10 min read
10 min read
ICX Consulting helps B2B leadership teams answer the key questions behind their B2B strategy before they choose technology. Which customers to serve, how to manage catalogs and contracts, and which commerce platform can scale with the business are strategic decisions, and asking them in the right order prevents expensive replatforming and protects margin.
Now is the perfect time to consider the B2B strategy for your business. Crafting an effective B2B strategy is more than selling products or services. It requires a deep understanding of customers, identifying their needs and aligning every decision with the company's business objectives. A well-defined strategic approach not only generates business opportunities but also builds long-term, sustainable relationships. For the executive team, the stakes are concrete, because the way a company sells to other businesses determines its cost to serve, its pricing discipline and how easily it can enter a new market or channel.
Consider the monthly operations review at a regional building materials distributor. The CFO notes that the company's largest contractors are placing more and more orders by email and phone at odd hours, and that two of the most capable inside sales reps now spend most of their day keying orders and checking stock instead of selling. The head of IT suggests buying a commerce platform, and a vendor demo is scheduled for Thursday. The sales director raises an uncomfortable point. The company has more than two hundred negotiated price lists, each with its own volume tiers and credit terms, and nobody has written down which of them should be visible online. The demo, however polished, will not answer that question.
This is how many B2B platform projects go wrong. They begin with technology because technology is concrete, while the strategic questions are harder and more political. Who are we selling to online, on what terms and with what role for our sales team? The answers determine which platform fits, not the other way around.
The future of digital commerce is already knocking on the door. Adobe estimates that ecommerce is set to account for 25% of U.S. retail by 2030, which means that companies of every size will need a competitive commerce management platform able to adapt to growing operational demands and buyer experience expectations.
B2B buyers are moving even faster. In McKinsey's 2024 B2B Pulse survey of nearly 4,000 decision makers, buyers used an average of ten interaction channels in their buying journey, and online sales represented 34 percent of revenue for companies that offer e-commerce. Gartner adds that in a survey of 646 B2B buyers, 67% said they prefer a rep-free experience. A B2B strategy that still depends on a sales rep and a PDF price list is designing for a buyer who is disappearing.
Before developing or refining a B2B strategy, it is essential to assess whether current processes are truly driving growth and differentiation. Key questions about positioning, value proposition and operational efficiency uncover areas for improvement and anticipate challenges. Gaining clarity in these areas enables better decisions and better use of resources. Companies that take the time to critically analyze their B2B strategy adapt more effectively to a changing landscape, and evaluating the core elements of the business model and their impact on customers opens the way to solutions that improve competitiveness and drive sustainable growth.
Two capabilities give the most important generalities to keep in mind when defining a B2B strategy.
These are not technical details. Catalogue and contract logic is where a B2B company encodes its pricing policy, its negotiated terms and its customer segmentation. Modern B2B platforms reflect this. Adobe Commerce, for example, documents company accounts with buyer roles, shared catalogs with custom prices per company, negotiable quotes, purchase order approval rules, requisition lists and payment on account, all features that translate commercial agreements into the buying experience.
With e-commerce expected to become the dominant channel worldwide, a company needs a fast and flexible commerce platform to sustain long-term growth, and it needs to understand how to approach its B2B strategy. The key questions below, and the business reasoning behind them, help select the right platform to stay competitive in the digital marketplace.
The most important fact about B2B commerce is its scale. According to Statista, one of the most relevant market data firms, the global B2B e-commerce market was worth $12.2 trillion in 2019, more than six times the value of B2C e-commerce. That is why companies should be clear that their e-commerce strategy must give B2B the weight it deserves, and why the evaluation of platforms for the business strategy must take this element into account.
The COVID-19 pandemic pushed the digital commerce market to new heights, forcing companies to adopt digital platforms and suppliers to adopt new approaches and pricing models. The result is a wide variety of e-commerce platforms, which makes a structured evaluation all the more necessary. Among those that stand out are the following.
Considering the two critical issues of catalogue management and customer contracts, and the number of platforms available, the questions that follow are meant to save time and effort in finding the right e-commerce capabilities for the organization and in discovering the technologies that are helping companies build the future of commerce.
>> How to be a better B2B seller on social networks? <<
These are the questions to ask yourself, each with the business reasoning behind it.
Whether you are just starting out or already have an e-commerce presence, choose an e-commerce platform that runs in the cloud. Cloud platforms receive continuous updates and shift part of the infrastructure, security and availability burden to the provider, which frees internal teams to work on the customer experience.
Don't force your business needs onto the capabilities of your technology provider. Choose a provider that offers enough flexibility to create a unique customer experience, from account-specific catalogs to the way a buyer reorders.
Think about what your business will look like two, three and five years from now, and how the platform can support those growth plans from day one.
Does the platform have the versatility to create different store views and handle multiple languages, among other requirements? For companies serving several countries in the Americas, currencies, tax rules and languages are a requirement, not an option.
Your e-commerce platform should be a team player. Choose one that easily connects and integrates with your other business systems, because prices, inventory, credit limits and order status usually live in the ERP and customer history lives in the CRM.
More is better. Choose a platform from a vendor that fosters a large, geographically diverse community of partners and solution developers, so the company is never dependent on a single supplier for extensions or support.
If there is even a slight chance that the company will adopt multiple business models, choose a platform that supports them. Many manufacturers and distributors eventually sell direct to consumers or open a marketplace, and a platform that cannot follow that move forces a second project.
Not every question carries equal weight in every business. The scenarios below are illustrative and show where leadership attention tends to concentrate.
A building materials or industrial distributor typically lives and dies by contract pricing and credit control. For that company, the personalization and integration questions come first, because a contractor who sees the wrong price or an inaccurate stock level will return to the phone, and the digital channel will become an expensive brochure. A food and beverage wholesaler selling to restaurants and retailers cares most about reorder speed, delivery windows and perishable inventory, which makes mobile ordering and ERP integration the deciding factors. A manufacturer of technical products with a global dealer network will weigh multi-site, multi-language and multi-currency capability heavily, along with the ability to give each dealer a distinct catalog and discount structure.
A medical supplies company has to consider compliance, traceability and approval workflows, so the buyer roles and purchase approval rules described earlier matter more than visual design. A company that sells both to businesses and directly to consumers needs to examine the hybrid model question seriously, since running two separate platforms doubles the cost of every catalog change. Across all of these cases, the best use of the seven questions is to decide which three or four matter most for your model, and to demand evidence on those before looking at anything else.
The questions are most useful when they become a scoring framework that the executive team can debate. Weight each criterion according to the strategy, score the shortlisted platforms and make the trade-offs explicit.
| Criterion | What leadership should ask | Evidence to request |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud and operations | Who is responsible for uptime, security and upgrades? | Service levels, shared responsibility model, upgrade policy |
| Personalization | Can each account see its own catalog, prices and terms? | Demo with two real customers and their contracts |
| Scalability | Can we add products, countries and shipping options without new code? | Reference customers of similar size and geography |
| Multi-site and language | Can we launch a new country or brand on the same platform? | Store view and localization capabilities |
| Integration | How will orders, prices and inventory sync with ERP and CRM? | Integration architecture and standard connectors |
| Ecosystem | How many certified partners operate in our region? | Partner directory and extension marketplace |
| Business models | Can we run B2B, B2C and marketplace models together? | Roadmap and existing hybrid implementations |
Building a strong B2B strategy requires a structured approach and a deep understanding of business objectives, customers and the market. Companies that question and analyze their processes can identify opportunities to enhance their value proposition and strengthen their competitive position. Every decision within the strategy should align with customer needs and with a scalable, sustainable business model.
>> Strategic Perspective of the B2B Model <<
A strategic approach in B2B goes beyond customer acquisition. It also involves long-term retention and growth. Optimizing the customer experience, using data effectively and implementing automation can make the difference between a business that merely survives and one that thrives. It is essential to keep assessing whether the processes and tools in place are truly driving efficiency and delivering impact.
Companies that embrace a mindset of continuous improvement and adaptation are better equipped to navigate market challenges. Regularly evaluating and refining the B2B strategy keeps a competitive edge and builds stronger, more enduring business relationships.
An executive team can make real progress this week without choosing any vendor. Start by asking the sales director to bring the ten largest accounts and the commercial terms each one has negotiated, including price lists, discounts, credit limits and approval rules. Ask the CFO to estimate what it costs today to process an order by phone or email, including the time of the people who take it. Ask IT to describe, in one page, where prices, inventory and customer history actually live. Those three documents turn an abstract strategy conversation into a concrete one, and they expose the gaps that any platform will have to close.
The hardest decision for leadership is usually the role of the sales team. A digital channel that sellers perceive as a threat to their commissions will be quietly undermined, whatever the quality of the technology. Decide early how online orders from assigned accounts will be credited, how sellers will use the channel to serve customers better, and which activities they will stop doing to make room for higher-value work. Communicate that plan before the project is announced, not after.
It is worth stating the limits plainly. A well-chosen platform will not fix inconsistent pricing, incomplete product data or an ERP that cannot supply accurate inventory. Those are business problems that surface the moment a customer can see them online. Treat the project as an opportunity to clean up the foundations, and expect the first release to be narrower than the vision. A focused launch for a few segments, followed by steady expansion, usually delivers value sooner than a comprehensive rollout that arrives late.
For more on planning and execution, see these tips for planning your eCommerce B2B strategy and this guide on how to implement a B2B eCommerce.
In the end, a B2B strategy is a set of choices about which customers to serve, how, and at what cost. The platform is the instrument that carries those choices into daily operation. Companies that answer the strategic questions first tend to choose more calmly, negotiate better with vendors and avoid the quiet waste of reworking a system that was never aligned with how they sell. Those that start with the technology often discover, a year later, that they bought answers to questions nobody had asked.
ICX Consulting approaches B2B commerce as a commercial strategy question first. Our B2B sales consulting and go-to-market strategy work defines segments, channels and pricing logic, and our B2B digital commerce practice turns those decisions into a platform roadmap, implemented on technologies such as Adobe Commerce when they fit the strategy.
To structure your own evaluation, use the Enabling Tool Selection toolkit and score each shortlisted platform against the criteria that matter to your business.
Yes. The strategy defines which segments will buy online, which terms and prices they see and how orders flow to the ERP. Choosing a platform first usually means adapting the business to the tool, which leads to workarounds, custom code and, in many cases, a second selection process within a few years.
It should be a joint decision led by the commercial leader, with finance, operations and IT at the table. Sales owns the customer and pricing logic, operations owns fulfillment and finance owns credit and margin. IT ensures integration and security, but the business case and the success metrics belong to the business.
Rarely. It changes what the team does. Routine reorders and price checks move to self-service, while sellers concentrate on complex deals, new accounts and expansion. Companies that plan this shift deliberately, with new compensation rules and clear account coverage, avoid channel conflict between reps and the online store.
Track a short set of indicators tied to the strategy, such as the share of revenue from digital orders, order cycle time, cost per order, quote-to-order conversion and retention of key accounts. Review them quarterly with the leadership team and compare them with the baseline taken before launch.
If your team is about to choose or replace a B2B commerce platform, the questions you ask in the next few weeks will shape your margins for years. Request a diagnostic with an ICX consultant and build a B2B strategy that your technology can actually support.
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