driven insights from B2B marketplace buying trends that can help build collaborative partnerships, and prioritize customer-centricity to drive success.

• $20.4 trillion is the forecasted market value of B2B Ecommerce by 2027
• 7.2X faster growth of B2B marketplaces than overall B2B ecommerce 
• 73% of B2B and B2C vendors on Amazon plan to sell on other marketplaces
• 81% of online sellers sell on two or more online marketplaces
• 90% of distributor websites will offer direct online ordering to buyers by 2025
• 94% of B2B buyers source products/services on B2B marketplaces
• 250% increase in B2B mcommerce orders from 2020 to 2024

Source: Forbes, McKinsey & Company, Digital Commerce 360, Gartner, Channel Advisor, Marketplace Pulse

The data clearly indicates that B2B ecommerce and the marketplace model are aligned for growth in the coming years. Vendors already selling online want to expand their reach by selling through multiple B2B marketplaces. Also, B2B customers prefer shopping on marketplace websites ( preferably using a mobile device) rather than shopping offline.

In essence, providing your sellers with the ideal B2B ecommerce ecosystem positions your business for significant growth in the booming market. 

But before we discuss the strategies to grow your marketplace’s value by adding rival vendors, let us briefly check the benefits they will bring on board.

10 benefits of onboarding your competitor’s sellers to your B2B marketplace

When it comes to onboarding sellers to your B2B marketplace adhering to the rule, “the more, the merrier” is the key to unlocking success.

Access to an established customer base

By onboarding competitors' vendors, you gain immediate access to a pool of loyal customers who are already familiar with similar products or services, providing a ready-made market for your offerings.

Expansion of market reach and penetration

Incorporating competitors' vendors allows you to extend your market presence into new geographic regions or customer segments, tapping into untapped markets and broadening your customer base.

Increased brand visibility and recognition

Leveraging the network of competitors' vendors helps raise awareness of your brand among potential customers who may not have been previously exposed to your products or services.

Enhanced competitiveness through diversified offerings

By offering a wider range of products or services through competitors' vendors, you can differentiate yourself in the market and attract customers seeking diverse options, thus strengthening your competitive position.

Better Cross-selling and upselling opportunities 

Access to competitors' vendors enables you to cross-promote complementary products or services, increasing sales opportunities and maximizing customer lifetime value.

Access valuable industry insights and trends

Collaborating with competitors' vendors provides valuable insights into market trends, customer preferences, and industry developments, which can inform strategic decision-making and product development.

Strengthened supplier relationships and networks

Partnering with competitors' vendors fosters relationships with suppliers, expanding your network and potentially opening doors to exclusive partnerships or deals.

Improved bargaining power with suppliers

With a larger volume of business generated by incorporating competitors' vendors, you may negotiate more favorable terms, pricing, or discounts from suppliers, enhancing your overall profitability.

Boost revenue and profitability

Diversifying your customer base and product offerings through competitors' vendors can lead to increased sales and revenue streams, driving overall profitability and growth.

Establish Market Stronghold

With a variety of competitors' powerhouse vendors on your B2B marketplace, you can rapidly expand your market presence, solidify your position as a market leader, and gain a competitive advantage.

Onboarding the bestselling competitor vendors to your wholesale marketplace is definitely an idea worth exploring.

Let us learn how to do it and how to attract and onboard new sellers from your competitors.

Bringing Rival Vendors Onboard- 7 Winning Strategies for Your B2B Marketplace

It's the sellers who power your enterprise B2B marketplace and make it attractive for your buyers. But how to make your enterprise marketplace attractive for your competitors’ sellers you want to onboard?

Well, you need to create a marketplace platform that offers value and benefits tailored to the needs and preferences of your sellers.

Let us learn 7 tested ways to do so; 

1. Offer an IT Infrastructure like no other

Why do vendors prefer to begin their online journey on B2B marketplaces? 

Yes, you are right, for the visibility they get and the readymade ecommerce solution which gets them started in no time. 

The vendors your brand is targeting have already experienced selling online, so it is crucial you provide them an online selling solution that surpasses their current experience. For this, you need cutting-edge B2B ecommerce solutions that not only meet but exceed current standards, positioning your brand as a leader in the B2B ecosystem.

Here is how you can impress and attract rival vendors with your next-gen technology offerings:

• Build a B2B marketplace that offers a host of features with a smooth learning curve to your vendors 
• Offer your vendors the ease of selling through mobile from anywhere in the world
• Take your enterprise marketplace brand omnichannel so your sellers can connect with, engage and convert buyers across multiple touchpoints
• Enable multilingual content on your marketplace website to help your sellers target buyers in their native language
• Offer secure B2B marketplace solutions that offer multilevel security to protect sensitive data

StoreHippo’s headless architecture enables you to build a B2B marketplace using next-gen technology solutions. With 300+ native enterprise features  and comprehensive solutions to manage, run and grow your online wholesale marketplace you can offer an unparalleled experience to your vendors. You can build an omnichannel brand presence using the decoupled headless architecture where the same backend logic and APIs can be used to build new touchpoints in no time.

Built on a mobile-first approach, StoreHippo not only provides mobile B2B marketplace apps but also gives mobile admin to vendors so they can manage their business on the go. The built-in multilingual support translates your website content, product descriptions etc. in multiple languages (including RTL languages) and enables your vendors to connect better with clients in their native language. 

StoreHippo’s PCI-DSS compliant platform also offers SSL and multi-layer security to safeguard all crucial data of your vendors.

2. Make Selling Online  a breeze

Even the most advanced B2B ecommerce solutions lose their value if they fail to streamline online selling. If your marketplace setup necessitates vendors to use multiple disparate plugins and extensions for managing their daily business, it can make selling online cumbersome, inefficient, and prone to errors. This ultimately will hinder the productivity and profitability of their business and deter them from joining your wholesale business.

One of the best strategies to attract rival vendors is to give them B2B ecommerce solutions that make their processes efficient without requiring additional paid plugins or extensions. From onboarding to selling and fulfillment you need to offer your rival vendors a smooth and seamless experience that none of your competitors can beat. 

Here are the ways you can craft an unparalleled online selling experience for vendors planning to join your B2B marketplace:

• Seamless vendor registration process with a separate vendor interface to run the business
• Intuitive, feature-rich and easy-to-use vendor dashboard to manage business
• Built-in product, order and inventory management solutions for running the business effortlessly
• Undistracted buyer engagement with a unique seller page for each seller on your B2B portal
• Built-in analytics and reporting to help your sellers monitor their sales performance and customer insights

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce solutions offer a comprehensive multi-seller solution for enterprises where they can give the best tools to their distributors and sellers for managing their business. The onboarding process is seamless and can be completed in just a few clicks. Sellers get a feature-rich intuitive dashboard where they can see their inventory, orders, shipping status, RFQ etc, and directly send quotes to clients. 

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform’s built-in product and order management solutions along with notification at each stage of the ordering process, make the whole process informed, standardized and transparent. Sellers also get reports within their dashboard where they can see the reports and analytics of their orders and make strategic decisions for growth and improvement.

StoreHippo enables you to create separate seller pages for each vendor, providing them with undivided customer attention within your wholesale marketplace. This feature allows sellers to promote their own pages to their loyal customers, fostering a sense of owning a unique digital store while remaining part of your B2B portal.

3. Market the uniqueness of your B2B Marketplace

Can superior technology and a feature-rich B2B marketplace be reason enough for competitors’ sellers to join your marketplace? Certainly not.

Along with these, your enterprise brand needs to stand tall above the rest of the players in the market and demonstrate unique advantages for sellers joining your brand.

From offering the best technology and tools to offering quality traffic, a conducive business environment and unlimited growth opportunities , your brand must prioritize delivering exceptional value propositions to attract and retain rival sellers on your wholesale marketplace.

Give the interested sellers compelling reasons why your marketplace is the best environment for their products and business growth and you have locked them forever.

Here is how you can achieve this feat:

• Leverage your vast traffic along with existing vendors' experience and sales to pull more vendors in similar categories 
• Clearly emphasize the unique value proposition of your B2B marketplace to vendors, such as lower commissions, higher visibility or enhanced support services.
• Create multiple sub-stores for diverse buyer groups, geographies or product lines to give more visibility to your B2B marketplace buyers
• Keep experimenting with business models, markets, product lines etc to give your sellers new avenues to explore
• Share valuable insights about buyer behavior, competitor analysis etc. to help sellers strategise their product listing, pricing etc.  

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform enables your enterprise brand to push boundaries and experiment with a variety of business models for better growth, adaptability, and sustainability in the ever-evolving ecommerce landscape. With built-in support for models like B2B, B2C, D2C, B2B2C, hyperlocal commerce and other hybrid ecommerce models, StoreHippo enables you and your vendors to explore immense growth opportunities.

You can build sub-stores for different business models, customer segments, product lines or any other criteria and thus amplify your sellers' presence on multiple sub-stores. With more stores, and rich catalogs your B2B marketplace is positioned to get more footfalls and hence better conversion opportunities for your vendors.

Overall, StoreHippo helps you set up a unique B2B marketplace website, experient with trending market scenarios and offer a competitive edge to your sellers in the dynamic B2B digital landscape.  

4. Offer Incentives and Special Deals

Well, your B2B marketplace brand boasts technical superiority, makes selling easy and also offers some unique advantages. An offer worth considering right? 

However, sellers seek tangible benefits above these in terms of monetary gains or enhanced visibility. 

How does your B2B marketplace present an opportunity that will decisively seal the deal for vendors from competitors’ marketplaces?

The answer lies in making your deals even more attractive by showing monetary benefits right from the word go. Strategise and showcase a number of direct monetary benefits a vendor will get just by joining your enterprise marketplace.

Here is what you can offer to attract your rivals’ sellers:

• Offer lower commission rates to top vendors who have a track record of getting high-volume orders
• Offer prominent placement of products on your B2B marketplace homepage or other high-traffic pages that present chances of faster conversions
• Offer personalized benefits such as exclusive distribution rights to certain regions or product lines, co-branding opportunities etc. to attract your rival brand’s vendors 
• Mention top sellers in your promotional material like blogs, ebooks, mailers etc.
• Offer discounted bulk listing fees, free shipping or other benefits to top sellers with huge catalogs and consistent large orders on your wholesale marketplace website

StoreHippo makes it easy for your enterprise brand to offer diverse discounts and commission rates. You can set up fixed or percentage-based commission rates for different vendor categories. You can also use the built-in discount engine to set up different discounts and coupons for your vendors, which can bring more sales.

With the drag-and-drop design tools, you can make quick changes to your design themes and place vendors and their products prominently on different pages. You can also create dynamic marketing pages on your B2B marketplace and position your vendors there.

With the built-in blog engine, you can publish blogs and other content to promote your chosen sellers.

5. Keep Pricing, Payments and Payouts Sorted

Well, with the array of features mentioned earlier and the unique advantages your B2B marketplace already offers, it is undoubtedly a compelling proposition for any seller. But what if you can take your offerings a few notches higher?

How about making the offer so irresistible that it lures sellers away from your rivals? Curious how to achieve this?

Give them tools that enable them to simplify their product pricing and taxes for diverse buyers and volumes. When sellers discover that selling on your B2B marketplace not only expands their reach but also offers effortless pricing management, streamlines B2B transactions and ensures simplified tax compliances they realize they have stumbled upon an opportunity they cannot afford to overlook.

Here is how you can amp up your wholesale marketplace’s offerings for competitors’ vendors:

• Enable your sellers to offer multi-tier pricing and accept multi-currency payments
• Let your sellers show differential pricing for different buyer segments
• Make taxation simplified and offer built-in tools with support for multi-level taxes
• Offer built-in invoice templates and make it easy to customize invoices for different buyers
• Keep commissions and payouts simple and transparent

When you build a B2B marketplace with StoreHippo you get features like multi-pricing and multi-tier pricing which help your sellers showcase differential pricing and thus cut negotiations time considerably. Also, with 60+ integrated payment gateways and full support for multi-currency payments your sellers can accept orders in multiple currencies.

The powerful tax engine of Storehippo comes with full GST support and also lets sellers set up multi-level taxes or grouped taxes as per the laws of the land. The built-in invoice templates make bulk invoicing simple. Sellers on your wholesale marketplace can also tweak the invoice templates to make custom templates for their requirements. Sellers can also generate multi-currency invoices for international buyers.

StoreHippo also simplifies commissions and payouts with the seller ledger and adaptive payment features. Multi-seller orders’ payments can be easily split into different customers. Also, payouts can be streamlined with the seller ledger feature.

6. Facilitate Seamless Integrations

So far, your offerings have been exceptional, but transitioning from a competitor's wholesale marketplace to yours can present challenges. Vendors may be hesitant to make the switch, especially if they're already using third-party software and solutions they wish to continue using. 

How about giving them the flexibility and ease of integrations to refine and optimize their operations for maximum ROI.

Yes, offering competitor distributors the ability to seamlessly integrate their accounting, ERP, logistics, and third-party software or services with your B2B ecommerce solutions can be a compelling pitch. Hassle-free integrations will not only attract them to your marketplace website but can also be pitched as a means to make their business more efficient, standardized and organized with new-age software already being integrated into your B2B ecommerce platform.

Here are a few integrations you can offer competitors’ vendors to onboard them to your marketplace:

• Enable the distributors on your B2B marketplace to integrate seamlessly with their ERP solutions
• Let the vendors add their preferred shipping providers for seamless fulfillment
• Make accounting and compliance easy for sellers by integrating their preferred accounting software
• Enables seamless integrations of warehouse management systems to help your distributors manage their warehouses effortlessly
• Integrate with multi-channel support and enable your sellers to address queries direct from their dashboard effortlessly 

StoreHippo enables you to build customized B2B marketplaces where you can give your distributors the freedom to integrate their preferred software and services. With 120+ integrations, which includes logistics, accounting, warehousing, payments, marketing, multi-channel support solutions and more. With these many integrations you can offer the distributors a well-rounded marketplace solution to grow their business.

Additionally, StoreHippo’s microservices and API-based architecture make it easy to add or remove any software or service provider without a major overhaul to backend logic. This further gives flexibility and control to add new integrations that improve overall business performance.

7. Offer Integrated Shipping Solutions

Irrespective of your ecommerce business model or size, shipping plays a crucial role in determining the success of your business. And streamlined fulfillment becomes even more important for a B2B marketplace’s distributors who usually handle bulk orders.

How about prime-positioning a streamlined fulfillment and hassle free shipping management to attract the rival marketplace brand’s distributors?

Fulfillment remains the biggest woe for many distributors and vendors who otherwise have the best products and services in place. Also, penetrating new markets remains a challenge due to unavailability of the right shipping solutions. By enabling distributors to tackle these two challenges you can easily onboard them on your wholesale marketplace and help them accelerate their growth.

Here is what you should be offering the sellers to make fulfillment streamlined:

• Give access to multiple reliable shipping partners without bearing upfront costs
• Seamless processes and modules to manage shipping and pick-up of bulk orders on your B2B marketplace platform
• Make it easy for sellers to do partial fulfilment through multiple shipping partners to optimize costs
• Make it easy to process shipments in bulk for high-volume orders received on your wholesale marketplace
• Offer solutions to manage the vendors’ own fleet of delivery agents

When you build a B2B marketplace website with StoreHippo you also get access to easy and low-cost logistics using multiple logistics providers. StoreHippo has 30+ pre-integrated domestic and international shipping partners and also enables you to add your preferred logistics providers. Your vendors can use multiple shipping partners without paying any upfront costs.

StoreHippo’s shipping management solutions enable you to offer multiple shipping options to your distributors and vendors so they can optimize their costs and minimize delivery timing. Vendors can compare and choose the most cost-effective fulfillment partner and also go for partial fulfillment. Vendors can also upload orders in bulk, schedule pick-ups,  get timely notifications for order tracking and more.

StoreHippo B2B ecommerce platform also comes with a built-in delivery boy management solution that enables vendors to manage their own fleet of delivery boys. 

Conclusion

Onboarding competitor vendors to your B2B marketplace requires a strategic approach focused on mutual benefits, transparency, and collaboration. By implementing these seven strategies, you can successfully attract rival sellers to your platform, enriching your marketplace ecosystem and driving sustained growth.

Attracting competitor vendors to your wholesale marketplace website becomes easier with a gamut of features and tools offered by StoreHippo. StoreHippo’s mobile first platform offers omni channel solutions to build a B2B marketplace that connects with customers across multiple touchpoints and offers better visibility to your brand and vendors. 

Ready to explore the opportunity for innovation and partnership, and watch your enterprise B2B  marketplace thrive as a result? Get started on your growth journey by powering your business with StoreHippo. Create your 14-day free trial store right away.