The Hidden Revenue in Your Existing B2B Customers

When B2B businesses talk about growth, the conversation can easily turn to new customers. New sectors, new regions, new leads.

But for many established B2B ecommerce businesses, the biggest growth opportunity isn't new customers at all. It's the ones you already have.

Not because they aren't loyal. Not because they don't want to buy more. But because buying digitally can still be harder than it should be.

Let's unpack where that hidden revenue sits, and how Magento-based B2B ecommerce is often the key to unlocking it.

Growth Doesn't Always Mean Starting from Scratch

Most B2B businesses already have:

• Long-standing customer relationships
• Agreed pricing structures
• Repeat purchasing behaviour
• Sales teams who know their accounts inside out

And yet, many of those same customers are still:

• Emailing orders
• Phoning in repeat purchases
• Sending PDFs or spreadsheets
• Waiting for confirmations and manual follow-ups

None of this feels broken, until you realise how much friction it introduces, and how often that friction quietly limits order frequency and basket size.

Where Revenue Is Commonly Being Lost

This is rarely about dramatic failures. It's about small, everyday frictions that add up.

Re-ordering Isn't Effortless

If a customer can't quickly:

• Find what they bought last time
• Rebuild a common order
• See their usual products and prices

...they often order less, or delay ordering altogether.

Magento's order history, requisition lists, and quick order features (all native to Magento B2B) are designed specifically to remove this friction — but they're often underused or poorly configured.

Manual Processes Suppress Buying Behaviour

When ordering relies on emails and phone calls:

• Customers batch orders to "make it worth it"
• Small top-up orders get postponed
• Sales teams become order processors

This is inefficient and can directly impact revenue. Magento's customer-specific pricing, account-based permissions, and saved purchasing workflows allow customers to order when they need to, not when it's convenient for everyone else.

Re-Ordering: The Biggest Missed Opportunity

For most B2B businesses, repeat orders represent good revenue opportunities. Yet many ecommerce stores still behave as if every visit is a first-time purchase. Magento B2B offers several native ways to turn repeat ordering into habit:

Requisition Lists

• Customers can save common order lists
• Ideal for consumables, spares, or regular stock
• Encourages faster, more frequent orders

Order History with "Buy Again"

• Lets customers repeat past orders with minimal effort
• Particularly powerful for multi-SKU orders
• Reduces reliance on sales teams for routine purchases

When repeat buying becomes easy, customers don't buy less — they buy more often.

Increasing Order Values Without Being Pushy

Cross-sell and upsell can feel awkward in B2B — especially when relationships are long-standing. But when done properly, it feels helpful rather than salesy. Magento makes this possible in a very B2B-appropriate way:

Related & Up-Sell Products

• Suggesting compatible or commonly paired products
• Especially effective for accessories, consumables, or replacements
• Native Magento functionality, configurable per product

Volume Pricing & Tier Pricing

• Encourages customers to buy more per order
• Supports customer-specific pricing rules
• Aligns well with procurement-led buying behaviour

Essentially, it's about making sure customers see relevant products they might otherwise forget.

Rewarding Loyalty With the Right Experience

One of the biggest advantages B2B businesses have over B2C is existing customer knowledge — yet many ecommerce experiences ignore it completely. Magento's B2B capabilities are designed to reflect real-world commercial relationships:

Customer-Specific Pricing

• Different pricing per customer or customer group
• Supports negotiated rates and contracts
• Avoids the need for "call us for pricing" dead ends

Customer-Specific Catalogues

• Show only relevant products to each customer
• Reduces confusion and speeds up ordering
• Achievable via Magento's shared catalogue functionality

Account Structures & Roles

• Multiple users per company account
• Different permissions for buyers, approvers, and finance
• Mirrors how B2B customers actually operate

When configured correctly, this provides an intuitive user experience that is actually tailored to a specific customer's business.

Freeing Sales Teams to Actually Sell

One common concern we hear is:

Won't ecommerce take orders away from our sales team?

In practice, the opposite usually happens. When Magento handles:

• Routine re-orders
• Pricing logic
• Product availability
• Order confirmations

Sales teams are freed up to:

• Develop accounts
• Focus on complex or high-value opportunities

When sales conversations aren't dominated by order processing, they tend to be far more valuable.

The Compound Effect of Small Improvements

Here's where things get interesting. You don't need customers to suddenly double their spend. Small improvements compound:

• Slightly more frequent orders
• Marginally higher basket values
• Reduced churn through convenience
• Better customer satisfaction

Across dozens or hundreds of B2B accounts, that compound effect can be significant, and all coming from customers you already have.

Keeping Your Competitors Out

It's realistic to expect that no matter how good you make the user experience, some customers might not need to buy more lines or more frequently. That will be dictated by their customer demands.

So, making improvements to the user experience just might not lead to more orders, but if the user experience is seamless, intuitive or friction-free for the times they do visit, then you're giving them no reason to consider going elsewhere. It's not a guarantee, of course - no amount of intuitive UX and functionality will keep customers buying at unfavourable prices, delivery or terms. But it will reduce the desire to review the market due to a frustrating experience so it's still a good investment to implement the very best features and functions.

Final Thought: Your Customers Already Want to Buy More Easily

This isn't about forcing customers online. It's about removing friction from a process that they already want to be simpler. If an existing customer were to place an order today:

• Could they do it without calling or emailing?
• Could they find their usual products quickly?
• Could they re-order in minutes rather than hours?

If the answer isn't a clear "yes", there's likely revenue being left on the table.

Magento B2B, when implemented properly, isn't just an ecommerce platform. It's a growth lever for existing customer relationships.

If you're interested in more information about implementing the features and functions referenced, or you'd like a no-obligation audit of your B2B store. Just drop us a line - [email protected] or give us a call on 01782 710740 - We love the challenge of making B2B ecommerce better here at Deploy, so we'd be happy to hear from you!