In many B2B businesses, ordering still looks like this. A buyer emails to ask about a product. Someone replies asking for the size and quantity. The buyer answers two days later. Someone looks up the price, types a quote and sends it. Then the buyer asks about a different size.
It works, but it’s slow, and it depends on one or two people remembering everything. It also frustrates buyers who’d happily have sorted it out themselves at 10 pm.
You don’t need a full online store to fix this. Most distributors and suppliers can’t show one price to everyone anyway, because prices depend on volume, account or region. What you need is a request-for-quote flow: buyers choose products and send one clear request, and your team still sets the price.
Step 1: Write down what a complete request looks like
Go through your last 20 quote emails and note what your team had to ask for before they could reply. Usually it’s the same short list:
- Product, size and variant
- Quantity
- Company and contact person
- Delivery location
- Whether they’re an existing customer
That list becomes your form. Keep it to what you really need to reply. Anything else can wait for the follow-up.
Step 2: Organise the catalogue the way buyers think
Internal product codes and supplier names make sense to your team, not to a buyer. Group products by what people are looking for, and put the details that decide a purchase on the page: sizes, specs, packaging and documents such as datasheets.
A good test is to ask a customer to find a specific product on your site while you watch. Where they hesitate, your catalogue needs work.
You don’t need everything ready on day one. Start with the products that generate the most enquiries and add the rest over time.
Step 3: Replace “email us” with a request list
This is the step that changes the most. Let buyers add products to a list as they browse, the way they would with a shopping cart, then send the whole list in one go. No prices need to appear, and no payment is taken.
A single request for six products beats six separate emails. Your team gets everything at once, already in the same format.
Step 4: Send each request to the right person
Decide who receives what. It might depend on the product line, the region or whether the buyer already has an account. Add an automatic confirmation so the buyer knows the request arrived and when to expect a reply.
This is also where a little automation pays off. Each request can be scored as it arrives, so a large order from a known distributor doesn’t wait behind a student’s question. A person still reads every request and sets every price.
Step 5: Keep email as a backup
Don’t force anyone. Long-standing customers may keep emailing for years, and that’s fine. Put a clear email address next to the request button, and when someone writes in, reply with the link for next time.
Change happens faster when the online route is simply quicker, not when the old one is taken away.
Three mistakes to avoid
- A form with too many fields. Every extra question loses people, and you can always ask later.
- No follow-up. If online requests get slower replies than emails, buyers will go back to email within a week.
- Trying to launch everything at once. Start with your best-selling lines and learn from the first requests.
Where to start this week
Do Step 1 first. It takes an hour, costs nothing, and shows you how much time goes into chasing details. That number tells you whether this is worth building now.