Relationship mapping seems more effective in strategic sourcing deals involving a buying group and sales team. The application of relationship maps is straightforward in this case because you turn contact info into a comprehensive deal review analysis tool. 

Sales teams can quickly realize who to influence and how to do so through the information gathered for the relationship map. However, can relationship mapping work for e-commerce platforms? Here are the advantages of this sales tool for newbie e-commerce entrepreneurs.

Building consumer personas

Personalizing marketing efforts for e-commerce requires highly targeted consumer personas. Using consumer personas to personalize marketing and sales material can help newbie e-commerce entrepreneurs grow their digital footprint. An accurate method of creating consumer personas is using Relationship Mapping Tools to find common characteristics of their customers. For this, Prolifiq offers solutions that use Artificial Intelligence and data gathered on Salesforce’s CRM platform. 

Relationship mapping tools shed more light on specific user interests. B2B e-commerce platforms can also have a better understanding of the account managers they deal with. That information ultimately boosts sales margins and opens up potential expansion opportunities.

Discovering purchase review procedures

B2B e-commerce platforms face the challenge of lacking in-person contact with buying group account managers. Most transactions are conducted behind a screen, and entrepreneurs do not have an opportunity to interact with buying groups. Subsequently, it may seem hard to discover the purchase review procedures implemented by client companies. 

With relationship mapping, e-commerce entrepreneurs gain further insights into purchase review procedures. By gathering more info using forms, entrepreneurs can begin their relationship mapping process. With more insights gathered, it will be easier to understand the kind of service buying groups expect from the e-commerce platforms they use to source products or services.

Improving e-commerce platforms via relationship maps

A byproduct of relationship maps is the ability to improve e-commerce platforms. During the mapping phase, you will identify some characteristics of the account managers you’re dealing with. Documenting these characteristics and inputting them into an AI-powered relationship mapping tool can provide valuable Business Intelligence on how to improve your e-commerce platform. 

The improvements could be related to the platform’s usability or other aspects of the customer journey. All the insights gathered for relationship mapping can also be used to personalize marketing offers, leading to higher sales volumes and long-term revenue growth.

Optimizing sales funnels

Successful e-commerce platforms have one or multiple sales funnels guiding all online activity, including marketing aspects. Platforms with a sales funnel do not undertake tasks at random, but everything must be coordinated with a common objective in mind. Tasks such as blogging or social media marketing must have a specific call-to-action that brings buyers closer to making a purchase. 

Instead of hard-selling, using a sales funnel helps build loyal customers with higher retention rates. Relationship maps help optimize and improve those sales funnels by establishing how most buyers come to know the e-commerce platform. That information can help restructure a sales funnel for the better.

Gathering data for relationship mapping

Gathering data for relationship mapping seems to be a challenge for e-commerce platforms. There aren’t contact lists with readily available information from client companies on these platforms. On the contrary, some organizations tend to use company accounts without personal details. However, there are indirect methods of creating relationship maps on e-commerce platforms. 

Organizations using company accounts can have surveys to get to know buying groups and the users being the company’s screen name. In contrast, buyers that use their personal information can be conveniently used for relationship mapping and to optimize sales margins.