A buyer needs forty of something. The supplier's site shows a list price and a button asking her to call for trade pricing.
She calls a competitor whose site shows her price, her volume break and the carriage, adds it to a basket and is finished in four minutes. The first supplier never knew she existed, and nothing about their actual price was uncompetitive.
What a trade price is actually made of
Six components, applied in order. The list price, the tier discount attached to the account, any customer specific agreement on particular lines, a volume break applied at a quantity, carriage, and any surcharge such as a small order charge or a material surcharge.
Component 1: the list price
The published figure nobody in the trade pays. It exists as a reference point and buyers know to ignore it, which is why showing only this achieves nothing.
Component 2: the tier or band
Usually set by annual spend, by trade category or by negotiated status. Buyers frequently do not know which band they are in or what would move them up.
Component 3: the customer specific agreement
Negotiated rates on particular lines or categories that override the band. These are invisible to the buyer and are the main reason trade pricing lives behind a login, as covered in customer specific pricing questions on b2b stores.
Component 4: the volume break
A lower unit rate at a quantity. The critical detail is whether it applies per line, per order or across a period, which is the ground in bulk pricing and volume discount questions.
Component 5: carriage
Free above a threshold, charged below it, and different again for pallets, timed deliveries or remote areas. Carriage frequently decides which of two suppliers is cheaper.
Component 6: the surcharges
Small order charges, fuel or material surcharges, cutting charges and packaging. These are the components buyers discover on an invoice and resent.
A worked example
A list price of ten pounds a unit. A tier discount of twenty per cent brings it to eight. A volume break at fifty units takes it to seven pounds fifty. The buyer wants forty units, so it stays at eight, giving three hundred and twenty pounds. Carriage is free above four hundred, so twelve pounds is added. The order lands at three hundred and thirty two.
What that example shows the buyer
That ordering fifty rather than forty costs three hundred and seventy five with free carriage, ten more units for forty three pounds. A buyer shown this orders fifty. A buyer shown nothing orders forty from somebody else.
Publish the basis even where you cannot publish the price
What the bands are, what moves an account between them, how volume breaks are applied and what the carriage thresholds are. This answers most of the question without exposing any individual rate.
Show the price after login, always
A trade site that still hides pricing behind a quote request after a buyer has logged in has misunderstood what the login was for.
Explain how a quote becomes an order
Validity period, whether stock is reserved and how to convert it. Quotes that expire silently produce an argument at the point of ordering.
Handle the account question at the same time
Buyers cannot see pricing until they have an account, which is the ground in trade account questions on b2b ecommerce stores.
Answer the price question at the hour it is asked
An assistant that confirms a buyer's tier, applies the volume break, calculates the carriage and shows the arithmetic answers in seconds what a quote request answers on Thursday. The discipline about answering discount questions directly is set out in how to handle discount and coupon questions with a. See pricing, run the numbers on the chatbot ROI calculator, and the sector view sits under wholesale distribution.