How to drive growth in the wholesale fuel market: PwC

While the transition to renewable energy is disrupting demand for petroleum-based fuel among consumers, demand remains stable in core segments like aviation, long-haul trucking and maritime shipping. We expect that to be consistent in the near term. But the market is dynamic, and we also expect fuel wholesalers to face even more complexity as they cope with evolving power expectations, a shifting regulatory environment and continued volatility in energy prices.

To survive and grow in this volatile landscape, companies should develop strategies to gain and retain customers, and to grab market share from competitors. That’s a steep challenge in a highly competitive market with more than 2,000 petroleum wholesalers in the United States.

Let’s explore tactics for fuel wholesalers to grow their business and set the foundation for future success. Because customers have so many options to buy fuel, wholesalers should look for ways to differentiate themselves from the competition. The most effective way to do this is by delivering an exceptional customer experience. As customer expectations evolve, building closer relationships is more important than ever.

Here are three practical approaches to building and maintaining strong customer-centric capabilities.

1. Move beyond the sale to become a trusted advisor

Instead of taking a transactional approach, concentrate on identifying the customer’s needs and challenges and then deliver products or services to resolve those issues. Wholesalers who make this shift successfully can build sticky relationships. We’ve seen some wholesalers work closely with commercial customers, including convenience store chains and trucking companies, to provide a range of products. They go a step further, even offering marketing design support for convenience stores, for instance, and fuel card solutions with detailed consumption reports to help other businesses optimize fuel spend.

Since your company’s customers may have a wide range of requests that change quickly, your fuel advisors can establish standardized sales processes and robust product catalogs at the component level to customize at scale. This can help your company quickly configure solutions to meet customer needs instead of selling “one-offs” that burden downstream contracting and billing functions with additional manual effort.

Sell solutions that solve your customers’ most pressing needs through their preferred channel. With a robust customer segmentation model, wholesalers can better target customers. Tailored solutions may also improve customer support capabilities. A well-designed segmentation model allows wholesalers to deliver a well-balanced account management strategy, while equipping account managers and support specialists with the information they need to deliver quality service.

Not every customer requires (or wants) white-glove support. Some may opt for self-service tools like online portals to access their account information anytime. But your most important clients will likely have the most complex needs and require tailored or dedicated support. An effective account management capability requires a simple account data hierarchy so that consumption and performance data drive robust segmentation and an account tiering model.

Growing in this environment means converting leads to new customers as well as expanding your existing business. Managing sales through an integrated lead and opportunity workflow can create a virtuous cycle of continuous improvement as your customer data and segmentation approach develops. This can help your company constantly refresh its offerings as customer demands change.

2. Simplify the buying process

Wholesale customers include industrial, commercial, aviation and fuel retail companies with a wide range of needs and operations across regions. Vetting and credentialing these customers before entering commercial relationships can be complex. An arduous onboarding process and prolonged sales cycles can create a frustrating experience for customers. Instead, empower customers with self-service onboarding tools to streamline the collection of a credit application, tax documentation, financial details and so on. A tech-enabled onboarding system also eliminates bottlenecks for a faster sales cycle and quicker time to value for customers. This also sets the stage for more robust fuel management platforms.

Collaboration and transparency during the pricing and contracting process is critical to keep sales moving. Leading wholesalers provide transparent pricing down to the line-item level, including freight and tax, to foster quicker supply approval. This foundational capability enables customer-centric pricing as commercial models such as day deals become more prevalent. Some wholesalers, for instance, offer purchase of wholesale fuel without a contract, allowing customers of all sizes to buy fuel as needed. These pricing capabilities also set a foundation for more innovative tech-fueled approaches to pricing. As AI models advance, we expect to see fuel wholesalers leverage sophisticated predictive modeling to forecast demand more accurately, power dynamic pricing models and improve margin.

Speed up your negotiation and closing process with standard contract templates and transparent review workflows. The largest fuel wholesalers already use digital platforms for creating, negotiating and executing contracts, which helps speed approvals and provide audit trails. Ultimately, open communication and transparent contracting enhances the customer experience and accelerates payments to wholesalers.

Third-party resellers play a productive role in the wholesale fuels market, providing market reach and scale with reduced operating expenses. Successfully leveraging third-party resellers to scale and grow your business puts the focus on your channel management capabilities and tools. Resellers will typically choose partners they find easy to work with. Integrating your sales and fulfillment workflows with third-party orders, invoicing and delivery tracking capabilities are ways wholesalers can increase transparency and make it easy for resellers to do business.

3. Focus on customer-centric innovation

Consumers and businesses increasingly ask for a seamless, convenient, self-service experience in managing fuel supply. At a minimum, wholesalers should offer consumers a user-friendly portal with simple management of account preferences, creation of new terminal locations and self-service order management. Customers also expect to be able to manage and pay their invoices in an easy-to-navigate customer interface. Industry leaders offer even more to enhance customer engagement. We’ve seen some wholesalers offer fuel data management platforms that allow customers to manage fuel transactions across suppliers and identify markets where fuel pricing is most competitive.

More wholesalers now offer services that provide real-time insights to customers who need relevant, actionable data to manage fuel purchases and consumption. For example, some providers offer integrations for real-time tracking of vehicle locations, driver behavior and fuel consumption to optimize spend on fuel. As environmental impact reporting becomes more critical, access to these insights is crucial for tracking progress against corporate emissions reductions targets. Many wholesalers already offer reports that track fuel consumption and related emissions so customers can manage their carbon footprint. Many go even further and offer sustainability consulting services to help customers develop and execute strategies for net zero commitments.

A strong foundation to scale and grow: Reboot tech capabilities

Start by building a scalable, industry-leading foundation.

Fuel wholesalers navigating volatile market dynamics too often are saddled with antiquated tech systems that muddle efforts to deliver a seamless customer experience. An intuitive user interface makes it easier for your sellers to sell and for customers to do business with you.

To modernize your tech landscape with the customer in mind, focus on these areas:

The right tech foundation demands the right capabilities to enable you to scale your commercial function. Lacking that base at the start of your scaling efforts can cause costly rework, bad investments and poor customer experience that hurts your brand.