Sales Agent Ordering

Sales Agent Ordering is a powerful feature of SparkLayer that lets certain users (Sales Agents) place orders and manage accounts on behalf of your B2B customers. Watch our video below to see how it works!

Sometimes referred to as Order Masquerading, it's a great way to integrate your sales team and centralise your B2B orders. Once enabled, Sales Agents are able to perform any of the following actions against an existing B2B customer account:

In addition to performing actions against an existing B2B customer account, Sales Agents can also:



The process of enabling Sales Agents works as follows:

The key difference in the ordering experience for a Sales Agent versus a standard B2B customer is simply this: the Sales Agent isn't placing an order against their own personal account but instead against their selected B2B customer.

Once they login, they'll be prompted by a special Sales Agent Ordering search box within the My Account Interface that lets them easily search and select a customer. At this point, the Sales Agent will be able to search for any B2B customer within your store and place orders on their behalf.

You can also see how the order experience works in our video below.

The Sales Agent can search customers by:

Once they've selected a customer, the Sales Agent is then in 'Sales Agent Mode' with a notification that will follow them around the ordering experience, notifying who they are logged in as.

Once logged in as a customer, the Sales Agent can then browse the website and begin adding items to an order. All prices shown will be the prices you've set up for the specific customer using the Price Lists functionality of SparkLayer.

Once they've added products to an order, they can access the My Cart Interface at any point and begin the checkout process. Just as with the standard customer experience, they can select an address, shipping method, and see all available payment methods.

Sales Agents are also able to add new customers directly from the SparkLayer interface, making it easy for them to quickly place an order (versus having to manually set up a customer record within your website's admin area).

To get started, for your selected Sales Agent, you'll need to follow these steps. When selecting Customer Role, choose Sales Administrator from the list.

This will activate additional privileges for the Sales Agent, allowing them to create customers on-the-fly the next time they sign into your website. From the main Sales Agent overview page, they'll see the option to Add a new customer as shown below.

When Add a new customer is clicked, the Sales Agent will then need to complete the basic information for the customer including their First and Last Name, their Email, and their Company.

When the "Add new customer" button is clicked, this will then trigger the following actions:

Sales Agents have the ability to edit prices "inline" for customers; it's a great way to make ad-hoc price changes or apply discounts without requiring adjustments to price lists.

To get started, for your selected Sales Agent, you'll need to follow these steps. When selecting Customer Role, choose Sales Administrator from the list.

This will activate additional privileges for the Sales Agent, allowing them to edit prices on-the-fly the next time they sign into your website. When they add items to a customer's order, they'll see an Edit button next to the Unit price to then make changes.

Our new "Add custom item" feature lets your Sales Admins add additional items to a customer's order that sit outside of your general product catalogue.

Use-cases could include adding custom instructions or details specific to an order, additional products (that don't have a specific SKU), or any custom item that needs to be associated with an order. Items can be added at a specific cost or at a zero cost value.

To get started, for your selected Sales Agent, you'll need to follow these steps. When selecting Customer Role, choose Sales Administrator from the list.

This will activate additional privileges for the Sales Admin, allowing them to add custom items the next time they sign into your website.

To add a custom item to an order, from the My Cart Interface, go to "Actions" and select "Add custom item". This will then allow the sales agent to enter the following details:

When a custom item is added to the order, it is then possible to edit the unit cost, quantity, and fully remove the item if required.

Sales Agents have the ability to set a custom shipping cost for customers; it's a great way to create a specific shipping costs without needing to edit shipping rules or costs behind the scenes.

To get started, for your selected Sales Agent, you'll need to follow these steps. When selecting Customer Role, choose Sales Administrator from the list.

This will activate additional privileges for the Sales Agent, allowing them to create a custom shipping cost on-the-fly the next time they sign into your website. When they add items to a customer's order and go through the checkout, they'll see an Edit button next to the shipping methods to then make changes.

It's also possible to set a custom message that shows when setting a custom shipping cost. If you'd like to make edits, please refer to the instructions below.

For Sales Agents with the "Sales Administrator" customer role (see above), it's possible to edit the product settings of items within an order.

For any products that have pack size or min/max product rules, the Sales Agent can enter "freeform" quantities and increment/decrement the line item quantities as required.

If changes are made to the default settings, the Sales Agent will be prompted to confirm their changes before proceeding to complete the order.

Sales Agents can access their own personal account by clicking the my account icon within the My Cart Interface.

Alongside placing orders on behalf of customers, Sales Agents can also add products to their personal orders and complete the checkout process independently. Whether it's for buying a product for an upcoming customer demonstration or making a personal purchase at a preferential rate.

When a Sales Agent places a personal order, pricing will be applied based on the price list assigned to their customer group within the SparkLayer Dashboard.



An additional feature of Sales Agents is the ability to access customer accounts across multiple devices using the same Sales Agent login. This means that you can:

If you're wanting to restrict which customers (or groups of customers) a Sales Agent can see, it's possible to configure this via a special settings. Named Sales Agent Groups, this powerful feature gives you full control over how you manage your Sales Agent access.

When a B2B customer places an order, it's possible to also notify the sales agent of any order activity using automations within your eCommerce platform.

Do you have Sales Agents who manage quotes on behalf of your B2B customers?

The SparkLayer Quoting Engine introduces a unified solution that streamlines the entire "quote-to-order" process directly from your existing online store. It allows you to handle quotes more effectively, converting them into completed orders faster than ever!

The SparkLayer Quoting Engine works by allowing your B2B customers to easily submit quotes for review, and for your sales team to then communicate with the customer until they're ready to complete their order. Learn more about how it works in our full guide.

When Sales Agents place orders through your store, a range of additional data is tracked against the order, from specific tags through to additional notes. This is useful if you want to be able to filter or analyse Sales Agent activity or integrate this into your backend systems.