You’ve set up a digital trade store, only to see a handful of existing trade buyers ordering through it.
Buyers continue to place orders across multiple channels (e.g. email, text, WhatsApp), leaving you and your team with an admin nightmare.
Here, Tom Paton from Orderlinks explores this problem and how breweries can automate all aspects of trade sales, saving your team time and improving the overall buying experience.
The problem
When breweries implement trade store solutions, the outcome is often the same – “we expected more trade buyers to order digitally.”
But they don’t, often preferring the convenience of direct messaging (e.g. WhatsApp, email).
It’s unrealistic to force buyers to use the trade store when it’s not their preferred ordering channel, as you could lose the sale. Therefore, trade ordering remains fragmented across different email addresses, WhatsApp accounts and other forms of communication.
This fragmented set-up creates issues. Orders are missed or incorrectly entered into systems such as Breww. Responding to order requests can be delayed if you’re unable to reply immediately, leaving the buyer in limbo and risking the sale.
Imagine if you ordered a pair of shoes online, only to receive a confirmation email a day later – so why do you allow this to happen with your buyers?
What if a buyer wanted to quickly add an item to an order or update the delivery address? They’d send your brewery a message, and ideally someone in the team would respond and update the information immediately – but does this always happen?
Trade shop is still important
Don’t get me wrong – it’s still important to have an online trade store. Even if only 10–15% of existing buyers order online, they should still be able to.
The question you then need to ask yourself is: are my existing solutions and processes automating internal workflows and improving the buying experience for all my trade buyers, or just a handful of them?
Save time and improve the ordering experience
Orderlinks is a trade platform that enables you to automate all trade orders – online trade store, email, text, PDF and WhatsApp.
Fully integrated with Breww, Xero, QuickBooks and Sage, there is no double entry across systems.
Firstly, you can set up an easy-to-use trade shop for buyers who prefer the convenience of an online channel.
Furthermore, Orderlinks empowers sales staff to spend more time engaging with buyers and less time on admin. Connect your sales/ordering email address to
Orderlinks, and when an order is received, it is instantly created and uploaded into Breww.
A staff member approves the order (in Breww or Orderlinks), and the buyer is sent all relevant order information.
And when an order is placed, there tends to be needless communication from buyers that isn’t relationship-enhancing (e.g. How do I pay? Where is my order? Can I have the invoice?).
That’s why we launched OrderHub, giving buyers a “centralised portal” to view and update order details – accessed via a URL link sent by email.
In a meeting with a trade buyer and want to quickly send your trade shop URL or create an order? Do this instantly via the Orderlinks mobile app.
Ensure your buyer data isn’t used to push sales for other breweries
And finally – when exploring or reviewing trade automation solutions, you need to ask yourself: what is the platform doing with my trade buyer data?
With Orderlinks, your data is your data. We will never promote other breweries or sellers to your trade buyers, nor share this information with any third party for commercial gain.
