Attracting, Onboarding & Growing the Right Sellers for Your Marketplace

IDEAS & INFO

Merchant acquiring is a range of services for payment execution and processing, conducted with the use of payment cards as part of the service provided to a merchant. In simple words, it is a service provided for merchants to enable them accepting credit card or debit card payments.

As there are multiple steps in the payment process (which will be covered shortly), often one company is covering the whole process, taking care of acquiring among providing a payment gateway, processing, etc.

Getting as many new, high-quality merchants boarded as quickly as possible is a key growth metric for payments companies.

Independent agents, independent sales organizations (ISOs), and payment facilitators alike are focused on a mission to sign up as many merchants as possible to generate processing volume in their portfolios.

Many of the would-be merchants are hesitant to get started with a new payment processor due to an inherent lack of understanding of how the entire process of getting signed-up works. Instead, they go to third-party providers like PayPal and, as a result, end up with higher fees and larger monthly bills than necessary.

A good understanding of how the merchant sign-up, also known as merchant onboarding, process works is important to the merchant recruitment process. A refresher for payment facilitators, ISOs, and independent agents can go a long way towards ensuring the best possible service is provided to each merchant during recruitment

Attracting new sellers to your marketplace is a huge challenge, but onboarding is what clinches the deal. In order to effectively incorporate new sellers and ensure ongoing satisfaction, it is crucial to ensure a seamless seller onboarding process, ongoing user support and easy website management. 

When building your marketplace, you must first identify your target audience and then locate the best channels to reach them. A deep understanding of your potential vendors, as well as their concerns and interests, will enable you to formulate the right messaging to bring them aboard. 

How can you facilitate marketplace onboarding?

Convince vendors that it’s worthwhile

Your first task is to convince online sellers that your marketplace will make life easier for them. Describe how your platform promotes operational control through integration with their existing solutions as well as built-in features such as easy inventory management, order management and an array of payment possibilities. Meet the needs of a variety of vendor types by offering specialized plugins and extensions.

You can also partner with 3rd party product intelligence solutions to quantify the sellers’ opportunity of selling their specific inventory on your marketplace.

Automate your processes

In order to ensure fast scaling of your marketplace, automate as many of your processes as possible. Support should not be dependent only on a manual team. Provide precise explanations for each stage as well as short FAQs to prevent dependency on auxiliary manpower. 

Facilitate the seller registration process

When it comes to onboarding, set up a designated, user-friendly page that includes all the required registration steps and specifies the types of documentation needed. Add a link to the page on your website and in the navigation menu to enable easy access. 

Provide concise training modules 

Rather than grinding out long training guides, prepare short training videos for each of the onboarding stages. You can also prepare an interactive walkthrough, accompanying sellers step-by-step through the process. This makes the training process more palatable and easier to grasp. Short instructional videos can be prepared for each of the back office tasks. 

Offer user-friendly templates and DIY tools

While smooth initial registration is important, that is only the first step. Provide your vendors with user-friendly tools to easily upload special offers, ads, images and information. In addition, enable them to easily integrate with your built-in features such as payment and billing systems.

Enable automatic enrichment of catalog data

The prospect of manually uploading hundreds of thousands of products is daunting and susceptible to human error – especially if you require complete item data. An AI-based product intelligence/marketing analysis platform enables automated cataloging of new products, product data enhancement, and accurate product identification in real-time. The ability to provide consistent data about the vendor’s fluctuating range of products is not only crucial during onboarding but also on a daily basis.

Want to effectively facilitate your onboarding process?

Vendor onboarding refers to the process of collecting the information needed to approve a company as a vendor and enabling your organization to conduct business, purchase goods and services, and make payments to that company.

Understanding Vendor Onboarding

Vendor Onboarding is the process of guiding new vendors into your company’s network.

Your vendors are, after all, the backbone of your business. Not only do you want to attract the right partners, but you also want them excited about partnering with you.

Your Vendor Onboarding Process is just the first step in what you hope would be a long-lasting relationship. Not only does it help you lay down your expectations from the association, but it also gives you the opportunity to understand the vendors’ motivations, and set a precedent of what is to come, and what the vendor should expect from you.

Vendor Onboarding Process

For different kinds of Vendors, the onboarding process can be entirely different. However, there are some standard steps that are always involved. Let’s look at them.

Understand Your Vendors

The onboarding process starts with an addition of the vendors to your database, made concrete by document collection. It helps ensure that not only do you partner with professional entities, but also understand their motivations. It reinforces the understanding that your vendors would follow the norms and policies laid out by regulating authorities.

Verify their Documents

The next step in the process is document verification. The verification team will weigh the vendor information and documents against the company’s standards. They will decide whether the vendor can work for the company or not.

Convey your Requirements and Expectations

The onboarding team will explain the entire operational procedure to the vendors. They will convey the information and the company’s expectations to them. It will ensure that the vendors work by the company’s policies and give substantial results. 

Read More: Automate Vendor Onboarding Workflows and Drive Excellence with Vendor Management

Addition to Marketplace, and Software Introduction 

When the verification team approves or rejects the vendor, the same information is conveyed to the onboarding team. If the vendor is approved, the onboarding team will add the vendors to the marketplace, deploy the needed software, and explain the workings to them. When there is a rejection, the onboarding team may ask for some additional documents required and solve the issue. 

A good vendor onboarding process helps your company develop a fortified relationship with the vendor. When you deliver the process professionally, vendors feel that they add value and are an integral part of your company.

This increases their motivation to work with you, and hence, their efficiency.  

A smooth, hassle-free onboarding process would attract good vendors to associate with you, whereas a shaky, unstandardized process might put them off, and have them lose trust in you, right at the get-go.