What is B2B Customer Relationship Management? A Practical Guide

B2B customer relationship management (CRM) is the practice of managing relationships with business customers, from first contact through repeat purchases.

That relationship increasingly plays out through ecommerce. McKinsey’s 2026 research found that 71% of B2B organizations offer ecommerce, generating roughly one-third of their revenue through digital channels. That means relationship management often extends beyond sales conversations to pricing, payment terms, ordering, and reordering.

Ahead, learn how to manage these customer relationships through the commerce experience with Shopify’s B2B tools.

What is B2B customer relationship management?

B2B CRM is the combination of processes and technology a business uses to coordinate sales and service for its business accounts.

As a B2B customer, a retailer might negotiate wholesale prices, get 30 days to pay, and receive access to a product catalog reserved for approved stockists. The purchasing manager places the orders, while the finance team pays the invoices.

B2B relationship management keeps those details connected: sales needs the conversation history, support needs to see what happened to the last order, and the buyer should be able to log in and reorder without asking someone to set everything up again.

For Dermalogica Canada, improving B2B CRM meant fixing a website so complicated customers preferred making orders by phone call. After moving to Shopify and giving their sales reps access to order histories and buyers an easier way to purchase, reorder frequency tripled.

“One thing we can be confident in is that we can grow with Shopify as the platform evolves, which gives us peace of mind knowing our technology stack is future-proofed,” says Melissa Daniels, general manager.

B2B customer relationship management vs. traditional CRM

A traditional, pipeline-focused CRM setup tracks contacts, conversations, and opportunities. B2B relationship management in commerce extends that work into ordering, payment, fulfillment, and repeat purchases.

The difference is what you manage and what happens when a customer is ready to buy:

When CRM, ecommerce, and order systems operate separately, keeping an account current depends on data passing accurately between them. Your buyers also notice when the information doesn’t match. Gartner research published in 2025 found that 69% of B2B buyers encountered inconsistencies between a supplier’s website and its sales reps.

“When sellers provide information that doesn’t match the organization’s messaging elsewhere, it can create mistrust, potentially putting the transaction at risk,” writes Robert Blaisdell, VP analyst in the Gartner sales practice.

Shopify’s unified commerce model brings customer data, orders, inventory, and checkout onto one platform. You can run B2B and direct-to-consumer (DTC) sales from one admin, with buying conditions tailored to wholesale customers. An existing CRM or enterprise resource planning (ERP) system can connect to Shopify to exchange data with those commerce operations.

Take the bicycle components manufacturer CeramicSpeed. While visiting US bike shops, their reps can use the Shopify app to place orders on customers’ behalf, completing the purchase during the visit. CeramicSpeed reported 5% faster B2B sales order placement after moving to Shopify.

“One feature we could not live without is the Shopify app. It’s a back-end user app where sales reps can log in on their phone and easily place orders on behalf of customers whilst on the road,” says Lukas L. Dalsgaard, ecommerce specialist.

When these systems and workflows aren’t coordinated, managing the relationship becomes more complex as accounts, buyers, and purchasing requirements grow.

What are common B2B relationship management challenges?

“In B2B, the customer is a company,” writes Brad Birnbaum in Entrepreneur, “with multiple stakeholders, years of history, active commercial relationships and expectations that extend well beyond getting a quick answer.”

The challenge of keeping those expectations aligned becomes more difficult as accounts grow and more teams get involved. Specific challenges include:

• You have to get the entire buying group to agree to the terms. A good relationship with your main contact doesn’t guarantee everyone else is ready to buy. The same 2025 Gartner research found that 74% of B2B buying teams experienced “unhealthy conflict” during decision-making. But the groups that reached consensus were 2.5 times more likely to report a high-quality deal.
• You need to keep account knowledge accessible as people and systems change. In CIO’s reporting on CRM trends, Harry Datwani, principal at Deloitte Digital, observes that, despite substantial investment, “clients still have fragmented data.” The challenge includes deciding who maintains account information and how it reaches other teams.
• You have to offer something the buyer account values. Bain & Company’s 2026 “B2B Growth Agenda” found that only 4% of surveyed companies had a strong value proposition. Their researchers describe an unclear proposition as something that “forces every function and every seller to improvise.”
• You’re expected to develop account teams while asking them to deliver more growth. In the same Bain research, CEOs rank growth as their leading concern. Bain also found that 49% of respondents’ enablement programs primarily focused on new hires, while just 29% emphasized experienced sellers. Their researchers say that there’s often “a front-loaded burst of productivity that can quickly plateau.”
• You need to automate work without automating the mistakes. More than 90% of commercial organizations said they were experimenting with AI in Bain’s 2026 survey, yet most hadn’t achieved meaningful productivity gains. As Constellation Research analyst Liz Miller says in an interview with CIO, “applying new technology to old processes only gets you more expensive old processes.”

Brad Birnbaum asks a useful question in Entrepreneur: “Are we buying faster horses when we need a different way to travel?”

If your team still has to piece together an account’s history across systems, faster replies leave the underlying problem intact. Shopify’s unified commerce model brings that information into the workflows buyers rely on, so the terms agreed with sales carry through to the next order.

The key workflows every B2B business should manage

McKinsey’s 2026 research on AI identifies a common ambition among B2B growth leaders: “rewire key workflows end to end.” They’re also investing more: 71% increased AI spending by double digits year over year, compared with 25% of their peers.

The companies getting value are redesigning how work gets done. For a B2B brand, follow the account from approval to purchase: who can order, what they can buy, which prices apply, and when payment is due.

Onboard customers and approve buying access

The onboarding process should leave a new business customer ready to place an order: approved to buy, assigned the right products and prices, and clear on how to access their account.

Shopify connects the application and account setup:

• Collect and approve applications with Shopify Forms. Add a company account request form to your storefront. When a prospective buyer submits it, Shopify automatically creates the company, location, and customer records for your review. From Customers > Companies > Ordering not approved, review their details, assign location permissions, and notify the buyer that they can start ordering.
• Set up companies, locations, and buyer permissions. Organize the business and its buyers before orders start arriving. The company represents the parent organization; locations hold details such as billing and shipping addresses, payment terms, and tax information.
• Automate access emails with Shopify Flow. Once an account is approved, let the buyer know they can start ordering. Shopify Flow’s Send B2B access email to approved customer template automates that notification.
• Let buyers sign in with a one-time code. Approved buyers sign in with an emailed six-digit code; there’s no password to create or remember.

Grow existing accounts and encourage repeat orders

A customer who orders every quarter needs a different follow-up schedule from one who restocks every two weeks.

Start with their buying history, then use Shopify’s reporting and automation features to decide where your team should spend its time.

• Track account performance with Shopify Analytics. Build B2B sales reports by company and company location to see how purchasing changes over time.
• Target follow-ups with customer segments. On Shopify, combine the Companies filter with purchase history in customer segments. Group B2B buyers by their last order date, amount spent, or products purchased to plan reorder reminders and relevant product recommendations.
• Prompt your team with Shopify Flow. Combine the Customer joined segment trigger with the Send internal email action to notify your account team when a buyer enters a segment you’ve defined; for example, customers whose last order was more than 60 days ago.

The luxury bedding brand Brooklinen uses Shopify’s order history to time reorder conversations with their hospitality customers. That visibility helps the team judge when to contact a hospitality group about its next purchase.

“We know the average amount of time between orders,” says Kelly Hallinan, senior vice president of emerging channels.

“It’s much harder to do that without Shopify’s back-end system.”

Let buyers place and repeat orders themselves

Shopify B2B gives your business clients several ways to handle routine purchases themselves:

• Let buyers order with their agreed pricing and terms. In a B2B customer account, buyers shop based on the catalog pricing assigned to their company location. At checkout, their billing and shipping details are prefilled, and the payment terms are applied according to the location. They can also add a purchase order number for their own records.
• Speed up bulk purchases with quick-order lists. Add Shopify’s Quick-order list section to a supported theme’s product pages. Your buyers can enter quantities across several variants, such as different sizes or colors, and add them to their cart together.
• Make previous orders easy to repeat. Your customers can duplicate a past order from their account, saving them from finding every product again. The same account lets them track shipments, access saved payment methods, and pay outstanding orders.

Take the Australian lifestyle brand The Somewhere Co. They added Shopify’s Quick Add functionality so wholesale customers could put regularly purchased products straight into their carts. Their buyers could also preview product descriptions and wholesale prices without opening each product page. After moving to Shopify B2B, the brand reported a 33% reduction in average B2B order time.

“With B2B on Shopify, we’re able to make the categories really clear and provide an experience akin to what our customers are used to when they’re online shopping,” says Letitia Devin, wholesale admin and marketing support.

Manage wholesale orders from approval to fulfillment

A wholesale order can arrive through checkout, a phone call, or an email. Your team needs to carry the buyer’s agreed terms through each route and keep track of what’s approved and paid.

• Capture rep-assisted purchases with draft orders. Create a B2B draft order for purchases arranged by phone or email; assign the buyer and company location, and Shopify applies the corresponding pricing, payment terms, and checkout settings. You can also add a purchase order number or a negotiated line-item price before sending an invoice.
• Review orders before accepting them. For company locations that need an approval step, enable Submit all orders as drafts for review; buyers submit their carts for approval, and your team reviews them in Shopify’s Drafts page.
• Set payment deadlines and track outstanding balances. Use payment terms to offer net-7 through net-90 terms or payment due on fulfillment. Shopify also supports percentage-based deposits; create a Due order view to see payments due today or overdue.
• Send invoices to everyone who needs them. The person placing an order may not be responsible for paying it. Shopify Flow’s “Send B2B order invoice to multiple email addresses” template can send invoices to additional recipients, such as the buyer’s accounts payable team.
• Manage partial shipments with fulfillment controls. When an order needs to ship in stages, Shopify lets you fulfill selected quantities, leaving the remaining items unfulfilled. Add tracking details and send a notification for each shipment, so buyers can see which part of their order is on its way.

Food service equipment supplier Russell Hendrix reported five times faster order processing for sales reps using Shopify’s draft orders compared with their enterprise resource planning (ERP) system. They’ve also seen a 43% increase in B2B order volume overall.

“Processing orders in the admin helps our sales team bypass so many steps we used to have to go through before,” says Paul Roy, director of ecommerce and marketing.

The workflows we’ve covered above put the commerce side of customer relationships inside Shopify: account access, negotiated pricing, payment terms, and orders. These workflows complement, rather than replace, the work handled in your CRM. Your CRM can continue handling prospecting, pipeline management, and sales conversations, with an integration connecting the relevant customer and order data.

Filtrous shows how the two work together. Their wholesale customers place orders and make payments through Shopify, with that information automatically reconciled within their ERP and CRM. Their buyers get more control over purchasing, while the business keeps those transactions connected to their other systems.

“Everything is more streamlined with Shopify. I have so much more time to focus on marketing and growing the business,” says Yin Fu, director of ecommerce.

How to improve B2B customer relationships with commerce data

Start with a small group of active accounts. Check their company records, review recent orders, and ask buyers where they still need help completing a purchase.

Choose one recurring problem to fix, assign an owner, and measure the result; for example, fewer pricing corrections or less time spent placing a repeat order.

• Monitor changes in buying behavior before making an offer. Compare each company location’s recent purchases with its usual pattern; a longer gap between orders is a reason to check in, but first review outstanding shipments and unresolved returns.
• Analyze past sales data to prepare better recommendations. Review the products and quantities an account already buys before suggesting additions. The Conran Shop, for instance, built their B2B site to let trade customers purchase directly while allowing their sales team to help them find products suited to their environment. That leaves room for advice within a self-service buying experience.
• Carry account agreements through to the order. Check that negotiated prices and payment terms apply to the correct company location, including purchases entered by a rep. Boost Auto combines native Shopify B2B price lists and volume discounts with an ERP integration that supports order processing and shipping. Even orders placed through another company’s website enter their system.
• Give buyers the information they need to reorder. Make previous purchases, available stock, and purchasing requirements accessible in their accounts. Memobottle supports a network that reaches more than 1,200 retailers worldwide with a dedicated B2B space. Those retailers can review previous and draft orders, check stock, and buy in increments that match the brand’s bulk-shipping requirements.

“Customers are more engaged with our brand, and our retailer network is growing worldwide thanks to the streamlined ordering, shipment, and reconciliation experience,” say cofounders Jesse Leeworthy and Jonathan Byrt.