Lead generation is a crucial aspect of any wholesale endeavor.
Unfortunately, one problem many store owners have is dealing with a revolving door of prospects who seem interested in their offerings but never buy anything. You know the type when you meet them; they like asking for wholesale price sheets but refuse to place an order. The rare few who do make purchases acquire only small amounts occasionally.
These tire kickers are the kinds of people you should prequalify and moderate before letting them access your wholesale store as full-fledged customers. Because if you don’t, you could be wasting time, effort, and cash that you could instead be spending chasing genuine leads.
So, how do you sort the wheat from the chaff to find actual, revenue-generating leads? And are there any tools that can help you capture such leads?
Let’s find out!
3 Best Tips On How To Find Your Ideal Wholesale Customers
Generating leads for your business takes a little work. Fortunately, with the right knowledge and a little practice, this is something that’ll soon come naturally to you.
First things first: realize that not everyone who shows interest in your business can serve as a lead. For this reason, you shouldn’t give any individual or group who approaches you immediate access to your store. Do your research on the prospect first, and clearly lay out what you should expect from each other once you’ve established a seller-buyer relationship.
With that in mind, here are three tips on how to find your ideal wholesale customers. For the best outcome, we suggest using all three!
1. Ask lots of business-related questions
When moderating your incoming wholesale sign-up requests, make sure to grab each prospect’s contact details, such as their phone number and email address. Take note that while chatting over the phone is ideal, communication via email is fine, too.
Then, reach out to them to request a schedule for a chat.
Many tire kickers won’t respond to this request. This is because they aren’t ready for the next crucial step in the process of establishing a buyer-seller relationship: the get-to-know-each-other meeting.
If a prospect agrees to chat with you, ask them direct questions about their business. Focus on gathering information such as:
- How long they’ve been trading
- What volumes they expect to order
- What they expect their next business year to look like
- Their products
- How they sell their products
Your main objective is to obtain accurate, detailed, and relevant data straight from the businesspeople hoping to work with you. In addition, direct contact is great for the relationship, as it shows them that you’re serious about creating a win-win scenario for both parties.
2. Provide order volume expectations
Here’s one simple yet effective way to pre-qualify wholesale requests before you even get on the phone with a prospect: force them to answer questions about how many units they expect to order.
This can be as simple as putting a dropdown field on your form that asks, “How many units of products do you expect to sell in the next 3 months?” Don’t forget to make this a required field so that prospects can only proceed once they’ve answered the question.
So, what’s the good thing about putting this on your form? Basically, by making the minimum on your list a specific amount that prospects must meet, it lets you set a barrier to entry.
This sets the expectations for your wholesale customers of what you deem to be a large enough quantity for an order. As a result, it gets them into the right frame of mind to pre-qualify themselves. Simply put, only those who are serious about doing business and who can meet your expectations can qualify to become actual leads.
3. Set your terms
Lastly, publish a page on your website detailing the Terms & Conditions that all wholesale customers must observe to maintain their wholesale status. Ideally, your wholesale registration form should have a link to this page.
A terms sheet is a great way to signal that you have a thriving wholesale business. On top of that, it shows everyone that you’re well-versed in wholesale processes.
It also means that wholesale customers must be comfortable with the entry conditions you require them to meet to gain wholesale status.
If you’d like to create your own Terms & Conditions, check out our free Wholesale Agreement Generator! Here’s our guide on how to use it!
Why We Made WooCommerce Wholesale Lead Capture
Simply put, we created Wholesale Lead Capture to provide store owners with an easy yet efficient way to capture new wholesale customers.
This WooCommerce extension can help you moderate your website users. Furthermore, it provides you with powerful and versatile systems that can help you achieve what we’ve outlined in this article.
Here are just some of the key features you can expect from Wholesale Lead Capture:
- A user-friendly registration form builder
- Email templates and email automation
- A comprehensive system for approving users
- Customizable fields
- Quick, automatic setup
Eager to make the lead generation process as simple as it is effective? Then check out Wholesale Lead Capture here!
Conclusion
Lead generation is crucial to any wholesale endeavor. Therefore, employing the right strategies can help you find the ideal customers for your store.
To recap, here are 3 tips on how to capture leads for your wholesale store:
Do you have any questions about lead generation? Let us know in the comments sections below!
