You’ve seen the strategy. You’ve understood the numbers. You’ve acknowledged the internal challenges and yet continue to trudge ahead knowing your organization will receive incredible benefits. But questions persist, mainly, as a leader, what exactly should you do to make B2B eCommerce succeed?
The Reality: Technology doesn’t lead digital transformation, leadership does! The most successful organizations don’t win with better B2B software. They win as a result of owning the vision of where the B2B experience needs to go, they’ve rallied their teams, and kept the organization aligned with both internal and external stakeholders as change unfolded.
These are the most common steps sucecssful leaders take when considering a B2B roll-out:
1) Define a clear “why”?
Before any roadmap, technology decision, a launch you need to clearly ask yourself
- What does digital success look like for us?
- Are we aiming to scale without adding headcount?
- Improve margins through automation?
- Meet modern buyer expectations?
- Retain key customers and defend market share?
Without clear answers to the questions above with purposeful meaning for moving in this direction it will be difficult to motivate your team as it does require multiple stakeholders to buy into your B2B eCommerce future. Don’t be vague, determine strategic, measurable answers that align with your business growth and share this frequently with your team in kick-off, board, or departmental meetings.
2) Assign Ownership with Authority
You wouldn’t launch a new product without a manager or into a new country or open a new location without someone at the helm so why should B2B eCommerce be any different?
Yet with many companies they have multiple decision makers and it becomes ambiguous as to who is leading the charge and when there are too many people sharing ownership it doesn’t get done! Ownership is typically split between:
- IT for the platform
- Marketing for the UX
- Sales for adoption
- Finance for funding
And when everyone owns it… no one owns it.
Leadership Move: Assign a senior-level owner, like a VP of Sales/Digital or a Chief Commercial Officer with cross-functional authority and metrics tied to performance.
3) Prepare the Eco System, Not Just the B2B Software
Many companies undercut their success by not having data that is up to date or easily accessible increasing implementation timelines and budgets. They are willing to fund the platform but just as much investment needs to be dedicated to:
- Data cleanup
- Product content enrichment
- Customer onboarding
- Internal training
- Dedicated digital staff
Without these facets the new B2B site launches but becomes underutilized and limps along.
Leadership Move: Budget for platform + enablement. Treat eCommerce like a revenue-producing branch. Staff and support it accordingly rather than let it sit dormant expecting the technology to do all the work. At the end of the day, people still by from people and requires a transfer of emotion.
4) Align Metrics
If you want alignment, start with measurement. You can’t have sales, operations, and marketing rowing in the same direction if they’re being evaluated on different goals.
Align around metrics like:
- % of digital revenue as a total of overall revenue
- Average order value of an online order
- Customer login and portal usage
- Quote-to-cash cycle time
- Order accuracy and return rate
And here’s a big one:
Don’t penalize reps for digital orders. Reward account growth, regardless of channel.
Leadership Move: Update comp plans, dashboards, and QBRs to reflect digital success.
Step 5: Lead the Culture Shift
Digital transformation is 90% mindset.
If you want your organization to embrace eCommerce, you need to make it visible, repeatable, and reinforced.
This means:
- Talking about it in all-hands and leadership meetings
- Recognizing teams who adopt and innovate
- Sharing customer success stories
- Setting expectations that this is how we serve customers now
Culture is built by what leadership consistently says and does.
Leadership Move: Make eCommerce part of the way you run the business, not just a tech thing “over there.”
Final Word: The Leaders Who Win
The leaders who win in B2B eCommerce aren’t the ones with the flashiest platforms.
They’re the ones who:
- Made digital part of their strategy
- Backed it with structure and investment
- Unified their teams around a shared goal
- And led visibly from the front
Because in the end… This isn’t a website launch. It’s a leadership moment, and the organizations that embrace it aren’t just catching up.
They’re pulling ahead.
