B2B marketplaces: 10 ways to onboard sellers more easily

Without sellers, there's no marketplace. So, if you want sellers to come to your B2B marketplace and - above all - want them to want to stay, taking care of their integration is essential. How can you do this? By offering them a simple, fast, comprehensive, and secure onboarding experience. To help you, we've listed the 10 levers you need to implement to attract, inspire confidence and build stronger relationships. 

What is the onboarding process in e commerce and marketplace?

A comprehensive onboarding process in e-commerce and marketplace platforms refers to the steps sellers must complete to start selling their products or services. This process is crucial for ensuring a seamless integration between the seller and the marketplace while maintaining compliance with financial and regulatory requirements.

RECRUIT

1. Create a coherent catalogue

The initial stage (or first step) is to attract the "right" sellers (or stakeholders) to join your marketplace. To do this, you must adapt to their specific characteristics: country of origin, language spoken, internal organisation, connection method (direct or via API), etc. Depending on their characteristics and needs, ask yourself what their expectations are and what operational difficulties they may have. Are they technically mature enough to integrate a marketplace? Does their target market match that of your platform? How can they stay competitive and make their shop visible and attractive? These initial thoughts should help you find ways of reassuring future sellers: they need to be sure they will find buyers who match their positioning and products showcased within the marketplace's sales. How do you do this? By creating a product catalogue that matches the target and the demand of the clients.

2. Make product discovery easy

When buyers come to your marketplace, they expect to have an experience similar to the one they have when they browse in a department store. They need to find product information to identify THE product they've come for quickly. The problem? On B2B marketplaces, product catalogues contain thousands of items that can be adapted and customised ad infinitum. This complicates finding the right product, as buyers don't have the time (or the inclination) to review the entire catalogue. As a result, salespeople take advantage of opportunities! The solution for facilitating product discovery within your marketplace? Streamline your catalogue, digitise each reference, have efficient marketing campaigns and link it to a complementary product with high-added value. This will increase the average shopping basket and improve the customer experience. Two reasons that will encourage sellers to join your marketplace and users to keep on buying on it.

INTEGRATE

3. Ensuring regulatory compliance

There are numerous regulations governing B2B marketplaces: DSP2 (strengthening payment security at the European level through strong authentication), LCB-FT (combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism through possession of a register of beneficiaries), RGPD (General Data Protection Regulation) and KYC & KYB (mandatory procedure for verifying the identity of merchants, partners, and customers). To properly onboard sellers, it is essential to ensure their regulatory compliance within the marketplace, considering the abovementioned regulations. The pain point? Administrative onboarding and setting up the KYC & KYB procedure can quickly become time-consuming. Between the numerous supporting documents requested from sellers and their analysis, it often takes up a lot of time and money... To supervise this stage, it is advisable to call on a PSP capable of handling the KYC & KYB procedure.

4. Automate onboarding with instant KYC

To go one step further in simplifying the collection of administrative documents and avoid sales staff getting lost along the way, opt for automated onboarding! How can you do this? Using instant KYC to instantly check the authenticity of documents and the identity of sales staff so that recruits can be onboarded in just a few minutes. Simple and fast, instant KYC is based on OCR technology, which can read scanned documents, extract information, and check them against the regulations in force. For your marketplace, this saves considerable time and encourages transactions: customers can register, have their identity and payment account validated in seconds, and make their first payment immediately. This means more sales on your marketplace and more turnover for your sellers!

EASE

5. Supporting sales staff in managing complex sales

Some B2B sectors, such as industry and construction, offer high-value-added products at high prices. If your marketplace is designed to handle these types of complex sales, it is essential to establish a climate of trust and have a proactive approach: everyone needs to be reassured, sellers and buyers alike! To achieve this, you must guarantee high-quality, responsive, and efficient customer service, responding quickly to buyers' queries and guiding them towards products tailored to their needs. The solution? Set up instant messaging or a chatbot and provide an exhaustive knowledge base (troubleshooting tips, training sessions, video tutorials, valuable insights, etc. ). You can also have communication channels to share ideas.

6. Order cancellation

Like any business, after-sales service is essential, particularly in managing order cancellations and should follow the best practices. Implementing a clear refund policy that answers sellers' questions is important. When a buyer cancels an order, what happens to the funds? Are they already in the seller's bank account or on the marketplace? How can I get a quick refund? You must anticipate these questions to reassure your sellers and avoid buyer dissatisfaction.

7. Dispute management

Like the refund policy, you must establish a dispute management policy that covers all possible situations: the product sent is faulty or does not correspond to the order, delivery is late, etc. As mentioned above, the financial aspect can also be a source of disputes, particularly in the case of complex sales. Our advice: make sure the funds are blocked on the marketplace, in the seller's account, until delivery is complete and the buyer has checked that the products are in order.

PROTECT

8. Protecting sellers from fraud

In a B2B marketplace, sales are often in the 5-figure range. So, it's vital to protect sellers from fraud and scams. So, what can you do? Install robust security systems that check the information buyers share and ensure they are professionals working in a coherent sector of activity. A bespoke "buyer" KYC could also be considered: it would aim to instantly verify the buyer's identity and place of residence via a code sent to them.

9. Credit insurance

As part of the fight against fraud, credit insurance is top-rated with B2B ecommerce sellers. Why is this? Because it protects them against non-payment while reinforcing their confidence in the marketplace. By scoring the buyer, credit insurance determines the buyer's level of reliability. As a result, even when paying in instalments, the seller can be sure that the buyer will pay in full. And if they don't, the insurance company will take care of it!

SUPPORT

10. Supporting the economic development of vendors

More than just successful and effective onboarding journey, opt for sustainable, long-term onboarding by working to build the loyalty of your sales staff! To do this, it's essential to support them over the long term in the economic development of their business. How can you do this? Promoting their shop window on your marketplace or their products as part of cross-selling. You can also enable them to take advantage of the international nature of the marketplace or offer them payment solutions tailored to their business practices: deferred payment, dynamic pricing, quantity discounts, free postage, etc. In addition to these functions, overall payment management is a crucial lever. So, it's vital to enlist the support of specialist  players and people.
 

B2B onboarding examples

B2B marketplaces face unique challenges in onboarding sellers due to complex workflows, compliance requirements, and high-value transactions. Here are a few examples of how leading B2B platforms handle seller onboarding:

• Faire: This wholesale marketplace simplifies the B2B onboarding experience by offering AI-driven recommendations for pricing and product listings, along with perfect incentive and flexible payment terms for B2B buyers.
• Ankorstore: Focuses on making onboarding quick and easy for independent brands by integrating automated KYC and instant payment solutions.

B2B onboarding software or solutions? 

Choosing the right onboarding software is crucial for B2B ecommerce marketplaces looking to optimize efficiency and compliance. Various solutions exist to streamline the process, including automated KYC verification, payment integration, and customizable dashboards.

Lemonway, an expert in managing payments on marketplaces, helps you to onboard your sellers via an all-in-one solution. Complete dashboard, simplified cost, instant KYC procedures, compliance with regulations... To find out more about all our features and our smooth onboarding process for your specific needs: contact our team!