Sales rep setup
This page is for you, the store owner or admin. Once you've set up your reps, they use Sales rep ordering to take orders.
How it works
Any customer in your store can be a sales agent: you give their account a sales agent role. When they sign in to your store, they choose one of the customers they look after. They then order on that customer's behalf, at the customer's prices.
Give someone the role
Choose who they see
They order for customers
Before you start
Each sales agent needs:
- An active customer account in your store for the person, with an email address and a complete address.
- Marked as a B2B customer in your platform, for example tagged
b2bon Shopify (see below). SparkLayer only usesb2bplus one customer group tag, so remove any other B2B-looking tags: they can conflict. - Their own login. Give every agent their own account and email address. Shared logins make cart locking conflicts more likely.
- A free sales agent place on your plan. Check the "used" count on the Your agents card at Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab).
Add a sales agent
Customers > Agents
Walk through a working copy of Customers > Agents, step by step. Nothing you do here changes your store.
- In your Shopify admin, open the person at Customers (opens in your Shopify admin in a new tab), add the
b2btag and save. - Go to Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) and click Add sales agent.
- Choose the Customer.
- Choose a Role: Sales agent or Sales administrator.
- Click Add agent.
More detail
- To give someone a custom role, add them first, then change their role on their page (see Change or remove a sales agent).
- You can also give someone a role from their customer page at Customers (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab): under Role, choose the role and click Save in the save bar.
- Make every change to a sales agent, including their role and the customer groups they see, in SparkLayer: changing a sales agent's metafields in Shopify has no effect.
- In Wix, set the person up as a contact with a complete address and the
b2blabel, and check they're a Site Member. - Go to Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) and click Add sales agent.
- Choose the Customer and a Role, then click Add agent.
- Add the person to a B2B customer group in your platform: a BigCommerce group whose name starts with
B2B, a SparkLayer Role in WooCommerce, or a Magento customer group prefixed "B2B". See Customer groups. - Go to Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) and click Add sales agent.
- Choose the Customer and a Role, then click Add agent.
The roles you can choose:
| Role | What it allows |
|---|---|
| Customer | Can log in and place orders for themselves. With this role, they're not a sales agent. |
| Sales agent | Can place orders and manage addresses, shopping lists, and company access on behalf of customers. |
| Sales administrator | All sales agent permissions, plus editing order prices and creating new customers. |
| Custom roles | Any custom role you've created. Choose these on the agent's page. |
Restrict which customers a sales agent can see
By default, a sales agent can see every B2B customer. To limit them to a territory or a type of customer, tick the customer groups they look after. They then only see customers in those groups.
- Go to Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) and click the agent's name.
- On the Role card, under Customers this agent can see, tick the customer groups they should see. Base is the base customer group.
- Click Save in the save bar.
To let them see every customer again, untick every group. The Can see column on the Sales agents screen shows the groups, or All customers.
More detail
- Each customer's page, at Customers (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab), lists the agents who can see them under Sales agents who can see them.
- To divide customers between agents, set up customer groups that match how you split them, such as one group per region. See Customer groups.
- Older setups used a sales agent groups metafield (
sparklayer.sales_agent_groups) on each customer, and on BigCommerce the SparkLayer - Sales Agent Groups attribute. Sales agent groups still apply, alongside the customer groups on the agent's page. See Older setups: sales agent groups.
Older setups: sales agent groups
If your store was set up before agents were limited by customer group, it may use sales agent groups instead. Keep these rules in mind:
- Sales agent groups only work through the customer metafield
sparklayer.sales_agent_groups. Customer tags don't put a customer in a sales agent group. - Values can only use letters, numbers and dashes, for example
uk-north. Spaces aren't allowed. - On Shopify, set the metafield to Limit to preset choices, or customers can fail to sync. See Set up the sales agent groups metafield.
- To set it for many customers at once, use Shopify's bulk editor or an app such as Matrixify (opens in a new tab). See Fill in metafields many at once.
Sign in as a sales agent
Once you've added an agent and chosen who they see, they're ready to order. Here's what they do on your store:
- The sales agent signs in to your store with their own account, as a customer would.
- They open the SparkLayer widget. As a sales agent, they also see a My Customers tab.
- They choose a customer to order for. See Order for a customer.
More detail
A sales agent can use the same login on several devices, and act as a different customer on each. Only B2B customers with an email address appear in their search.
Get notified of customer orders
When a customer places an order themselves, you can email their sales agent using your platform's automations.
Shopify only
On Shopify, use Shopify Flow (opens in a new tab). A typical flow starts when an order (or draft order) is created. It checks which customer it's for, and sends that customer's sales agent an internal email with the order number. Start from our sample Shopify Flow template (opens in a new tab).
Change or remove a sales agent
To change what an agent can do, give them a different role. To remove their sales agent access, give them the Customer role.
- Go to Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) and click the agent's name.
- Under Role, choose a different role, or choose Customer to remove sales agent access.
- Click Save in the save bar.
More detail
With the Customer role, the person keeps their customer account and can still sign in and order for themselves. It also frees up their sales agent place.
The Sales agents screen
Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) is where you manage your agents. The Your agents card lists everyone with a sales agent role, with View customers and Add sales agent at the top.
| Part | What it shows / does |
|---|---|
| Used badge | How many sales agents you have out of your plan's allowance, for example "1 of 2 used". |
| Search | Find an agent by name or email. |
| Name | The agent's name. Click it to open the agent's page. |
| The email they sign in with. | |
| Role | Sales agent, Sales administrator or a custom role. |
| Can see | The customer groups the agent is limited to, or All customers. |
Under the list, How agents work sums up the three steps: give someone the role, choose who they see, and they order for customers.
The agent's page
Click an agent's name to open their page. It's the same page as a customer's, with what SparkLayer holds for them: Basic information, Financial details, Role, Company users, Addresses and Identifiers. Click View in Shopify to open them in your Shopify admin.
You can only change the Role card here. Everything else comes from your store.
| Part | What it shows |
|---|---|
| Basic information | Email, company, customer group, price list override, and Customer groups they can see: the groups, or All customers. |
| Role | The agent's role, and under it Customers this agent can see. |
Save changes with Save in the save bar.
Plans and limits
| Plan | Sales agents included |
|---|---|
| Basic | None |
| Starter | 1 |
| Growth | 2 |
| Pro | 5 |
| Enterprise | Custom |
The Your agents card at Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab) shows how many you've used. When they're all used, Add sales agent shows You've used all your sales agents. Click Compare plans to move to a plan with more, or change an agent's role to Customer to free up a place. Extra sales agents are also available for $39 a month each. See Your plan and usage.
On the Basic plan, sales agents and roles are locked:
- Clicking Sales agents in the menu opens a window that explains the feature, marked Included in Starter. Click Try Starter free for 14 days to start a trial, or Book a 15-min demo.
- The screen itself shows Sales agents are on Starter and above, with Compare plans and See how it works.
- In the SparkLayer Dashboard, the Sales agents menu item has a Starter tag.
The Sales reps section
Sales rep setup is part of the Help Center's Sales reps section:
| Part | Who it's for | Use it to |
|---|---|---|
| Sales rep setup (this part) | You, as the store owner or admin | Make someone a sales agent, choose which customers they see and what their role lets them do. |
| Sales rep ordering | Sales reps | Take an order for a customer in the cart. |
Troubleshooting
Sales agent mode (the My Customers tab) only shows when the person is signed in on your store with the exact email address that has the sales agent role. Check the Email column at Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab).
A typo, or signing in with a different email, doesn't sign them in as the agent. On Shopify, it creates a new retail customer with no b2b tag, who sees your store as a retail shopper. Sign out and sign in again with the right email.
The agent's own customer record also needs the b2b tag, as any B2B customer does. Use b2b plus at most one customer group tag: extra B2B-looking tags can conflict.
Only B2B customers with an email address appear in an agent's search. If a customer is missing, check they're a B2B customer (on Shopify, tagged b2b) and have an email address. If they don't have one, give them a placeholder such as salesagent123@yourstore.com.
If the agent is limited to some customer groups, the customer must be in one of them. The agent's page shows Customer groups they can see. See Restrict which customers a sales agent can see.
On an older setup that uses sales agent groups, the customer's sparklayer.sales_agent_groups metafield must match the agent's group. Tags don't count. See Older setups: sales agent groups.
Another sales agent has the same customer open, so the customer's cart is locked to them. See Cart locking.
FAQs
Yes. Their own prices come from their own customer group. See Order for yourself.
Add sales agent offers the two built-in roles. Add the person as a Sales agent, then open their page and choose the custom role under Role.
Shopify only
Sales agents' roles and the customer groups they see are managed in SparkLayer, at Customers,Agents (opens in your SparkLayer Dashboard in a new tab). Changes to their own metafields in Shopify have no effect.
Next steps
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