Hugo wrote this thread explaining his tactic to get B2B orders for his store.
Most shopify stores don’t take into account the B2B aspect of dropshipping.
Normal customers struggle to buy 1 item, without much of an offer and a great value proposition, it would be hard to ask for more.
Start diving into B2B sales, where i’ve sold over 23,000+ units.
I started doing cold emails and cold calls.
The product is a memory foam pillow, with upsells of weighted blankets, orthopaedic knee pillows and ankle rests.
I would cold call elderly homes and businesses selling pregnant women products near me.
I would normally get a 1-2% reply rate out of these cold calls & emails.
But I knew my product was selling well, averaging about $6K/day in revenue, I needed to try harder.
I wanted to hit the $10K/day mark.
This is where the principle of complacency comes in.
I went out and made it happen myself.
It was non-negotiable.
If I was making $6K/day, then why not increase your chances by doing some cold calls and emails?
It’ll at least get you 1% closer to $10K/day.
So go do it.
Follow up with different touch points.
If someone emailed you once pitching your product or services, what are the chances that you go through with the deal?
Close to 0.
I followed up with more calls and emails 2-3 days after the first touch point.
Your reply rates are going to increase and I was getting a 3-4% reply rate.
Usually at this point, you’ll know whether they’re interested in your products.
Remember. The most important part of reaching out to businesses is the follow up.
Have stock in hand with good packaging.
I asked my supplier to send me one of each product listed on my shopify store and created a bulk order page for these businesses to check out.
I would go to the branches which gave me a reply and showed interest in my products.
I would hand deliver the products to the managers for free and let them try the products out.
I would then sell them face to face and either hand them an invoice or they would later on directly order on my website.
Your goal is to get them to buy from you over and over again.
Offer them tiered discounts depending on the volume they buy.
I was living in Hong Kong at the time, which is very close to my suppliers warehouse in China.
He got the bulk order shipped within 2 days.
3 things
Good product, fast delivery, and a face behind the brand.
Marketing 101, the more you buy, the larger your discount should be.
My minimum order quantity for B2B orders was 50 and would go up to 500+ units.
Increase your discount rate incrementally.
The elderly home bought 100 memory foam pillows with a 15% discount, and then referred me to this larger branch downtown.
They were interested in buying 200+ pillows.
I settled both their orders the next day face to face.
I made $9205 that day.
I gave them 50 free knee cushions since I knew that knee support cushions help with lower back pain.
I ignored the cost since this would help in building a relationship with the general manager.
The next day, I received a 40+ volume order on my shopify store.
I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The general manager was in charge of another elderly home branch in Shanghai and he referred my website to their admin team.
My no.1 tip for this step is to build relationships with the people you work with. A cold call lead to a follow up call, and that lead to meeting face to face.
Truly believe in the product you’re selling, make sure its packaged well, and don’t be too salesy.
The Domino effect
I haven’t received an order from the elderly home since, but I used the profit from them to invest into a team which i could outsource the outreach to.
I hired a team which would write my cold emails and do my cold-calls for me. I would do the sales pitch.
This choice alone helped save so much time so I could focus more on scaling the Shopify store and my agency.
All I had to do was close these businesses face to face and book a meeting with them.
Ever since hiring my team, I have closed a
- Local hotel for weighted blankets
- A baby store selling pillows and plushies
- 3 More elderly homes
- A pet pillow store
- A distributor in Japan (Zoom Call)
Lesson: Once you get your first bulk order, hire a team.
Follow up with your current clients.
Make sure you maintain and keep the relationship with people who have bought from you.
This will ensure the greatest chance of them buying from you again and even referring you to their friends/partners.
Double down on SEO and SEM.
Make sure your brand has the biggest chance of getting eyeballs on search engines like Google, Youtube etc.
I’ve had Dickies reach out to me once asking for a bulk order for my other stores just because they did a simple google search.
This will ensure the highest chances of bulk orders other than reaching out to other businesses.
Building google branded search campaigns, writing blogs and plugging them into your website are just 2 of the many ways you can get your brand out there for more bulk and multi orders.
Hope you guys enjoyed this thread, If you found any value, please:
- Follow @hugojacked