Scaling small-scale operations into big ones, hiring staff and managing all moving parts requires tact, strategy and more than a little help. Understanding what help is out there, and how much it’s all going to cost, can make or break this delicate transition. B2B, or Business to Business, products and services exist to make everything happen without a hitch. But when are they needed? And, what’s actually worth the expense?
It’s not completely unheard of for a tiny company in a home garage to find so much success it no longer fits the space it was born in. The titan of ecommerce now known by all as Amazon began in a shed designed to keep vehicles protected from the elements. Google started in a dorm room and Yankee Candles were once produced and sold from a kitchen table.
If you’ve already breezed through Alpha Academy’s course titled ‘Complete Home Based Business’, you’ll have the starting point of an entrepreneurial journey all figured out. But this is just the first step, the start of a business idea that, if good enough, will eventually need to expand out of that garage or off that kitchen table sooner rather than later. Growing pains as a small, home-run business finds success can be more difficult to handle than many realize.
Table of Contents
B2B products: What they are and what they do
Never heard of B2B products? In a nutshell, they’re services, and sometimes physical products, that companies make and sell to other companies to help them run any operation too big to fit on a kitchen table.
These could be printer companies that only make office-sized printers designed for office spaces that need hundreds of documents printed every day. Without them, a small business would have a very difficult time indeed efficiently checking off every item on a daily task list.
The most obvious and widely-used examples of software B2B products include accounting products like NetSuit, Xero and Sage. Businesses use these products to track all the financial comings and goings of their operations. Some offer payroll additions to help owners accurately and quickly pay staff. Product management software, content management systems, collaboration platforms and tools to make marketing efforts easier are also examples.
Because so many options exist, there’s competition between them. Some offer extra features, but cost more. Others are subscription-based or only need a single one-time purchase, like office chairs, point-of-sale machines or a printer.
When it’s time to start thinking about buying a B2B product, small business owners need to be able to choose the option that fits their budgets and needs quickly. In the UK, free services like Market Inspector can help, because they offer quotes from many B2B product services quickly.
Why businesses use B2B products
When you’re just starting out making and selling candles, cupcakes or trinkets, orders will come in slowly and it will be easy to handle the production, customer support, packing, shipping and marketing yourself. The trouble will only come when the business takes off.
Suddenly, there will be many more emails and social media DMs to reply to. It will take all day to carefully craft the items you’re selling and making sure every item goes where it needs to in a reasonable timeframe will be complicated and stressful. If you don’t hire someone to help, mistakes will start creeping in and your small business’s reputation might suffer.
This is why big enterprises have hundreds, or even thousands of staff and support workers. Apple or Google could not run the way they do with only one person handling everything. All these workers need somewhere to work, an office perhaps, and reliable ways to communicate with one another.
The B2B product industry exists to make all these individual logistical things smoothly and seamlessly click together into place harmoniously.
A checklist for knowing when it's time to look at B2B products
Success is hard work. When all the hours of your day are being taken up replying to customer email queries and the neighbor you’ve hired to help pack orders can’t keep up with demands, this is a sign that it might be time to call for B2B support. Not sure what you’re looking for? Here’s a basic checklist you can use to make sure you have a good idea about when it’s time to invest in a B2B service or two, or three:
1. There’s no time to promote your product
A business without a robust and actually effective marketing plan has no hope of reaching new hearts and minds. If nobody other than your small community knows what you’re selling or a newcomer is confused about where to go to make a purchase, all that growth you’ve been enjoying will dry up fast.
The marketing industry is as monolithic as it is because it takes hours and weeks of effort and work to maintain a strong brand presence on the dozens of social media platforms now around. Making, packing and shipping products takes enough time as it is, but some handy B2B automated marketing tools like Mailchimp can give you some of your time back. Allowing these tools to nurture your leads for you and attract new buyers without your help can seriously lighten the load.
2. You find yourself drowning in the administrative details
Can’t keep up with orders because you’re wasting time organizing meetings, juggling spreadsheets and setting reminders to pay your staff member on time every month? It’s time to start investigating project management, accounting software and inventory management tools.
With all the boring stuff in one or two easy to understand online work spaces, you can get back to what most think the fun part of owning your own company is – dreaming up new products and working on promotional events.
3. Commutations are getting lost
More customers means more money which means more staff to handle all the day-to-day tasks you can’t handle on your own. It can be very fulfilling to be at this part of a business’s growth stage, but it also means it’s a little tougher to keep everyone now working under you aligned.
Keeping track of who knows what can get all tangled up very fast. If you’re not on the ball at all times, a quick message could get ignored and this could mean missed deadlines and unhappy customers. Emails won’t cut it; you’ll need a collaboration tool like Microsoft Teams to keep messages in one place. Customer communications, messages and interactions are important as well. B2B products like HubSpot or Salesforce makes tracking customer and client interactions less troublesome.
4. Customers are drying up
If you’re baking and selling cupcakes and cookies to your immediate neighbors and friends, eventually, you’ll run out of people to sell to. When your little market is fully tapped, thinking bigger and online is probably the only way up. Reaching more people is easier over the internet, and ecommerce B2B products, like Shopify, are a surefire path to more people.
Think carefully before making any decisions
If you expand with a B2B product before absolutely necessary, the cost of using a service or product could damage your growth projections instead of helping. Are you sure you need to buy fancy new office chairs, the best POS machines and that printer that also sends faxes and scans photos right now? If yes, don’t wait. Get the service or product that will help you grow. If you’re not sure, look up some quotes in the meantime, and have the best possible idea of what you’re looking for as your company slowly grows.
Image Source: pexels.com
