There’s a trend in wholesale that we want to talk about: B2B buyers are becoming much less accepting of friction in their buying experience.
In the past, your retailer might have tolerated a clunky PDF order form or a three-day wait for inventory confirmation, but those days have passed.
According to research from McKinsey & Company, nearly two-thirds of B2B buyers now opt for digital self-service interaction when given the choice. They want the speed of Amazon with the personalization of a boutique.
If your wholesale process doesn’t meet those standards, then you’re opening the door for your competitors.
Platforms, like RepSpark, can help your brand immediately meet those standards. Here are some examples of high-impact adjustments we’d help your brand implement this quarter.
First impressions happen fast. If a retailer wants to carry your brand, how long does it take them to go from interested to order placed? In many systems, this process is bogged down by manual credit checks and games of email tag.
The Quick Win: Enabling a streamlined onboarding feature, like RepSpark Community, allows retailers to request access and get verified credentials almost instantly. Reducing that friction in Q1 means capturing the budget buyers have now, not two weeks from now.
Nothing kills a buyer relationship faster than a backorder email sent three days after they placed an order. Retailers are operating on thinner margins and tighter timelines; they need to know that what they buy will actually ship.
The Quick Win: If you are still relying on nightly batch updates, prioritize a real-time integration between your B2B platform and your ERP. Giving buyers 100% confidence in your stock levels encourages them to buy deeper into available styles without fear of cancellations.
Digital line sheets are standard, but are they interactive? Static PDFs force buyers to look at a picture, write down a style number, and then search for it in a portal. That is a friction point that leads to abandoned carts.
The Quick Win: Convert your static PDFs into interactive, shoppable digital catalogs. This allows a buyer to click on a product image within the lookbook and add it directly to their cart. Data shows that interactive catalogs significantly increase average order value because the path to purchase is seamless.
One of the biggest anxieties for a buyer is not knowing when product will actually hit their dock to plan their floor sets. If a key item is currently out of stock, seeing a vague backordered status often causes them to abandon the line item entirely because they can't plan around it.
The Quick Win: Configure your B2B platform to display specific Future Availability Dates for incoming inventory. By showing a buyer that a specific size is available on March 15th rather than just out of stock, you empower them to secure that inventory now against an incoming purchase order. This turns a potential lost sale into a committed pre-book instantly.
Buyers are creatures of habit. They often reorder the same core styles, sizes, and colors. Forcing them to rebuild that order from scratch every time is a waste of their time.
The Quick Win: Use your sales data to create best-seller or core replenishment lists that appear on the buyer's dashboard the moment they log in. By curating these assortments for them, you turn a 20-minute task into a two-minute task.
Modern retailers aren't just buying your product; they are buying the content needed to sell it. They need high-res images for their ecommerce site and social media clips for Instagram.
The Quick Win: Don’t make them email your marketing intern for a Dropbox link. Configure your B2B portal to automatically provide the relevant digital assets (images, copy, logos) for the specific products they just bought. It’s a value-add that makes you an easier partner to work with.
Digital doesn't have to mean impersonal. In fact, Gartner reports that buyers increasingly value suppliers who can anticipate their needs.
The Quick Win: Have your reps build personalized recommended assortments for their top 20 accounts and send them via your portal. When the buyer logs in, they see a custom selection made just for their store. It bridges the gap between the human touch of a rep and the efficiency of digital buying.
Improving the buyer experience isn't about reinventing the wheel; it is about respecting the buyer's time.
By implementing these seven quick wins, you signal to your retailers that you are a modern, responsive partner.
Schedule some time with our team to see if RepSpark would be a good fit for your brand.
Or check out our ROI calculator to see the return RepSpark could bring your brand.
Why is B2B buyer experience important in 2026?
As B2B demographics shift toward Millennials and Gen Z, buyers expect the same speed, ease, and transparency they get from consumer shopping sites like Amazon. A poor user experience can lead to lost sales and damaged retailer relationships.
How can I reduce friction in the wholesale ordering process?
The fastest ways to reduce friction are enabling single-sign-on (SSO), providing real-time inventory visibility so buyers don't order out-of-stock items, and offering shoppable digital catalogs that eliminate manual data entry.
What is the value of shoppable digital catalogs?
Shoppable catalogs bridge the gap between inspiration and transaction. Instead of viewing a static PDF and manually searching for product codes, buyers can click items in the catalog to add them directly to their cart, which increases conversion rates and saves time.