Read on for tips about how you will want to manage your large buyers to get an overarching view of the market, make the best decisions, and drive demand.
In Phase 1, you may choose to manually service large buyers, but ideally, all orders should go through the system
While you transition buyers onto the platform, you may continue to service large buyers manually. All their orders should still be entered into PhoneX to ensure complete visibility and accurate analytics. Once small buyers are using the platform, you will want to move large buyers onto the platform as well.
Make sure large buyer orders are in the system so you can get a full view of the market.
It's important to create orders for these customers within PhoneX, not outside it. If you place orders outside the system, these large buyers won't be able to access their orders in the system, but more importantly, the data from these orders will not be included in your Pricing and Offer Clearing analytics.
It's important to place orders within PhoneX so you can accurately measure your true:
- Demand
- Distribution of selling prices
- Estimated Days to Book
- Inventory Turns
The key is to make sure that all of your sales data flows through the platform so that you have an overarching view of the market.
Large buyers create the base of your demand pyramid
Large buyers are critical to driving demand and higher prices.
There are other reasons it's critical to get your larger buyers to participate on the platform, even if you have to do some of the work for them.
- Large buyers will eat up all of your leftover product and create urgency for your smaller buyers, who realize that if they don't pay the higher price, they will lose the product.
- Large buyer engagement is critical, because your volumes will hopefully grow, enabling you to serve large buyers in addition to your growing base of smaller, higher paying customers.
Use features built specifically for large buyers to accomplish a full transition
In the long run, we have seen our clients’ use special pricing (see more in pricing section) to incentivize large buyers. In addition, clients use the open PO functionality to pre-sell to a select number of large buyers.
The end game
Use the platform to create a virtuous cycle.
Ultimately, the goal is to train your buyers to put in their offers and check out fast.
You can then spend more time on marketing, which includes bringing in more customers and sending out broadcasts promoting more buyer engagement.