Everyone wants their buying process to be as simple as the click of a button. It’s no different for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) trying to find easy, reliable IT solutions. Consumer online shopping has set the precedent for what buyers expect. As a result, today’s business buyers are more mature, more informed and expect instant delivery from their purchasing processes. According to Gartner, 83% of business-to-business (B2B) buyers want to purchase through a marketplace or a digital sales platform. For the managed service providers (MSPs) that serve these buyers, it’s now time to adapt or risk getting left behind. This is where the Pax8 cloud commerce Marketplace comes in – providing an efficient, B2B online buying solution for MSPs and their customers alike.
In this blog, I’ll outline the latest report from global analyst and research firm Channelnomics of more than 400 solution providers in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific—and what it tells us about taking advantage of a Marketplace to grow your MSP business. This report was commissioned by Pax8 and sponsored by our partners SuperOps, Trend Micro, Bitdefender and SentinelOne.
It’s All About Serving the Customer
Even if what you’re currently doing seems to be meeting customers’ needs, what they really want is simplicity. They want the convenience of reading up on something on their own time, saying, “yep, that sounds like what I need,” and ordering it on the spot, just like they might order that new air fryer everyone’s talking about. Long delivery cycles are out; you need to be nimble in order to meet the expectations of today’s SMB customers.
This is where the idea of a marketplace comes in. One person or a small company can’t always deliver the kind of consistent and timely delivery that organizations of all sizes now expect, thanks to current B2C online commerce experiences. Similar to their B2C counterparts, B2B customers are looking for a digital marketplace experience when it comes to purchasing solutions (83% of them, says Gartner). They want:
- Convenience: Shop when I want, in one central location.
- Price transparency: Tell me how much this really costs, installation and everything.
- Near-instant quoting: I want to know how much this costs now, while I’m doing research.
- Immediate fulfillment: I want a solution to my challenge ASAP.
- Support and services: I’d like to see a variety of services that complement my purchase and help me get the most out of my new technology.
Yes, it’s difficult to achieve this level of customer support as an MSP. Setting up your own digital storefront can be tricky when it comes to consistent fulfillment, plus there’s the upkeep you have to put into it and the cost of implementation. But if you rely on traditional channels and sales models without any sort of evolution, your clients will either go to another MSP that can offer near-instant fulfillment—or they’ll go directly to the vendors themselves. It’s really that simple.
Of course, we’re going to tell you that you should be using an intelligent cloud commerce marketplace to make the level of service we’ve described here happen. That’s what we offer at Pax8. But we’ll let you know just how many MSPs are already using marketplaces in addition to ours, and why, so you don’t just have to take our word for it.
How Leading MSPs Are Already Making Use of Marketplaces
As the Channelnomics report shows, selling solutions digitally and using an intelligent marketplace means near-instant benefits. Nine out of 10 partners surveyed worldwide see additional benefits and opportunities in selling through digital sales and marketplaces. These include increased profitability (46%), higher demand for professional services (45%), access to new market segments (38%), better customer data analytics (38%) and a higher demand for managed services (38%), among other benefits.
These opportunities mean more business for you, the MSP. Greater profitability is in reach because you can find a broader audience with minimal overhead and fewer restrictions due to geographic location. Greater profitability and revenue is also derived from streamlined, automated ordering processes. You can help your clients integrate, customize and optimize the solutions they purchase through professional and managed services. This helps you deepen the relationship with your customers. And a marketplace’s digital platform generates a wealth of data you can use to parse out customer behavior, preferences and purchasing, then tailor the right solution for your customers’ unique needs. Other benefits of leveraging marketplaces include co-selling and collaboration opportunities, access to new customers with improved marketing strategies, and building even more customer trust and credibility.
The fact is, most MSPs are already selling digitally, as the report shows 87% of MSPs surveyed are always or often sourcing products through a marketplace. And 36% of solution providers worldwide generate more than 20% of their revenue from digital and marketplace sales. In North America alone, 53% of solution providers surveyed said the growing appeal of marketplaces is significantly shaping their strategic planning. Not selling this way means you’re in the minority—and in danger of falling behind and losing out business that may have felt safe in previous years.
Build a Moat
It seems obvious that a recipe for success is deepening customer relationships and offering multiple ways to meet them where they are at – with buying options and access that simplifies their buying process while meeting their needs. With a platform like the Pax8 Marketplace, you can actually create your own storefront and enable self-service so that you can curate your own digital marketplace experience and your own unique set of services or “special sauce.” Pax8 lets you even create segments or groupings of your clients and offer different storefronts to each, so you’re offering solutions specific to that industry or segment and giving them a tailored experience.
Creating your own marketplace is something you should seriously consider, given that 21% of our partners derive more than 25% of their revenue from online marketplaces. Not only do marketplaces and digital platforms enable self-service purchasing, but they also create opportunities for you to upsell and cross-sell additional products and services. So, it’s a way to get your clients used to buying within your system, allowing them to peruse and even cross-sell and upsell to themselves, while making it more likely they’ll stick with you in the long term. Just remember that, like your business as a whole, your marketplace is something you’ll need to market to both new and existing clients to make it work.
An Enhanced Experience
Overall, offering your clients a way to purchase online enhances their whole experience while improving your bottom line. Just be sure to make customer success your No. 1 priority to reap the benefits of increased average sale values, reduced churn and expanded same-account sales over time. The report emphasizes that customers want price transparency, near instant quoting and immediate fulfillment.
To help keep clients happy, successful MSPs are bundling their products with services such as training, customization and support, both differentiating themselves as well as deepening their customer relationships. They also take advantage of professional services automation (PSA) and Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) tools like SuperOps, a unified PSA-RMM platform that gives MSPs tools to streamline operations, enhance service delivery and scale their businesses; and cybersecurity solutions to keep their businesses humming, such as those from Bitdefender, Trend Micro and SentinelOne.
To really give your clients first-class treatment, don’t spend precious hours building your own marketplace from scratch. Go with the Pax8 Marketplace, the largest SMB-focused marketplace leveraged by the largest community of MSPs and solution providers around the world. At Pax8, we’re committed to helping you put your clients first and give them the kind of service they won’t get anywhere else. Read the new report from Channelnomics to learn more about how solution providers are embracing marketplaces to extend sales capacity and opportunities. And visit the Pax8 Marketplace to start taking advantage of our AI-powered, intelligent platform now.
