Your customers have already made this decision for you. Across B2B, 83% of buyers now prefer to place orders through digital channels, and 61% want a rep-free experience for routine purchases (Gartner); McKinsey puts the preference for digital self-service at 65%. And the buyers themselves have changed — more than two-thirds are now Millennials or Gen Z, people who grew up ordering everything from their phones.
That makes a digital ordering portal table stakes. It is no longer the thing that sets you apart — it is the price of being considered at all. Which means the real differentiator is not whether you have a portal. It is whether you execute it well.
And execution is unforgiving. Roughly 8 in 10 B2B buyers say they will switch suppliers after a single poor digital experience. A portal that is clunky, that shows stock you do not have, or that never surfaces the right product does not merely fail to help — it sends your customer looking.
What sitting it out actually costs
Your customers will order the way they want to order. If you do not give them that, the distributor down the road who does will take the account — one customer at a time. This is not hypothetical: one distributor told us a competitor had been on a mobile ordering app a couple of years longer than he had, so when he finally launched his own and hit the road, the app was his whole pitch — and he has been pulling that competitor’s customers over ever since.
Wholesale has never been forgiving: by U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data, nearly two-thirds of wholesale-trade businesses do not survive ten years. The ones that disappear are rarely beaten on price. They are out-executed.
But this is not a story about fear — it is an opportunity, and it is yours to take. You do not have to be the biggest distributor in your market. You have to be the one who executes. Get the inventory right, put a real portal in front of your customers, let it carry your message consistently, and the numbers follow. Lead it with confidence. The numbers are on your side.
Common Questions
Ready to scale your distribution? Find all the answers here
Do B2B buyers prefer to order online?
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Yes. Across B2B, 83% of buyers prefer to order through digital channels and 61% want a rep-free experience for routine purchases (Gartner); 65% prefer digital self-service (McKinsey). More than two-thirds of buyers are now Millennials or Gen Z.
What happens to distributors that do not offer digital ordering?
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They become easier to leave. Roughly 8 in 10 B2B buyers switch suppliers after one poor digital experience, and the distributor down the road who offers a good portal tends to win those accounts one at a time.
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