How Online Portals are Bringing Buyers and Sellers Together?
The internet has created numerous business opportunities by bringing buyers and sellers together. For instance, many online marketplaces allow consumers to buy branded goods and deliver it to the customer’s doorstep.
The Existing Trust Deficit
Many businesses that sell products or services to other businesses are often overwhelmed by inquiries for their product or service. While this may seem to be great news for any business, it actually makes it difficult for a business to distinguish between genuine customers and customers who have very little interest in buying from them.
Also, a very large number of regular inquiries from potential customers also demand that a business have a large number of well-trained employees who can attend to such inquiries.
Another challenge a business often faces is that a large number of inquiries they receive are actually spam and attending to each inquiry as though it were genuine would consume considerable time and effort. In short buyers have little to guide them when it comes to understanding who may be a genuine customer and who is simply making casual inquiries.
This is why the services of an online portal which allows buyers to accurately separate genuine buyers from fake ones are so crucial.
How Online Portals Help Buyers
An online portal can provide services that enable buyers and sellers to communicate before concluding a sale. During such an online chat a buyer can discern the needs of the customer and also judge how committed the customer is to make a purchase.
Meanwhile, a potential buyer can judge whether the product or service offered by the seller meets the buyer’s requirements. Hence rather than becoming inundated by emails many of which are likely to be spam, a buyer can actually chat with a potential buyer and easily judge how committed the buyer is to purchase from him.
Another advantage of a chat between buyers and sellers is that it results in few or any lost leads for the buyer. Unlike emails and bulk SMS many of which are spam, online chats are genuine and bring together interested buyers with competent and willing sellers.
Portals Facilitate Buyers and Sellers
There are many other ways that portals help buyers and sellers, perhaps the simplest of which is that a portal allows sellers to create an organized database of prospective customers on the portal. Conversely, buyers will also benefit by being able to search more easily for prospective sellers.
Such an online database allows buyers to manage leads better ensuring that they sell to the maximum number of customers possible. The information in such a database is kept private in a users account and can only be accessed by those authorized to use it.
One of the greatest challenges buyers and sellers face is finding the right company to buy from or sell to. A portal uses the best technology to allow buyer and sellers both to complete winning deals. Often a portal uses AI-based search to match the quotations of sellers with that of buyers. This allows a buyer to find companies that are willing to sell to him at a price he wants, and conversely, companies can sell to buyers willing to pay them a favorable price.
The AI used by a portal to match buyers and sellers creates market efficiencies which benefit all who use the portal. Additionally powerful AI also powers bots that can answer questions on behalf of those listed on a portal. Finally, a portal helps all those who use it as it allows users to track orders placed using the portal. This removes many of the unnecessary and cumbersome steps companies take to keep track of past, current, and future orders.
The use of technology to find new markets is more than important to grow a business, it is crucial to remain competitive in a business.
The Article is written by Arun Pratap Singh, Founder & Director, Dial4Trade.com
