Podcasts about b2c ecommerce

https://youtu.be/9jLLr7IPej0 Ethan Giffin, Founder of Groove Commerce and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap, is driven by deep curiosity, a passion for technology, and a desire to help businesses solve problems that directly impact revenue. With over two decades of experience in eCommerce, Ethan now focuses on helping manufacturers and distributors build scalable digital revenue channels that complement their sales teams and improve overall business performance. We explore Ethan's Revenue Framework for Manufacturers and Distributors, a practical system for building and scaling digital revenue channels in complex B2B environments. The framework guides companies through Discover, Build, Pilot, Activate, and Optimize—starting with cross-functional alignment and strategy, followed by building the right system, testing it with key customers, scaling adoption across the customer base, and continuously improving performance. Ethan explains why B2B eCommerce is far more complex than a typical website project, how “quiet friction” can silently drive customers away, and why successful digital transformation requires long-term commitment, internal buy-in, and the right systems in place. — 5 Steps to Closing the B2B Revenue Gap with Ethan Giffin Good day, dear listener. Steve Preda here with the Management Blueprint Podcast, and my guest today is Ethan Giffin, the Founder of the Groove Commerce, eCommerce Agency, trusted advisors to manufacturers and distributors, and author of Closing the Digital Revenue Gap. Ethan, welcome to the show.  Very excited to be here, Steve. Very excited to be here. Thank you.  Well, we’ve known each other for quite a few years, probably, I don’t know, five or six years.  2018.  So 2018. So that’s eight. Eight years.  Eight years. Yeah.  Oh my God. Okay.  Eight years.  So we’ve known each other a long time. I think you’ve been on one of the early versions of this podcast as well. But things have changed a lot since then. That was five years ago. And your business has transformed, and you have niched your business dramatically since. So I thought that it would be great to have a conversation and talk a little bit about where you come from, what you’re trying to achieve, what matters to you, and also the system that you developed, which I thought was very impactful for manufacturers. So before we dive into that, tell me about your personal ‘Why’ and how you manifesting it in your business?  How many hours do you have, Steve? How many hours do you have? I think my personal “why” is that I have a deep curiosity about life in general. I've also always enjoyed technology and driving technology, and I've always enjoyed sales. A very odd to put all of that together, but I think that's really has created my personal “why.” I'm just an amazingly curious person and want to continue to learn. And actually love helping people solve their problems that help make them money. It's pretty simple to me in that regard.Share on X If you asked people in my EO chapter, they would say, “Oh, you always ask great questions.” So I just love being curious and helping people.  Yeah, definitely. The area you're working in is very fast-moving, with lots of changes—especially with AI happening and so much innovation in technology. A lot to be curious about. I was personally very curious about the system that you developed. You call it the eCommerce Revenue Program Framework. And we are framework junkies here on the Management Blueprint, and I’d love to learn about what that does for manufacturers, distributors. What are the main pillars, and how does that system work? How do you generate revenue for them? That’s a great question. It’s a great question. So I’ve been building websites for well over 30 years and building eCommerce sites for, I think 22 years at this point. 2004 was my first really in-depth professional eCommerce website. Over that time, I've worked with a ton of different types of organizations, and a lot of common themes started to present themselves. As Groove has continued to evolve, we began to work a lot more with manufacturers and distributors who wanted to create online buyer portals so their customers could come in and buy from them.  And they call it B2B eCommerce, and it’s very different from B2C eCommerce. Generally, you have to be approved to buy. There’s just a lot of things that goes into kind of replacing working with a salesperson, so to speak, in many of these industries. And I just found a lot of common threads. I also found a group of folks who may not be as digitally mature in the eCommerce space as other folks. And I needed to lay out a system that both the CEO, the CFO, the CTO, and the CMO could all understand and work within, and have some level of accountability within that.  Yeah. Just one thing I’d like to mention here. I had a Vistage member when I started my Vistage groups who was running a distributorship, and they really struggled this idea that they wanted to sell online, but they were afraid of upsetting their distributors. They didn't want to be seen as competing with them. So it was a very complex and politically difficult situation. You're probably going to talk about that as well.  Well, it’s a little bit different, right? So the concept of what we’re doing is actually helping someone that has, maybe they’re a manufacturer and they sell to distributors. They’re not selling to the public. They’re selling to an approved group of their customers that are able to come in and buy from them anytime they want 24/7 without human intervention. And so that’s the concept of what we create. So we actually help them create a real digital revenue channel within their organization. And people are like, well, wait, does that mean you don’t need salespeople? No. Most of these organizations have long running sales teams, and actually the sales team can leverage the platforms to help their customers and accounts buy more, so that they can spend more time actually selling than hand-typing in orders and being an order taker.  And so it allows their customers to come in and reorder whenever they want and buy at more frequent intervals and see their pricing, have their payment terms, et cetera. Very different from, say, going to an online T-shirt shop, putting in your credit card, and they ship it to you. Sometimes customers are able to buy on credit, and you’re tracking how much credit they’ve utilized within the ERP system. A very different and much more complex transaction. We think that manufacturers and distributors should have at least 10% of their overall revenue flowing through a digital platform like that. Our average customer is anywhere between $100 million and $400 million in revenue. So that's $10 to $50 million flowing through that channel. And so some industries with more digitally mature customers can go much higher than 10%. And it’s just a much cheaper way to operate.  So let’s say I’m a manufacturer and I manufacture widgets, and these widgets are being distributed through vendors who install these widgets into machines. Retail customers don't really understand our widgets, so we're not selling to retail. We're fully salesperson-based, and we'd like to go online. We'd like to get 10% or 15% of our sales online. What does it take for us to transform our business to partially online?  Yeah. That’s a great question, Steve. That’s a great question. I'm going to walk you through it very simply. I will say most CEOs or VPs of marketing think about a project like this as just a website. That's the wrong way to think about it. This needs to be a true revenue channel within the organization—a true top-down initiative that has accountability from all sides—because it's much bigger than that. If you’re talking about $10, $20, $30, $50, or even $100 million going through a system like this, it's not just about building a website. And that’s a really common mistake that the prospects and customers that we’ve gotten have often done.  Their IT might say, “Oh, we have a WordPress website. Let's use WooCommerce for free.” Or, “I saw Shopify on Jim Cramer. Let's try Shopify.” Most of those direct-to-consumer systems don’t have the right kind of features and functionality, nor is the process to pick the software first. So what we actually tell our customers and prospects is, “Hey, we've got to take a step back.” We have a five-step lifecycle that takes about three years for a company to go from zero to kind of fully digitally transformed in terms of their eCommerce. We start with what we call the Discover phase of the lifecycle. And that is where we work, consult, understand, and build alignment between the sales team, the finance team, customer service, operations team, the warehouse, and the IT team to build this kind of alignment where all the groups of the…Share on X  In that process, we’re helping them to pick a software to utilize, to run all of this, and that will connect to their ERP system accordingly. The next phase in the process is the Build phase, and that is more traditional—like any website—where we architect, design, and build the full system. For a modern manufacturer, that generally takes about six to eight months to go through that process. Some are a little faster, some are a little longer, depending on the organization. But is this because there are thousands of SKUs, or why does it take so long?  Because there’s complex integrations with their accounting and ERP systems. The catalog is often not ready for prime time. Maybe it's in the ERP, but it contains a lot of internal slang and doesn't have photos for everything. They're often missing data or specifications. For instance, sometimes Amazon has better product descriptions and more measurements than the manufacturer's own website. So these are the kind of things that we need to go to. The Discover and Build phases together can take anywhere between eight and 12 months—or longer—depending upon the size of the organization. The next step, the next lifecycle here is called the Pilot phase, and this is something people often forget about. What they don’t do is they don’t pilot these types of systems with a handful of their top customers. Customers that would never fire them, or that are willing to go on a little bit of an R&D journey with them. They don’t pilot these systems and have them start to utilize it in a white-glove way, and they don’t often have the same kind of white-glove service with their internal sales teams to help them get going. So this Pilot phase is very important to start seeing early adoption—both internally and with the customer.Share on X  Sorry to interrupt, but I'm curious—how do you get those customers to actually invest time in piloting a system like that when they already have a salesperson who knows them and their needs?  Well, generally, up to this point, we've internally surveyed and built a system that can handle these customers. Most of your top customers want you to succeed. Quite honestly, they may already be experiencing friction in the sales process currently is holding them back and they may be like, “Oh, I can just go in and press one button to reorder my weekly order—thank God!” Most of the time, they volunteer to pilot the system. In fact, these are the ones that you want to pilot the system, the ones that are willing to do that, and you need to take them through that process with a white-glove level of service, even holding weekly office hours if you need to.  But what you want to see in that pilot is see those customers make not only their first order, but maybe their second, third, or fourth order, depending upon what their typical intervals are. And so we want to get that up and running and get some early kind of wins there and get both the internal team and the customers feeling like, Hey, this is really working for us. And then the next phase after that, we call it the Activate phase. Again, these websites are very different than a direct-to-consumer site, where they usually have an improved list of customers and they’re hidden behind a password. The next phase is the activate phase, and that’s where you want to get all of your customers in the system placing their first and second orders and getting it going. And you want to roll that out.  Generally, it might take you a good 10 to 12 months to get everybody rocking and rolling with this part of the system. But once they do, and once they start making their first, second, third order, you’ve built muscle memory over time. So this activation phase is really important. I was recently talking to the VP of marketing at a $400 million distributorship. He was telling me that they had invested seven figures in building this system, and they spent 18 months connecting it into all their financial systems. Again, $400 million. And they had only done about $200,000 in their first nine months having the system live. And what they didn’t do was they didn’t figure out how to activate their customer base. Because I asked them, how many customers do you have? Well, we’ve got about 180,000 customers.  Well, how many are in the system? 15,000. And next thing, and I’m like, well, you haven’t done yourselves any favor here. So you need a very solid plan to activate. That takes about the first two years, right? The first year is kind of architecting and building the system. Year two is really piloting and activating the system, but by year three, you've got more mature scorecard.Share on X You are starting to find ways to optimize, to reduce friction in the buying process. Maybe you’re introducing more products to your catalog. You’re introducing your customers to more product offerings that you may have, or maybe you’re finding even new industries that you can easily plug into the system and generate more revenue. And we call that the Optimize phase. And that continues to just spin in a flywheel once that’s up and running. That’s fascinating. So I wonder—how do you get the sales team to buy in? Is there an advantage for them, or they feel like sometimes that the digital channel is going to compete with them?  Yeah, well, that buy-in can come from a lot of feelings. I’ve had to stand up in front of national sales meeting audiences and talk about these kind of things. And so I would say, out of the gate, salespeople are nervous that you’re trying to take their commission away. When their customers buy through these systems, they need to get the commission off their accounts as they normally would. Maybe you raise expectations, right? In terms of what you’re looking for them to sell, or their annual quota. Perhaps you want them to sell a little more now that they have this electronic tool—but they need to share in the revenue that comes through these systems. The second part is that, according to McKinsey Consulting, 70% of all digital transformation projects in the mid-market fail to meet their original stated goal. So what happens is that people make wrong decisions, or maybe they pick software before they put alignment together. And so the salespeople, maybe they’ve had a poor experience or two with a CRM rollout, or an ERP rollout, or a previous eCommerce rollout that wasn’t thoughtfully planned. And so you’ve got to figure out how to build that confidence and trust back with folks. And then the last piece is you’ve got to give them a voice in the process. A traditional website project may not include the head of sales for the organization, but for our discoveries, we like them to attend at least the first couple days of that.  So this is a huge project—two or three years working with a client. How important it is that you keep an eye on the pulse of the client, keep listening, and make sure buy-in continues to be strong? Yeah, I think it's very important. One of the best parts about all of this is everything is trackable. We can track which customers have logged in, we can track how frequently they log in. We can track how frequently they buy, and then we can leverage technology to go out and kind of tickle them, remind them—“Hey, it's been a while since you ordered. Why don't you come back and check this out?” It is an ongoing relationship, but that relationship changes and evolves over the course of working together. I think once you get over the kind of discover-and-build phases and into the pilot, the relationship begins to evolve and change. Clients get really excited about milestones, like the first $100,000 in orders that come through the system or the first six-figure order that comes through unattended. There’s a lot of things that you want to think about and celebrate along the way when you’re working together.  Do you find that clients are willing to think long-term and commit to three-year plans where they’re willing to invest time and money into building this channel out over a period of time, as opposed to trying to get a silver-bullet solution that will happen overnight? I think it depends on where they are. From our client’s point of view, if they’ve bought into working with us, they believe and understand that this isn’t just a one-project kind of operation to build a 10–15% revenue channel within the organization. There’s no long-term contracts on our side to do it. It’s kind of broken up into kind of multiple phases and pieces. We actually do that so we can make sure that they’re ready to move on to the next step in that. There is some heavy lifting that comes from the first year of actually building a system and getting all the integration parts working through that —which is challenging. I get questions often about this. There's usually a buying committee that makes decisions on these types of project and expenses, and the CFO is always a part of that conversation. And I think the transparency that we do offer a CFO to say, listen, this is what you should expect over a three-year period.  If both sides do what they’ve agreed to do here, this is what it can get to. And I believe that maybe it might cost them $50 or $60 an order for a human in their call center to actually get the order over the phone and type it in. And kind of follow along with that from an ongoing kind of basis. And it might cost $3, $4, $5 for an order of that scale to come out of an eCommerce system. So there's definitely optimization that happens all the way around. Salespeople are able to do more, and customer service is able to focus on actually helping people, not entering orders.Share on X  Yeah, I was wondering—let’s say my widget manufacturer, we increase, we get 10% into the digital channel in a period of three years, maybe 10-15%. How much of that is accretive to the actual sales in your experience? And how much of it is kind of cannibalizing some of the actual sales?  I think it’s a little bit of both. Customers will generally buy more from you if it’s easier to buy from you. And I think there’s a real optimization in terms of expenses and costs that happens when you bring it all on.  So there’s a little bit of top-line growth and a lot of profitability improvement, margin improvement. Margin improvement.  Yeah. That’s very interesting. So, Ethan, you're coming out with the book Closing the Digital Revenue Gap. What prompted you to write this book, and what is it about?  I felt like I’ve got over 20 years of stories from being on the road. And I felt like it would be a lot of the same challenges would happen over and over again on these types of projects. So I sat down and wanted to really write about these stories, the challenges, and how we made it through them, and give the reader some things to think about as they’re going through challenges like that. And just understand that they’re not alone, that other people, that other organizations have had similar challenges over the year. So I wanted to get that out on paper and have it in a holdable form. Sorry, I don’t have them. I’m still waiting for the hardcovers to come in, so I don’t have one to show you today. But the reasoning is I felt like I wanted to tell my story and the stories of the journey I’ve been on of building these types of sites and systems over the years. Yeah. I’m sure you have a lot of war stories. Can you share one or two with us—something that was really difficult but then created a breakthrough, or a situation where someone was very skeptical and then came around?  Yeah. I think one of the big stories I like to talk about is quiet friction. Every business has quiet friction in it that may affect their customers, and they don't even know it.Share on X So, here where I'm from in Baltimore, they recently passed a law where it costs five cents for every grocery bag that you use at the grocery store, right? There’s one grocery store in the area that carries a handful of my favorite things to make pizza. They carry these special pepperonis, special cheese, like all the things. And I love making pizza. And I’m always so happy when I’m going to this store to get those things because I know I’m going to make pizza, and I love it. Well, with this law coming and happening, most grocery stores that you go to that have a self-checkout will have an option.  How many bags did you use? 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5. And the bags are right there. It's on the honor system. Well, this grocery store chain at their self-checkout locks the grocery bags up, and you actually have to go get the self-checkout assistant to come over, swipe his badge, type in a whole bunch of like characters on the touchscreen, and then get a bag out of a locked cabinet and give it to you. And it’s created so much friction with me that I actually hate going to that grocery store now. And it’s kind of ruined the experience of me buying three of my favorite things to do my favorite thing. If I ask most manufacturers to say, think about your business. Is it actually hard to buy from you? Sit and ponder that a bit. What kind of quiet friction do you have within your organization? And most of them, you can see the steam come out of their ears once they realize what’s creating those types of challenges for them. What kind of quiet friction do you have in your company that might not make people like leave immediately, but if somebody else gives them the opportunity to buy what you sell from them much easier without making it a pain in the ass, they might like, kind of gradually move, float away from you. And I think that’s where you start to just like miss compatibility with all of it.  Yeah, I love that you approach it from this angle—it’s the friction. If you remove the friction, the flow of business accelerates. It's like widening a gorge: a lot more flow can go through, and it’s so easy to miss the friction because you don’t see it. It’s something that is holding you back. And if you remove it, the effect is probably cumulative. If you have all these little things that don’t count on their own and they are immaterial on their own, but cumulatively they are absolutely disastrous. Love it. So we live in the AI age, and I can’t avoid asking a question on AI as well: how are your clients, customers taking advantage of AI?  It’s all over the place, right? I would say a lot of our customers are using AI to help with an email here or there. Maybe they have some Industry 4.0-type IoT devices connected in their factory that leverage, or are able to leverage AI for creating dashboards. But it really is generally through the use of software that we’re seeing that kind of happen overall. But one of the areas that we found AI to be fantastically helpful these days is helping to build a public-facing catalog—being able to leverage tools within AI to stock in data from various sources and get that into a structured format that we can leverage and import into a system. So we’re doing those types of projects a lot with folks. They’re still looking for coaching and help in those areas. So AI is still an emerging area, but we’re trying to, like, every day figure out how to leverage AI more and more with what we’re doing.  Is it possible to use AI in optimizing these web properties, these eCommerce systems?  I don’t think so yet. I mean, I think AI can make recommendations about things, but I wouldn’t trust AI to just auto-optimize what I was doing. I would also say that most of the folks, unless you’re really getting 50,000, 60,000, a hundred thousand visits on a single webpage—a million visits on a webpage—you’re not getting enough to statistically create a winner in that. So it’s all about using those types of things responsibly. But we are seeing AI really come to light in terms of the traditional eCommerce search, right? eCommerce search has always been keyword-driven, but we have certain platforms and tools that we plug into sites now that are able to search PDFs and even CAD files and all types of things in terms of being able to answer questions. That’s very interesting. So Ethan, you’ve been running a business for over two decades now, at least. That’s what I’m aware of. We mentioned 2004. I think Groove was started in 2004.  Seven, officially seven. But the precursor days before it was actually Groove.  Okay. Alright. So 2007. Still, it’s coming up on 20 years. So what is, in your experience, the most important question any entrepreneur should be asking themselves?  I would ask themselves if they have niched down enough within their industry. I would say that’s probably one of my biggest mistakes: not niching down fast enough and really focusing on a single area with that. So that would be the thing that I would want to say if I was an entrepreneur, and I have told people that, and to write a book.  Is this partially why you wrote the book?  It is.  Yeah.  Yep. Yeah, I’ve been doing more and more keynote speaking, and I knew I needed a book if I wanted to elevate myself to the next level. So before we wrap up, I can’t hold myself back from bringing this up, but you’re also an accomplished DJ. You started your career DJing, and you still do it sometimes for friends.  Yes.  What did DJing teach you as an eCommerce entrepreneur? How do you see life differently, or the world, or business owners differently because of DJing? Well, that’s a great question, and it’s affected me. I started DJing when I was 15 years old. I’m 51 now. And I do focus now on working with some nonprofits locally here in Baltimore, and I DJ their galas, and we put on a big show. And I would say that, interestingly, DJing has moved into digital. When I started as a DJ, I had 12-inch records that we would put on a turntable, and you’d have to have a dolly and crates of records that you would have to haul around. And now I can have 50,000 songs on my laptop in front of me, and I have these devices that spin like turntables that I can DJ on. And that—quite frankly—that transition for me to go from analog to digital was quite difficult. And I really did my own little mini digital transformation to figure out how to do that, and I was against it for a long time.  It really helped me understand more what our customers are going through as they’re thinking about that and having much more empathy. So it is that transition. I used to work at a nightclub, and we had to bring somebody in from Italy to program the lighting equipment that we had at the time in the 1990s. And now I have a light show that is driven by the waveform in the music, and it manages the lights through AI. I had it set up within an hour of getting the software. And so it’s just been tremendous to understand and see like how that has gone from analog to digital. And it’s been very helpful on the journey to teach our clients how to go from analog to digital as well.  I love it. I mean, that’s such a huge challenge with all this technological evolution going on—to keep up with that, stay fresh, and stay young with the technology, and you’re doing that. So that’s awesome. So if we have in the audience some manufacturers, distributors, or someone who is very passionate about eCommerce and wants to talk to you, learn from you—where can they go, and where can they connect? Where can they get your book? How does it work?  Absolutely. So if this resonated—if this message resonated with any of your listeners—we’re waiting for our first initial batch of books to come in, and I’ve held some back to give away. I would love to offer a complimentary book to any of the listeners of this podcast that it resonated with, as well as offer a free consultation as part of that. And if they go to www.b2becombook.com, they can request a free copy, and we’ll send it out as soon as we get them in. Sounds good. So B2B is B2B, right?  B2B. Yep.  So definitely check this out. And if you enjoyed the show, make sure you subscribe and keep coming back, because every week I get an exciting entrepreneur on the show. And Ethan, thanks for coming and sharing your goodies and wisdom. Thank you so much for having me. I always appreciate seeing you.  That was a great pleasure. Thank you. Important Links: Ethan's LinkedIn: Ethan's website:

FOLLOW US: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/inside-commerce/ ABOUT THIS EPISODE:

Markets are confused. Investors want rate cuts because they are a tailwind for growth. But rate cuts tend to be driven by negative economic data, and the economic data is...weird.So is a rate cut coming, and if so, how much should it be? and what will this mean for wholesale distributors?This week, we cut through the economic confusion to bring you informed perspective on the economy, rate cuts, and the implications for wholesale distributors and manufacturers. We also take a look at some important lessons that B2B marketers can learn from the world of B2C eCommerce. Here's a hint: storytelling is a good start, let's really start talking about customer personalization.Join the conversation each week on LinkedIn Live.Want even more insight to the stories we discuss each week? Subscribe to the Around The Horn Newsletter.You can also hear the podcast and other excellent content on our YouTube Channel.Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or TikTok.

In this episode, we're joined by Jack Ampuja, a specialist in supply-chain management, a dedicated educator and the President of Supply Chain Optimizers. Jack discusses the critical role of eCommerce logistics, the challenges businesses face in optimizing their supply chains and the importance of adopting digital strategies. He provides valuable advice for manufacturers, distributors and retailers looking to enhance their operational efficiency and navigate the complexities of eCommerce.Key Takeaways:(03:09) Challenges in logistics for eCommerce and the search for cost-effective delivery solutions.(05:09) Comparison of B2B and B2C eCommerce adoption and the need for competitive pressure to drive B2B change.(08:12) The interdisciplinary nature of eCommerce and the need for dedicated leadership.(11:13) Challenges of scaling eCommerce operations and the necessity of reconfiguring systems for efficiency.(15:08) Balancing direct-to-consumer sales with maintaining relationships with distributors.(20:01) The importance of leveraging customer feedback to drive eCommerce adoption.(23:23) Strategies for effective product marketing and cross-selling in eCommerce.(25:37) The value of starting small in eCommerce and learning through gradual implementation.Resources Mentioned:Jack Ampuja - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-ampuja-a3b275/Supply Chain Optimizers | LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/supply-chain-optimizers/ Supply Chain Optimizers | Homepage - https://e-commerceoptimizers.com/Thanks for listening to the B2B Commerce UnCut: A Journey Through Change, powered by Oro. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review to help get the word out about the show. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation.#eCommerce #B2BeCommerce #DigitalCommerce

In this episode, we're joined by Jack Ampuja, a specialist in supply-chain management, a dedicated educator and the President of Supply Chain Optimizers. Jack discusses the critical role of eCommerce logistics, the challenges businesses face in optimizing their supply chains and the importance of adopting digital strategies. He provides valuable advice for manufacturers, distributors and retailers looking to enhance their operational efficiency and navigate the complexities of eCommerce.Key Takeaways:(03:09) Challenges in logistics for eCommerce and the search for cost-effective delivery solutions.(05:09) Comparison of B2B and B2C eCommerce adoption and the need for competitive pressure to drive B2B change.(08:12) The interdisciplinary nature of eCommerce and the need for dedicated leadership.(11:13) Challenges of scaling eCommerce operations and the necessity of reconfiguring systems for efficiency.(15:08) Balancing direct-to-consumer sales with maintaining relationships with distributors.(20:01) The importance of leveraging customer feedback to drive eCommerce adoption.(23:23) Strategies for effective product marketing and cross-selling in eCommerce.(25:37) The value of starting small in eCommerce and learning through gradual implementation.Resources Mentioned:Jack Ampuja - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-ampuja-a3b275/Supply Chain Optimizers | LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/supply-chain-optimizers/ Supply Chain Optimizers | Homepage - https://e-commerceoptimizers.com/Thanks for listening to the B2B Commerce UnCut: A Journey Through Change, powered by Oro. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review to help get the word out about the show. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation.#eCommerce #B2BeCommerce #DigitalCommerce

In this The Faces of Business, Veronica Lee Jeans - Shopify Queen, Veronica Jeans, Ecommerce Queen stops by to discuss the ever-changing world and exciting developments in B2C ecommerce.   Veronica Jeans, renowned for her bestselling book series "Shopify Made Easy," brings a wealth of knowledge to the table. Guiding retail businesses from startups to millions of dollars in sales and sharing her expertise as a lecturer in Digital Advertising & Marketing, Veronica's strategies have revolutionized eCommerce for countless entrepreneurs.   Check out the Blog post here: The Exciting and Evolving World of B2C Ecommerce   Thanks for taking the time to listen today.   Find Damon Pistulka on LinkedIn talking about life & building businesses you can sell or succeed.    On Twitter as @dpistulka with inspiration and sharing thoughts.    Find out more about Damon when he's not working.  @damonpistulka on Instagram, or Damon Pistulka on Facebook.      More information on building businesses you can sell or succeed and the Exit Your Way method on our website   View our blog page for this episode here.   Email us for more information info@exityourway.com

In this episode of The eCommerce Toolbox: Expert Perspectives, host Kailin Noivo is joined by Kelli Reeves, Senior eCommerce Program Manager at Floor & Decor, to discuss the difference between B2B and B2C eCommerce. Together they explore the differing customer expectations and experiences, examine the future of B2B eCommerce, and delve into how Noibu has been helping Kelli's team to serve both B2B and B2C customers.

This podcast interview focuses on product innovation that has the power to enable Sales Teams to do meaningful email outreach at scale. My guest is Joel Stevenson, CEO of Yesware. Joel loves building businesses and has 20+ years of experience doing just that. He built a supply chain business from $2MM to $30MM, a B2C eCommerce business from $50MM to $100MM, and a B2B business,  from scratch to several hundred million. He earned a BS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from Yale School of Management. In March 2017, he joined Yesware as their SVP of Sales & Marketing. He then transitioned into the COO role - and today, he's the CEO. Their mission: To help sales professionals deliver positive buying experiences and build the valuable relationships their customers deserve. This inspired me, and hence, I invited Joel to my podcast. We explore Joel's journey with Yesware and the challenges he had to overcome growing it in an extremely dense market with many better-funded competitors. We discussed how he'd carved out his niche and what that meant for product strategy, marketing, and sales. Joel then elaborates on how a rise in prices during COVID-19 had an unexpected positive effect on the overall quality of the business. Lastly, we discuss the effects of the merger with Vendasta.  Here's one of his quotes A lot of our early value as a company was driven because we have a very good Salesforce integration. But the peril with that strategy was that with Salesforce as a system of record, we're effectively putting all of our data inside of Salesforce.  And then if somebody decides that they're unhappy with Yesware, for whatever reason [...] it doesn't end up becoming that difficult to switch.  And so I wish we would have done earlier what we're doing now - is completing the story where Yesware becomes more of the system of record. I think that would have massively increased our stickiness. The promise of product-led is easy acquisition. The peril of product-led is retention. And that was the thing that we had to keep working on. During this interview, you will learn four things: How you can create meaningful differentiation in an extremely dense market  The true value of your saas is often about what you offer, but how and where you offer it. It's all about context. How one simple (but controversial) change can help attract much better quality customers The power of reflecting on the potential of the success of your SaaS business - and taking an open mindset (without ego) on how to achieve it. For more information about the guest from this week: Joel Stevenson Website Yesware Subscribe to the Daily SaaS Reflection Get my free, 1 min daily reflection on shaping a B2B SaaS business no one can ignore. Subscribe here Yes, it's actually daily. And yes, people actually stay subscribed (Just see what peer B2B SaaS CEOs say) My promise: It's short. To the point. Inspiring. And valuable. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Get to know Matt Gorniak, the tech-savvy CEO of Threekit, a groundbreaking visual commerce platform. Matt takes us through the ins and outs of 3D visualization, AR, and virtual photography. We tackle the challenges that B2B companies face when it comes to visualizing their products and how this impacts the buyer's decision-making process. With Matt's innovative approach, Threekit is helping these businesses bring their products to life and offer customers a more immersive and informed buying experience. As we approach the future of commerce, we explore how B2B manufacturers can leverage the power of e-commerce to their advantage. Reducing the cost of sale, improving product experience, and meeting the high expectations of Gen Z shoppers - Matt paints a vivid picture of the e-commerce landscape. Be prepared for an insightful ride into the future of visual commerce. Show Highlights: The challenges faced by B2B companies in visualizing their products and their impact on the buyer's decision-making process. How Threekit is helping businesses bring their products to life, offering customers a more informed buying experience. The importance of a seamless product experience in winning deals and reducing the cost of sales for B2B manufacturers. The potential of AI in reducing waste and personalizing customer experiences, especially for luxury brands. The use of 3D visualization in both B2B and B2C commerce and its impact on the online customer experience. Follow and Review: We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click that purple '+' in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast. Supporting Resources: Learn more at Threekit.com: http://threekit.com/  For Manufacturers - see how the Threekit B2B Platform can help you deliver a valuable self-service buying experience with visual product configuration and composable architecture: https://www.threekit.com/b2b-manufacturing  For Retailers - learn how to deliver magical B2C product experience with the composable Threekit Platform which delivers customization and personalization at scale to deliver the perfect visual product experience at the perfect time, no matter the channel: https://www.threekit.com/threekit-for-retail  Learn more about Threekit with Salesforce: https://www.threekit.com/ecommerce-platform-integration/salesforce-product-configurator  *** Episode Credits If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com. Let them know I sent you.  

Matt is the eCommerce Manager at Thermacell - https://www.thermacell.com Thermacell is a designer, manufacturer, wholesaler, distributor & DTC retailer of natural insect repellent products Matt has a deep background in DTC & retail eCommerce having come from Amazon Matt has helped Thermacell turn his experience into a strategic B2B eCommerce strength In this episode, Jason & Matt discuss how B2B brands can leap  ahead by pulling from the rich eCommerce talent pool to be found in the DTC & B2C eCommerce world

On this episode of BRAVE COMMERCE Joy Simonson, Head of Global Consumer eCommerce at 3M talks about how the brand's “maker culture” has contributed to its success in both the B2B and B2C eCommerce world. She starts by speaking about how leveraging B2B eCommerce provides incremental profits for B2C and how both work hand and hand. Emphasizing the importance of data, Joy stresses how optimizing content leads to conversion. When a brand is able to tie content to data, it can truly test its effectiveness. 3M, as a large technology company, has adopted a “maker culture”, in which they constantly are testing and iterating their products and marketing initiatives. Joy explains that since the company has an engineering foundation, they are able to automate its output quickly. As an expert in the eCommerce space, Joy says that eCommerce belongs everywhere for brands because it is another road to the consumer. She speaks on how it is important to build a common language to align all teams. She stresses the value of cross-functional work to build empathy and says that when teams are able to create a human relationship and listen to each other's needs, they can quickly advance together. In this episode, you will learn just how far testing your ideas, leading with empathy, and working together can get a brand in the eCommerce space. Key Takeaways:Optimizing content with data leads to conversionShowing and providing platforms for cross-functional work, such as building a common language, allows brands to quickly advance togethereCommerce is important for all brands, as it is another way to ultimately reach the consumer Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On this episode of BRAVE COMMERCE Joy Simonson, Head of Global Consumer eCommerce at 3M talks about how the brand's “maker culture” has contributed to its success in both the B2B and B2C eCommerce world. She starts by speaking about how leveraging B2B eCommerce provides incremental profits for B2C and how both work hand and hand. Emphasizing the importance of data, Joy stresses how optimizing content leads to conversion. When a brand is able to tie content to data, it can truly test its effectiveness. 3M, as a large technology company, has adopted a “maker culture”, in which they constantly are testing and iterating their products and marketing initiatives. Joy explains that since the company has an engineering foundation, they are able to automate its output quickly. As an expert in the eCommerce space, Joy says that eCommerce belongs everywhere for brands because it is another road to the consumer. She speaks on how it is important to build a common language to align all teams. She stresses the value of cross-functional work to build empathy and says that when teams are able to create a human relationship and listen to each other's needs, they can quickly advance together. In this episode, you will learn just how far testing your ideas, leading with empathy, and working together can get a brand in the eCommerce space. Key Takeaways:Optimizing content with data leads to conversionShowing and providing platforms for cross-functional work, such as building a common language, allows brands to quickly advance togethereCommerce is important for all brands, as it is another way to ultimately reach the consumer Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Sarah Falcon is the VP of marketing at Object Edge where she leads marketing strategy and execution – including driving high performing content marketing. Sarah gets to work across a number of industries including both B2B and B2C eCommerce.We'll be discussingWhy is blog content important on an eCommerce site?Why do we need a system to drive our blog content?How to build your blogging checklistHow to find the people to deliver your blogging checklistHow to optimise your blogging once you've got your blog creation checklistGet all the links and resources we mention at KeepOptimising.comEpisode sponsored by KlaviyoThis podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Are you running a business as a new mom? It can be overwhelming to try to juggle being a mom and a service-based business owner, but it's totally possible! In this episode of Serve Scale Soar®, I am doing an entrepreneur spotlight with Rachel Greeno, a Conversions for Clients student and Serve Scale Soar® member.She's a Facebook ad manager and she's here to share her experience with taking maternity leave, running a business as a new mom, what it's like to lose all of your clients and have to start over, and so much more.Rachel is a Funnel Strategist who pivoted from a career in corporate PR to building a boutique social media marketing agency. She founded Lamplighter Marketing in 2017 and for the first 4 years, she struggled through all the growing pains associated with going from solopreneur to an agency. She now has an AMAZING team of seasoned strategists and managers who help her B2C eCommerce, home services, health & wellness, and alcoholic beverage clients with cross-platform ads and organic management. Tune in to learn how Rachel grew her business as a new mom and how you can too! Find the full show notes at www.brandimowles.com/169Resources Mentioned:Visit Rachel's website: https://lamplightermarketing.comConnect with Rachel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelgreeno/Follow Rachel on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lamplightermarketing/Follow Rachel on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lamplightermarketingAdditional Resources:Ready to scale to consistent 10k months without growing a team, hiring contractors or creating a course? Then it's time for you to Scale with Simplicity®.  Find out more >> https://brandimowles.com/join-serve-scale-soarFollow the Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/serve-scale-soar/id1477998650Follow Brandi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brandimowlesFollow Brandi on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Brandiandcompany

B2C consumer experience expectations have been bleeding into the commercial sphere for a long time, but with the disruption of the last two years, that trend seems to be accelerating. Not only are manufacturing companies looking to improve the experience they offer distributed buyers of MRO supplies, procurement is more aware of the experience expectations as well. In this episode of The Sourcing Hero podcast, Host Kelly Barner welcomes Mike Franz, Founder and CEO of ManufacturingPower.com. As a manufacturing ‘triple threat,' Mike is now using his broad experience to transform the way small to medium sized manufacturers address their MRO spend by acknowledging changes in consumer expectations.  In this conversation, Mike talks about how buyer experiences are changing and how procurement can keep up without compromising on their ‘must achieve' objectives: How the B2C eCommerce experience is changing expectations of corporate procurement  How companies can accommodate talent and bandwidth shortages by better leveraging procurement processes and systems The steps procurement can take to avoid having to choose between data quality and organization and an improved user experience

In de deze les gaan praten Alexis en Dries jullie bij over B2B en B2C eCommerce platformen. B2B en B2C staan voor business-to-business en business-to-consumer. Je vraagt je misschien af of er een verschil is tussen de twee soorten platforms ... en het antwoord is ja! B2B-platforms zijn ontworpen om transacties tussen bedrijven te verwerken, terwijl B2C-platforms zijn ontworpen om transacties tussen bedrijven en consumenten te verwerken. B2B-platforms zijn doorgaans complexer dan B2C-platforms, omdat ze te maken hebben met zaken als facturering en boekhouding. B2C-platforms zijn doorgaans eenvoudiger en gemakkelijker te gebruiken, omdat ze niet met diezelfde complexiteiten te maken hebben. Als je dus overweegt een e-commercebedrijf te beginnen, moet je weten of je je wilt richten op bedrijven of consumenten. Zodra je deze beslissing hebt genomen, kunt je het type platform kiezen dat bij jou past. Als je vragen hebt over B2B of B2C platforms, aarzel dan niet om contact met ons op te nemen. Alexis en Dries helpen je graag. Sterker nog Dries is speciaal naar Dynamicweb gegaan om zijn expertise te delen met de B2B enterprise eCommerce bedrijven. Show Notes op onze website: https://ecommercelessen.com Volg onze Linkedin pagina: https://www.linkedin.com/company/ecommerce-lessen Op Instagram vind je nieuwe en leuke achtergrond informatie over onze lessen

Digital commerce initiatives require your product, channel, and customer data in order. Or they might not pay off as you might never get the desired results from them as you expect. While both B2B and B2C eCommerce efforts have their share of challenges, the B2B space experiences complex relationships and hierarchies that drive the process intricacies. These relationships could be because of how the relationships are set up, how contracts are structured, and how each of them are paid in the relationship.In today's episode, our guest, Jay Schneider, shares his insights into how B2B digital commerce processes differ from B2C. He compares and contrast B2B sales and marketing trends such as buying groups, marketplaces, and group purchasing organizations that have been on the rise. Finally, he provides insights into the product data and why it is important for B2B distributors to keep their house in order to be successful with the eCommerce initiatives.For more information on growth strategies for SMBs using ERP and digital transformation, visit our community at wbs.rocks or elevatiq.com. To ensure that you never miss an episode of the WBS podcast, subscribe on your favorite podcasting platform.

Ashwin is the Founder & CEO of CustomFit.ai - https://www.customfit.ai CustomFit.ai is a SaaS, B2B Focused Experience & Hyper-Personalisation Platform CustomFit.ai differs from B2C eCommerce personalisation platforms in that it focuses primarily on content and customer journey personalisation vs search, merch & product recommendation personalisation. CustomFit.ai tracks all website interactions from the first landing page to detect the optimal path to engagement for that individual visitor/customer. CustomFit.ai also integrates with CDP & Marketing Automation platforms for further marketing segmentation and engagement. In this episode, Jason and Ashwin discuss the key differences between B2C and B2B digital experience personalisation and how B2B businesses can level up their customer experience through all stages of the customer journey lifecycle.

Episode 179: We've seen a monumental shift in the way our industry has adopted digital technology. We've seen many of the features of B2C eCommerce start to influence the expectations of B2B buyers. So, what does the future of purchasing heavy-duty parts look like?  Show Notes: Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com for complete show notes of this episode and to subscribe to all our content. Disclaimer: This content and description may contain affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, The Heavy-Duty Parts Report may receive a small commission. Sponsors of this Episode: Want to look up parts but don't have a part number or the VIN? Download Diesel Parts for free on Desktop or on your Apple or Android device. Looking for high-quality fuel injection for heavy-duty applications? Visit AMBACInternational.com/AftermarketSpecial Offer:  Are you looking to purchase heavy-duty parts and get your commercial vehicle repaired? Get access to one of HDA Truck Pride's 750 locations across the United States and Canada. Visit HeavyDutyPartsReport.com/BuyParts.

Joel Stevenson is the CEO of Yesware, a company that builds software that helps professionals communicate efficiently and authentically by integrating a powerful set of tools right inside your email inbox. Some of Joel's accomplishments have been building a supply chain business from $2MM to $30MM, a B2C eCommerce business from $50MM to $100MM and a B2B business from scratch to several hundred million.   In Today's episode, Joel talks about his start in sales and how his background in acting has helped him think on his feet from time to time. But, most importantly he discusses how he's been shaped as a sales leader to be curious and focused in order to accomplish his goals.   Tune in to Joel Stevenson's episode to learn why you might be cut out for sales and why at the end of the day everyone should know the tricks of selling in order to further their career.   Quotes: “The hub of your workflow is going to be in your inbox. We're being deeply integrated into your inbox.” (2:25-2:32) “Something I picked up a little bit later in my career was sitting meditation that's really been helpful to me in terms of focus.” (4:38-4:46) Well, I got news for you, you're all going into sales, whether you like it or not. If you want to build a skill set that's going to be useful for your whole career, you might think about building a selling skill set.” (7:58-8:01) “You have to be a curious person, in order to want to ask the right types of questions.” (13:10-13:15)   Links: Joel Stevenson LinkedIn Yesware LinkedIn Yesware Website   Empellor CRM LinkedIn Empellor CRM Website Empellor CRM Twitter

Meet Alessandra Colaci, the VP of Marketing at Mailshake, an email automation and sales engagement platform that helps people make great first impressions with their prospects at scale through cold outreach. Alessandra's 15-year digital marketing career spans from B2B SaaS to B2C eCommerce.In this episode, you'll hear about a LinkedIn initiative Alessandra has led for the last six months that not only gets her employees involved, but also excited about posting valuable content for their audience. You'll learn what successful posting looks like, why it's important to have an internal advocate on every team you want to activate, and the tangible and intangible results obtained from this initiative. Enjoy!Notes- 01:40 Reaching People Who Haven't Opted In- 02:10 Engaging With the Sales Audience on LinkedIn- 03:05 Enabling Employees To Post on Their LinkedIn Profiles- 06:00 Activating and Encouraging New Sales Hires To Post- 06:45 What Successful Posting Looks Like- 07:55 LinkedIn Training and the Ideal Posting Frequency- 10:20 The Benefits of No Posting Expectations or Guidelines- 11:35 Intangible Benefits From This Initiative- 16:00 Data-Focused Marketers and the Dark Funnel- 19:30 What's Next for This Initiative- 21:10 Leadership Challenges: Deeply Understanding the Audience- 22:20 Lightning Questions 

Greg is the Founder & CEO of Devicedesk - https://www.devicedesk.com Devicedesk is a 6 year old, specialist B2B SaaS enterprise eCommerce & order management platform based out of Melbourne, Australia Enterprise B2B merchants have very unique needs, especially in verticals like IT products, IT services and Telcos Devicedesk was specifically built for these complex environments Devicedesk makes it easy to deploy and connect B2B eCommerce experiences with B2B buyers In this episode, Jason and Greg discuss how the rise of B2B eCommerce has forced brands to revisit their eCommerce experience to help eliminate buying friction and better emulate the B2C eCommerce experience

Great marketing is all about keeping up with your target customers and their culture, but it's also about connecting with them emotionally. Join MaxYang & Co.'s Founder/CEO and marketing specialist Max Yang as he leads an educational strategy session on ever-evolving consumer behaviors. Knowledge and insights on business brand building and marketing best practices that you can apply to your eCommerce or B2C business to help you persuade and retain future customers.  Follow me on Instagram: Therealmaxyang / Maxyangandco Subscribe to my YouTube Channel --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/max-yang-co/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/max-yang-co/support

Kelly Macmanus Funke is President of Littleton Road Productions, a television production company with an overall deal at Universal Content Productions (UCP). Her career began in the 1990s, working for Cary Woods as he produced the first projects of today's most celebrated content creators, including Jon Favreau, Doug Liman, James Mangold, Alexander Payne, M. Night Shyamalan, and Scott Rosenberg. Under her own company film generator, she was the associate producer on Jonas Pate's SHRINK and she championed the early works of author Gregg Hurwitz, Broadway and screenwriter Jon Hartmere, and television writer, Patrick Macmanus. Then it all came to a halt. In 2009, she said goodbye to Hollywood. She spent the next decade in leadership positions in various industries. She served as Senior Vice President, Marketing for North America for the sportswear brand FILA. She was part of the global executive leadership team that returned the branded manufacturer from near-obsolescence in 2007 to a $5 billion dollar enterprise that won Shoe of the Year in 2018. During her time away, she also shepherded the return of legendary brand ambassador Grant Hill to a lifetime deal; built an in-house ad agency from the ground up; and oversaw the creation and growth of the company's B2B and B2C eCommerce teams. Immediately prior to her tenure at FILA, Funke was Director of Operations on a U.S. Senate primary in the '08 cycle and oversaw operations for Jamestown Associates, a nationally renowned political ad agency. In the fall of 2019, her brother Patrick was inundated with projects for him and for the many talented writers he he championed with his overall deal at UCP. Naturally he called up Kelly. Naturally, she said yes. Two years later, they now have an overall deal, created the hit Peacock drama Dr. Death starring Joshua Jackson and are in the middle of production on the true-crime limited series The Girl From Plainville starring Elle Fanning. Her story is just as remarkable as she is. Can't wait for you to dive in and meet Kelly! This week, we discuss: Parallels between production and the writer's process Why producing is age agnostic Having faith in yourself

EP33 China Internet Landscape and Digital Giants Part 28 •          Customer value proposition หรือ คุณค่าที่ส่งมอบให้ลูกค้าของ JD.com (HKG: 9618; NASDAQ: JD)  คือสิ่งที่สะท้อนผ่าน Logo ที่เห็นประกอบด้วยตัวอักษร 4 ตัวคือ 多 快 好 省 more, fast, good, save เยอะ เร็ว ดี ประหยัด •          Model หลักของ JD ตั้งแต่เริ่มต้น คือ B2C แต่การ operate คือเป็นการซื้อมาแล้วขายตรงไปยังผู้บริโภค สิ่งสำคัญคือ การรับผิดชอบการขนส่งด้วยตัวเอง (Self-own logistic model) ไม่ได้ไปจ้าง 3rd party แต่พัฒนาเครือข่าย logistics   ยอมลงทุนสร้างศูนย์โกดัง fulfillment, last-mile delivery ต่างจาก Alibaba ที่เน้นด้านความเป็น asset-light business model ของการเป็นเพียงแพลตฟอร์มเชื่อมโยงผู้ซื้อและผู้ขาย ในแบบ C2C/ B2C และเชื่อมผู้ขนส่งแบบ3rd party partner เท่านั้น •          JD ค่อยๆกินส่วนแบ่งการตลาด B2C eCommerce ทั่วไป โดยJD มีส่วนแบ่งอยู่ที่ 25.2% ใน 2015Q2 ขึ้นจาก 2014Q4 ที่มีเพียง 18% ส่วน Tmall ก็ลดลงจาก 61%  มาอยู่ที่ 55.7% •          ถึงแม้จะยังทิ้งห่าง ยักษ์ใหญ่อย่างค่าย Alibaba (ที่มี Taobao/Tmall) แบบไม่เห็นฝุ่น แต่ก็เป็นสัญญาณที่ดี เพราะทำให้ยักษ์ใหญ่มีสั่นคลอนและเป็นการเติบโตในส่วนแบ่งตลาดถึงเท่าตัวเลยทีเดียว  การเข้ามาครองส่วนแบ่งการตลาดได้จากหน้าใหม่สู่หน้าหลักก็ต้องขอบคุณระบบการขนส่งที่มีคุณภาพนี้นี่เอง •          รายละเอียดทั้งหมดติดตามได้ใน EP 33

Jay Patel is an experienced commercial executive with over 25 years’ experience in the TMT sectors through various operational, investment and advisory roles. Jay enjoys working with fast growing technology businesses and has served as both an executive and non-executive director on the boards of both private and public companies over the last 20 years with international experience across the UK, India, Africa and the US. Currently the CEO of IMImobile Plc, a company Jay helped start in 2003 and which he led to the listing of in 2014. The Company provides mobile technology solutions to global bluechip companies across the world employing over 1000 people and since 2010 we have profitably grown revenues from £15m to over £150m;raised £45m for exiting early investors, executed five major acquisitions and repositioned the technology offering. Previously, Jay was a co-founder of venture capital firm Spark Ventures plc, which had £250 million under-management in various public and private funds. Jay has led a number of successful investments, restructurings and exits in the technology sector across digital media and publishing, B2B software and B2C eCommerce.Jay has also worked in corporate finance roles at UBS Warburg and BSkyB. I qualified as a Chartered Accountant with KPMG and have a MBA from INSEAD and an Economics degree from LSE. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jay-patel-821a1/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- RESOURCES & LINKS ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://www.pipspredator.com https://www.investing-champions.com https://www.trading-champions.com #tradingonline #investing #trading #pipspredator #alpeshpatel #business Subscribe to my newsletter for more tips: https://www.alpeshpatel.com/blogsignup Subscribe to my Telegram channel for daily market information: https://t.me/pipspredator Follow me on my LinkedIn Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alpeshbpatel/ Join my Facebook community: https://www.facebook.com/tradefx4profit Follow more free resources including my book from www.investing-champions.com and www.alpeshpatel.com My daily insights are on my instant messenger app - also free. Get my FREE Trading Journal & Picks

What types of products work well for direct to consumer or B2C eCommerce? What influences purchases? How are discounts used to encourage email list growth? Let's find out with David Stellato from DFOglobal.

Adam Goldschmiedt is the Practice Director at Pixafy. He has over 16 years’ experience in the web/eCommerce space, working with hundreds of clients across dozens of verticals and industries, ranging from startups to large, widely-known national and international brands. In his current role, Adam manages Pixafy, a Net at Work company, who are eCommerce and integration experts focused on B2B and B2C eCommerce platforms & the critical ERP and other back-office systems that drive them.     In this episode, Adam will talk about Pixafy’s erpCommerce™ solution, and how it enables Sage ERP users to launch fully transactional B2B and B2C websites in 60 days or less, using market-leading eCommerce (Magento) and Integration Platforms (Dell Boomi) that afford limitless scalability and flexibility, as the online business develops.   Link to Pixafy marketplace listing.

Alex is an expert at helping businesses to adapt to ‘Selling in the 21st Century'. Host of a Podcast called 'Death of a Salesman'  Professional Services Lead – DLA  Alex, is a social selling heavy hitter, a technology early adopter, as well as being a well respected LinkedIn wizard.  In this show, Alex covers off the tech-tools he is using, things like Lately.com, TikTok, Sprout, Shield, Intrahive, Bombora, and quite a few more.  We also talk about why current B2C Ecommerce strategies, including intent data, are going to shape our B2B sales approaches in the next coming years.  Other things you'll enjoy here will be the classic "In sales there is no shortcut" & Why LinkedIn is the best lead gen tool on earth, so, you should stop complaining and just pay for Sales Navigator, now.   Alex Low https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexanderlow/  Bombora  http://bit.ly/2kS7Ik7-dlaignite  Answer the public https://answerthepublic.com/  Lately  https://www.trylately.com/how-lately-works  Mark McInneshttps://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-mcinnes/Mark McInnes - Sales Trainingwww.Markmc.cowww.Bonjoro.com Coupon – BOSS20Tactical Pipeline Growthwww.markmc.co/tpg 

Will Tjernlund is the co-founder and a managing partner at Goat Consulting. He started his career at his family's 80+ year old manufacturing company with the intention of expanding on Amazon and E-Commerce. Today, He will discuss and give insights for B2B companies going B2C.   “This episode is sponsored by  Capital Advance from  Payoneer. This gives you working capital to spend on anything that helps you grow your business - like more inventory or more advertising! Offers feature a single fixed fee and a gradual settlement plan. Click here for a free consultation with a working capital expert today”   You'll Learn: The most common issues that businesses are hitting right now The importance of legacy systems Tips for businesses who are starting from scratch The possibilities of letting go of sunk costs How to provide better value How to apply these in real life How to get your mind around Systems thinking How much should we spend on advertising in 2021 Best practices from bigger businesses   “This episode is sponsored by  Capital Advance from  Payoneer. This gives you working capital to spend on anything that helps you grow your business - like more inventory or more advertising! Offers feature a single fixed fee and a gradual settlement plan. Click here for a free consultation with a working capital expert today”

Will Tjernlund is the co-founder and a managing partner at Goat Consulting. He started his career at his family's 80+ year old manufacturing company with the intention of expanding on Amazon and E-Commerce. Today, He will discuss and give insights for B2B companies going B2C.   “This episode is sponsored by  Capital Advance from  Payoneer. This gives you working capital to spend on anything that helps you grow your business - like more inventory or more advertising! Offers feature a single fixed fee and a gradual settlement plan. Click here for a free consultation with a working capital expert today”   You'll Learn: The most common issues that businesses are hitting right now The importance of legacy systems Tips for businesses who are starting from scratch The possibilities of letting go of sunk costs How to provide better value How to apply these in real life How to get your mind around Systems thinking How much should we spend on advertising in 2021 Best practices from bigger businesses   “This episode is sponsored by  Capital Advance from  Payoneer. This gives you working capital to spend on anything that helps you grow your business - like more inventory or more advertising! Offers feature a single fixed fee and a gradual settlement plan. Click here for a free consultation with a working capital expert today”

What is the biggest difference between a B2B and a B2C eCommerce? Customer acquisition. In B2C, reaching customers happen mostly via media and marketing channels while in B2B the whole approach is more omni-channel and includes direct sales. Small shops and restaurants, and even the big businesses can save a lot of time spent on procurement as well as money when they start buying their supplies online. It helps sellers to remove friction points and make it as convenient for buyers to purchase the products they want. Its a win-win situation here. “Bringing a delightful B2C shopping experience to B2B is our core value,” says Muhammad Chbib – CEO of B2B marketplace Tradeling, our guest for today's episode. He also speaks about challenges they had to overcome as one of the first B2B eCommerce players and also why he'd be very skeptical about launching just another B2C eCommerce brand. This episode includes: 4:50 – How we reacted to our audience's change of needs 7:38 – B2B eCommerce vs B2C 13:56 – Augmentation of clients' business rather than disrupting 21:48 – How to start building a network of sellers for the marketplace 25:49 – Importance of (digital) marketing for B2B 31:39 – How to select a vertical for your eCommerce business 34:09 – What to consider when starting an eCommerce business

In this week's episode, we are joined by Kevin Murray, Greenlight Commerce and Maria Morais, SAP to discuss the current eCommerce trends, the accelerated shift towards digital selling, and how B2B and B2C eCommerce has evolved, particularly during business disruption.

Without question, the last several months have accelerated ecommerce adoption and drastically changed consumer behavior. The entire sales lifecycle from finding a prospect to closing the deal has been turned upside down. Now two key obstacles lie in the path of ecommerce leaders… The first is the more obvious, more discussed problem: How do you operationally and technically need to change to meet your customers' evolving needs?  The second key obstacle is not as often addressed, but is equally as important: How do you then communicate to your customers that even in these changing times, you are equipped and ready to meet their new needs?  The binding and laminating business doesn’t sound like it would be ripe with insights into answers to both of these questions, but Jeff McRitchie, the VP of eCommerce at Spiral, is here to prove that assumption wrong.  Jeff has nearly two decades of experience in the ecommerce and digital space. Just last year, his own company, MyBinding.com, was acquired by Spiral, where he now helps lead ecommerce operations. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Jeff explains what it has been like merging his ecommerce business with a more traditional binding company. He shares some of the challenges he faced along the way, and what methods and strategies he’s leaned into to find success. Jeff also discusses tips for building out a winning SEO and content strategy, and how ecommerce is playing a larger role across the entire business, including in customer acquisition and content marketing.  Main Takeaways:   The Merge: When a primarily ecommerce company merges with a larger more traditional business, there are a lot of balls in the air to create a cohesive and efficient system. Most of the adjustments have to be made on the side of the acquiring company, which needs to learn how to compete in a digital marketplace. That means that education has to be a priority both internally and externally.    Use Their Words: Every industry has jargon and industry-speak. It’s easy to fall into the trap of using that language throughout your platforms and channels. Instead, you have to meet customers where they are with their own language, and use the words and phrases they use. This will ensure that your customers feel like you are speaking directly to them and it also helps create more longtail SEO opportunities. Content For Now that Pays Off Later: Some of the most-viewed content you create might be consumed after a customer makes a purchase. On the surface, that might make it seem like content-creation is not a good customer acquisition strategy. On the contrary, it’s actually a critical long-term strategy in the sense that good, useful content is critical for brand awareness and building trust, which customers will remember when they need to buy in the future. For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length. --- Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce --- Transcript: Stephanie: Welcome to another episode of Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles. Today on the show, we have Jeff McRitchie, the VP of Ecommerce at Spiral Binding, My Binding and Binding 101. Jeff welcome. Jeff: Thank you. Stephanie: Thanks for coming on the show. I was excited when I was looking through Spiral's background. It looked like you guys started in 1932. Is that right? Jeff: Yeah. I mean, we've been around for a long time. Stephanie: Yeah. I think that'll make for a really fun conversation because I'm sure that the company and you have seen a lot of transformation over the years, so that'll be fun to dive into later. Jeff: For sure. Stephanie: Tell me a bit about Spiral. What is it? How do I think about what you guys do? Jeff: So Spiral is really a company and we've built ourselves around helping people to bind presentations and proposals. We do a little bit of laminating. We do a little bit of other things, but really we focus a lot on binding. We sell the equipment and the supplies for people to be able to bind presentations, proposals, books and training materials. Those are probably the primary things that come out of it. Jeff: We're a niche player in the office products market is one way to think about it. We're an interesting a hybrid of a company because we sell a little bit in B2B, a lot in B2B, a lot in B2C or B2B to C sort of space. Then we also have some really interesting national account sort of business as well. Kind of a little bit of an evolving company, we're a manufacturer and a distributor at the same time. We have lots of different faces which presents some really cool challenges from the standpoint of being in a digital transformation or Ecommerce role. Stephanie: Okay cool. So how long have you been at the company for? Jeff: My story is interesting, actually I'm co founder of a company called My Binding about 17 years ago. Last year we sold to Spiral. I've been with Spiral for just over a year now in this sort of digital transformation role but with My Binding, which was more of a pure play Ecommerce space. We grew and we were the largest sort of binding Ecommerce player in the market. Then all of a sudden we joined forces essentially with Spiral, which was the largest sort of B2B player in the market. Now we're one force together going after the binding and laminating market. Stephanie: Oh, interesting. What was that process like where you had your own company, you guys were selling online and then joining a company that maybe wasn't doing as much of that. What was that process like when it came to incorporating your company into an existing older company? Jeff: There's definitely some upsides. Suddenly you have increased purchasing power, you have more access to talent and capital. Those were amazing things, but the integration side of things is tough. Jeff: I mean, you're trying to merge systems and figure out how everything works together and learn the language of a new company. Some of that stuff is not as easy as it should be, as well as trying to figure out where exactly are they on the landscape of digital transformation and how do you navigate that when... We were pretty much an Ecommerce or digital first organization. That wasn't really their background. Now we're figuring out how do we be both? That's a pretty big challenge actually. Stephanie: Yeah. That sounds really difficult. What does the customer journey look like for Spiral or what did it look like compared to My Binding? Jeff: I guess the best way to think about it would be that in a B2B, B2C sort of Ecommerce experience, we were really building our business around a large number of transactions with a large number of customers, essentially small transactions to a large number of customers. On the more traditional B2B model, the traditional side of the Spiral business would have been around a small number of transactions to really big customers. Which is pretty typical when you look at this idea of traditional B2B and more like an Ecommerce B2B sort of experience. At least a B2B, to C sort of experience. Jeff: That was the really interesting thing is that we were dealing with customers from all over the country that in almost every industry that you can imagine, but most of them were rather small and we are filling specific needs for those customers. That was fine. On the spiral side you were looking and saying, hey, they had deep relationships. Relationships that went back decades, in many cases, with organizations where they were the supplier of choice. They had complex contracts and all those kinds of things. That was never really part of the Ecommerce world. Trying to figure out how do you merge those two together to get the best of both. It's not easy, but it's really fun actually. Stephanie: Yeah. I can imagine it takes a lot of training for their existing customers who are used to those contracts and used to things being done a certain way. How are you maybe going about training the customers who are used to doing things the old way to be like, Hey, we actually can do this online usually. Jeff: Slowly. Stephanie: Any lessons there that someone can take away if they're going through the same thing right now within their org? Jeff: You don't have to do it all at once. Our approach is really to allow customers to interact with us the way they want to interact with us by giving them better options. Really the priorities for this past year have been to try to integrate systems and then upgrade our footprint so that we can allow the company to put its best foot forward. Really starting with the E-comm side and getting everybody on the same platform and then tied into the same systems. Jeff: Now we're actually probably just a couple of months away from launching our brand new B2B E-com experience for the traditional spiral customers. Essentially we have been allowing them to continue to exist and deal with the company in the way that they used to while improving the experience and then bringing the platform up for the entire organization. One of the things about especially B2B commerce is that it gets really complicated as you tie in lots and lots of systems and a lot of interesting rules. Jeff: Customers want to deal with you in the way that they want to deal with you. What we've found is that we have to build specific experiences for our different customer types. That's the approach that we've been taking. I think that's a good approach from the standpoint of, you're not trying to force everybody into the same sort of experience because not everybody wants to deal with it in the same way. As a large organization that sort of deals with these sort of different challenges, we have to answer questions, like, do you display pricing on the front end of your website or is it a login only experience? Jeff: What pricing do you show people or what price pricing do people get and how do you control that and how do you manage that and how do you make sure that that experience is personalized for individuals? Then there's the age old question, which is really challenging in an organization that has multi channels and that is, how do you deal with the channel conflict? Whose customer is that? I guess it depends on who you would ask because everybody thinks that the customer is theirs. Yet ultimately the customer needs to deal with the organization in a way that the customer feels the most comfortable, not in the way that the organization feels most comfortable. Stephanie: Yeah. That makes sense. What kind of legacy or what things did the legacy customers get hung up on the most when you guys are making this transition and trying to show them that a new platform's coming? Is there similar themes of things that they're like, oh, I don't feel comfortable with that, or, I don't want to move because of this? Jeff: I think when it comes to customers, most customers want technology. I mean, they become comfortable. I think that they don't want to lose functionality. That's been probably one of the hardest things is that even if that functionality wasn't the best, they become comfortable with it and they don't really want to lose that. Yes they do want a best in class experience. One of the hard things that we all have to deal with in Ecommerce right now is that the bar has been raised. Jeff: There are people who want more and more features in terms of their online shopping experience. What you find is that you need to be able to roll these things out, but you need to make sure that it doesn't make things harder on those customers, especially long time corporate customers. They are really dependent on these things working smoothly and easily. That's actually one of the hardest challenges in this process has been, okay, well, we've done a lot of cool things for customers over the years. One off, you build a feature on the website just for that one customer. Jeff: Well, trying to then redo that and not lose a substantial amount of functionality for specific customers, especially large customers that you have these really deep relationships with, that's pretty tough. Stephanie: I was actually going to ask that next, when you mentioned that you were personalizing the experience for certain customers to make them feel more comfortable or hearing what they want and trying to incorporate that into the platform, how do you go about picking out what things you should maybe personalize or give to the customer without going down a worm hole of having a personal experience for every customer? Jeff: Ultimately, we're taking an approach of first saying, what's the best in class experience that we could build. What are the things that are going to be the best for all of the customers and then looking and saying, "Hey, can we in our roadmap put in the flexibility to accommodate for these many things that customers have asked for?" Jeff: How could we build this in such a way that we can add that on or this on? I'm not sure that we always nail it just from the standpoint of... It's pretty tough to keep everybody happy. But we're taking the approach of, hey, we can make it substantially better for everybody. It may not be perfect, but it should be a dramatic enough improvement that they'll recognize that we have their best interest in mind. Stephanie: It seems like some of those requests might also fit other customers as well or it might be something where they're like, oh, I actually wanted that and never thought to ask. It could be helpful when it comes to product development on your side, like technology development. Jeff: Yeah, totally. We had a really good team that we used to build out stuff and we're able to iterate fairly quickly. That's the good news because sometimes we miss something and so... But as long as you can respond fairly quickly to a customer's need, it gives you an opportunity to serve them better and to communicate. But the other really important part of this is really getting the account managers and your sales people involved in this process so you get some really good feedback because one of the challenges that we face at least is that sometimes as the E-com department and on the technology side, you don't always get raw feedback. Jeff: Maybe the stuff you're hearing is from the people who are yelling the loudest, not necessarily from the people who are trying to help you. You're not necessarily hearing about the features that are going to make the biggest difference for most number of users. Stephanie: That makes sense. With this whole re-platforming and new tech stack that you're going to be launching what pieces of tech are you most excited about showing to the customer or bringing online that maybe wasn't there before? Jeff: For us it's really about an enhanced user experience. We kind of been a little bit on the old school side on the traditional B2B piece of it. This gives us the ability to provide a really much better experience end to end in terms of transacting with us. Some of the things that we're aiming for, that are harder than I was thinking they would be, would be real time freight quoting. When you're a B2B company and you've got a distribution network across the country, and you're trying to figure out how much that pallet is going to cost to go to this customer. You think, hey that should be super easy. That's like in the Ecommerce world, until you start to realize, well, it's really important that you get that right. You have to first know where all that's going to ship from. Jeff: One of the biggest things is a really deep integration with our ERP so we can understand where the inventory resides and then how much it weighs and the sizes and all those kinds of things so that we can do that on the fly. Because right now we do an add back type thing. We'll tell you what the freight is later. Customers don't like that. Especially not in the Ecommerce world. Getting that upfront, same with sales tax calculation. Right now, a lot of that's done on the backend and people want to know upfront. That means building a system that has management for resale certificates and all of those pieces. Jeff: I need to understand where are you exempted, where you not exempted and what are you exempt from and all of those kinds of things so that I can quote you and tell you what the sales tax is going to be upfront before you place your order. That's another piece of it that we're excited about. Requisition list is another one where people will have their own custom price list in the system where they can quickly order. We're building a system where they can upload an Excel file with all of their items that they want so they can do quick ordering and quick reordering. Jeff: I guess those would be a few of the systems. Like a quote management system to allow people to request pricing on items and then for us to respond to them live and track that inside of our system is another one that we're building. Those are all areas where we're saying, hey, this could really enhance the user's journey and make it a lot easier for them to do business with us. Stephanie: That's great. Yeah that sounds like some great changes. Have you had any customers trying out the platform as beta testers and have you seen any difference when it comes to average order value or anything? Jeff: We're not quite there yet. We finished design and we're in the midst of development at the moment. I would say that that's going to be one of those steps prior to launch. Will be first to have sort of sales associates and account managers jump into the platform and test it for themselves and then to really get especially key customers in the system testing, and then also giving us feedback. What do they love? What did they not like and how can we make it better for them? That's on the roadmap before launch to be able to say, "Hey is this better for you?" It's funny because on a traditional B2C Ecommerce launch, you'd be focusing so much on the front end. Jeff: Like, the My Account pages are taking just as much time for this site because that's where our customers are living. They want to use the search, but they really want to use the my account pages. They know what they want, and they need to be able to quickly reorder it. They need to be able to see their orders. They need to be able to have the ability to upload those requisition lists. It's a little bit of a twist but getting them, especially into those my account pages so that they can spend some serious time understanding their accounts and telling us what they like or what they don't like is going to be really important for the launch process. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really interesting about focusing on my account page and how much time they're spending there. I'm sure that things like product suggestions or also bots might be very important on that page to help showcase items that maybe they wouldn't otherwise buy when they're just quickly uploading something or just reordering. Are you guys experimenting with some of the suggestion features? Jeff: Most definitely. Yeah. That's part of the vision is to try to figure out and say, okay, we have these deep relationships with customers and they buy specific sets of products. How can we expand to purchasing a product set? How do we get them and introduce them to complimentary products and show them the right pricing and the right place so that they can say, "Hey, I should totally add that on." That's something that I should consider. It's an interesting challenge for us because we have different personas or groups of people that we're dealing with. Jeff: On one hand we're dealing with dealers and they're really reselling product. You're trying to show them maybe categories of product, where do they need to expand because they're buying for specific purposes. Then you have end users and those end users you might want to show them a different size or a different color. We're experimenting with what the best algorithm is that we can use to show them the right products and then also in the right places too. Stephanie: That's great. What tests are you most excited about that you're pitching to everyone right now and some people maybe aren't sure about? Jeff: I'm actually most excited right now about the lead gen side of our business. Stephanie: Tell me more about that. Jeff: When you start to think about what the power of Ecommerce is for a B2B organization. Ecommerce can really become the engine that powers the acquisition efforts of a company. Especially because we can get in front of hundreds of thousands of customers a month, whereas the traditional B2B sales force might only touch hundreds of customers per month. Maybe thousands, but definitely not hundreds of thousands. Jeff: The idea of... What does it take for us to build a really cool robust system to not only bring these leads in but then to try to figure out how do I score these leads and then not only take them and turn them into an immediate sale, but to determine which ones of these really can be turned into those more traditional B2B accounts that we have these deep relationships with that are going to buy from us for years to come, many tens of thousands of dollars, right? Jeff: The really exciting part to me is looking at it and saying, okay we are on the Ecommerce side, on the B2B2C Ecommerce piece of it. We almost have too many leads. We get so much traffic that comes in. So then how do you figure out, take all those leads and build a really robust system where you can make sure that they're getting exactly what they need, and you're closing as many sales as you can, but then how do you figure out a way to pass those accounts up, the right accounts to the right people so that you can build them into a much larger long term sustainable program. Jeff: For us, that means building a really cool inbound sales team that makes sure that we take care of those leads and that we foster them and do all the things that we need to do, but then building an outbound sales team as well that's going to go in and then say, "Hey, let's take these leads and take them to the next level." Then also figuring out a system for passing accounts up and down inside of the organization. You really want to be able to pass a lead up or a customer up that has substantial potential to be either a national account or what we'll call an enterprise level account. Jeff: But you also want the reciprocity of getting those accounts back or the smaller accounts back from the team. I will say that no one wants to give up that account. That's a big challenge inside of an organization when you're trying to say, "Hey, I'll give you some, you give me some." The way usually ends up being is someone... Everyone wants to receive, no one wants to give. But the system only really works if you can give the best to the... But then also that you can receive quality back. For instance, handing back to the E-com team, only the accounts that don't do any business, isn't really a win. Jeff: You really want your enterprise salespeople focused on enterprise level accounts. We're having to sort of wrestle through what does that look like in terms of structure. I don't know that we really have it all figured out yet, but it's a cool idea. Stephanie: I'm guessing there's a way to automate that and create rules. So it, like you said, can go up or down depending on certain criteria from when they're coming in. How are you all thinking about automating that process? So it's maybe less of a salespeople having to give and take and whatnot, and more like, Oh, this is automatically routed to you based on these metrics. Jeff: That's exactly what we're doing. We're exploring machine learning and big data to try to figure out a really good way of scoring customers because using that scoring, you can figure out how to pass customers up. Then a set of rules as well that says if these customers aren't of a certain size or if they have this kind of profile, they really belong in this group. But it's an interesting challenge from trying to figure out where do you get all this data from, and then how do you process it? We're exploring different options right now in terms of what that might look like and how we can best approach that without spending a ton of money before we bet that it actually works. Stephanie: Yeah. That's really cool. So outside of the prospect giving that information, what kind of things are you looking into right now to find the information to help with that scoring process? Jeff: It's actually challenging. You have certain pieces of information that are given to you which you have usually a name and an address. Their email address usually has a domain associated with it, especially in B2B. So you can pull a lot of information from that and you can start to sort your domain, your customers by domain. But really we're looking and saying, okay, well we do know the purchase history. The idea then is, okay, if you were to sort all your customers out, you can sort them on a scale of, let's say a one, two, three. You can say my best customers spend the most money with me. My worst customers spend the least amount of money with me, but that really misses part of the point. Jeff: You almost need to add a second access to this, which is really about customer potential. When it comes to customer potential, we're looking at the idea of what would it take for us to add some big data to this? To understand the size of their company and the profile of the company that they come from, or the industry that they come from as well, because the industry can be really important to us. But then the other side of it is also looking at what they purchased. Like for instance, people who purchase specific equipment or supplies, they're going to have a much higher lifetime value with us because those are proprietary or have maybe a really good pull through rate. Jeff: For instance, it may not be that it's a proprietary supply, but when you buy that machine, you have to go through a lot of supplies to make it worthwhile. You look at the data and you say, okay, that customer has a huge amount of potential. Not because of the amount that they bought from us, but because of what they bought or who they are, the company that they work for or their position. We're looking at the possibility of maybe even extending that into some of the databases out there that help you understand whether people are in market and what their roles are as well. Jeff: Because when you're dealing with B2B, you're not really selling all the time to the company, you're selling to a person inside of the company and that person has a role. You have to figure out, okay, well what role do they play in this picture? That helps us to sort them into personas. If you're dealing with a really small number of accounts, you can figure this out, but we have to automate it because it's not really feasible to do that in a one off basis. Stephanie: Yeah, definitely seems like you're going to need a whole entire data or business operations team who can build those rules out for you and have dashboards. That seems like a big project, but well worth it. Earlier, you mentioned that you guys have more traffic than you know what to do with and lots of leads coming in. Of course my first question is how are you getting this traffic? How are you acquiring potential customers? Jeff: Sure. I mean... We're in a niche industry, right? So that's part of it. We've been around for a really long time. Because of that, at least... Spiral has been around 80 years, My Binding for almost 20 on the web. As you start to look at that, we created a massive amount of content. Thousands of videos and pages. We really have in a lot of ways, the best websites in our sort of space and industry. Because of that, people are finding us to solve problems. What you find is that we built out these websites and either through SEO or through paid search we're driving a ton of traffic to the websites because they convert and that makes a ton of sense. Jeff: We're essentially... We have all of this content and it's really designed around this idea of how do we solve these problems for customers? We can drive more and more of that content. The website deals with a certain number of those sort of leads and converts on its own. The challenge for us tends to be, what do you do with the people that are maybe a little higher in the funnel? You're now talking about making sure they have a really awesome call center that is going to be able to answer those questions. Live chat is really big. We've extended our live chat hours all the way to midnight which is unheard of in the B2B space. Jeff: I want somebody there to talk to somebody if they have questions about products. Especially really big products. We're experimenting with the idea of doing triggers for live chat. We did that and that was really successful for us. We turned on the trigger and said, with the idea of if I walk into a store, somebody says, "Hey, how can I help you?" We did that on the Ecommerce site and we had massive numbers of people that were engaging with us. But the surprise to us was that many of those people were actually much higher in the funnel than we were used to dealing with. Jeff: In other words, they were now engaging with us and they weren't ready to buy. They were in the research space and they had lots of questions. Which is really cool but it just changes the model a little bit and you all of a sudden have to figure out how do I step up for that? How do I make sure that I have the right person to answer those questions? That's part of it. Driving the leads really comes to how do you acquire traffic on scale? Really good high quality traffic for the site. Then the question is, well, what can you do with it? Driving the traffic is really exciting from a standpoint of it doesn't have to be done in one way but you have to be maybe a little bit creative to do it because you really are trying to get in front of people that have problems rather than... Jeff: At least in our space, you don't come to a binding website unless you have a problem that the binding website can solve. It's not exactly an impulse purchase. You're going to show up and you're not going to just browse around. I wonder what kind of binding machines they carry. You probably are on a mission to solve some sort of problem. Right. Whether that's like your bosses told you that you need to buy a binding machine or you need to upgrade the way that your reports or presentations are going to look, or you have a deadline of Friday and you need to get these reports out for the annual meeting. Jeff: These are all sort of really common sort of scenarios and so then the question is, will this product work for my specific needs? That's a question that our customers are constantly asking. Building to that has been a really great sort of acquisition model for us to build around the idea that every customer that comes to us comes to us with a problem that we can solve for them, and then figuring out how do you work backwards to that? What problems could we solve? Then as you start to get creative with that and build massive amounts of content, that content lives out there forever. That's been really a big part of our success, is really the longevity but also the content generation sort of machine that we've built over the years. Stephanie: How has your content... What is the style now today? Is it only educational? Is it humorous and how has it evolved over time? Jeff: We've tried a lot of things over the years. We've tried to be funny. I think we think we're funny sometimes. We've tried a bunch of different things. We've tried to be really educational. It was really hard to figure out the ROI of that. What we've really... If you were to look at our content, we do a lot of content that is really close to the bottom of the funnel, but that would be really helpful. We go with that sort of helpful thing as well as deep. So the idea of building out a really robust and large set of content over the years about products. Jeff: We spend a lot of time making sure that we have all of the details about the product, even to the point where our competitors come to our sites to look up products because they don't have as good of information as we do. That's one piece of the content side of things for us. We have a lot of how to videos. We did a bunch of experimenting around the videos. We found that the videos that people really cared about would basically answer a couple of quick questions. But mostly it was, will this product work for me? How does this thing work? Jeff: We made a whole series of those videos, almost five thousand of them that are really around the idea of how does this product work and a quick demonstration essentially. Usually around a minute long that takes the product out of the box, show someone how to use it. Those really work well for us because they show a customer generally what are they looking for. A lot of customers they want to see what it looks like or they have a machine already and they want to say, "Is that's the thing that works with my machine.? They don't understand our language. Those videos have worked really well for us as well. Stephanie: That's great. Are there any surprising pieces of content that you didn't think would work that did, or surprising sources of customer acquisition that you wouldn't have looked into before? Jeff: We've had a few blog articles that have found traction in the world and the web that I wasn't really anticipating. We've written a lot of content over the years. Most of the blog articles get a little bit of traffic. They're like evergreen content, little bit of traffic over a long period of time. But occasionally we'll end up with one like... Something about how to laminate without a laminator. Stephanie: That's a good one. Jeff: Amazingly, there's a lot of people that look up that and I was shocked. It consistently drives more traffic than almost any other blog article for us. Which is odd. I'm not sure it drives a ton of business because they don't want to buy a laminator, but if you think about it, there's a whole segment of people that have maybe problems that we don't traditionally associate with our business. That would be one thing and then the other piece would be the language piece. Jeff: It's always surprising when I discover that the language that we use internally for our business doesn't match the language of the customer. An example would be we talk about binding covers all the time because we're in the world of binding. A lot of people they just talk about card stock. In the paper world, the card stock doesn't even exist. It's not a thing. People will talk about it. It's cover weight paper. Index weight paper. Card stock is like this sort of crafting term. Yet it's sort of taken on a vocabulary of its own in the world. Jeff: When people search for binding covers, often they'll use that word. That's always surprising to me as well. There's a whole list of those things where people basically they choose to use their own words to describe things. Now you're trying to figure out how do I technically be accurate about this product but really use their language? Because if you don't use their language, then you're not going to show up in search for this stuff and they're not going to feel comfortable with it. Stephanie: That's a really good reminder, especially with generational shifts that the new consumer might be using completely different language than what you're used to. How are you exploring what that language might be? I mean, especially a company that has been around since the thirties, how are they figuring out, oh, this is what they call it now, this is what the kids are saying these days? Jeff: Probably the easiest thing for us is to look through our search results and especially the no results found once because often it's those things. When people are typing in stuff in the search bar and nothing's popping up. You look at that and you're like oh... A smart merchandiser, someone who understands your products really well, they start to make those connections and they're like, oh, wait a second. That's what they mean. Obviously a lot of that like spelling mistakes and things like that. You can fix those in your search engine but when you start to look at it, you start to see sometimes patterns. That's one of the easiest ones. Jeff: The other two that are really helpful for us would be Google autosuggest. Just start typing things in Google and then figure out what Google thinks that you should add to the end of it. All of a sudden you realize, okay, maybe people are searching for maybe a slightly different side of things than we thought they were. Then the other one would be Amazon. Amazon, their product terms are awful. Yet they sell so much. Why? Because they tie into language. They have usually products that have all these different words in the titles that you would never imagine. Jeff: As you start to look at products that are really successful on the marketplaces, you can start to realize, okay, well maybe they're onto something there. They've managed to call out even the most important attributes of that product in a very search centric sort of model or they have really been able to hone in on maybe key words that we weren't thinking of when we've been building this out. Especially because often you start with whatever... A point of reference would be the manufacturer's title. It becomes quite difficult sometimes to sort of detach from that, but Amazon detaches automatically because they let people come up with their own titles for stuff. Jeff: Usually it's the sort of ecosystem that will change the title to try to optimize. Sometimes when you find really successful products that you're realizing, Oh, maybe people do care about that. Stephanie: I love that. That's really good tips to remember about, finding those keywords and how to discover them because yeah, I think even longterm key words would probably be really good for your industry. I'm thinking, how would I Google something like that? I would probably be like how to create a hard cover book for my presentation or something really long winded like that. It's a really good reminder about the keywords importance. Jeff: Then obviously you have your paid search stuff too. You can look and see in your paid search accounts, you can say, okay, what keywords are actually driving? If it was a broad or a modified broad match keyword, you're going to start to dig in and you can say, oh, it actually matched on this keyword and it drove a sale. Again, driving back and saying, okay, what am I driving sales on? It tends to be a really good place to start discovery as well. The only thing, the problem with that is that you might be so far off that you're missing the boat completely. That's where it takes a really good merchandisers to sort of nail that stuff down. Stephanie: I also think it was interesting earlier when you were talking about how to laminate without a laminator and thinking about selling something through saying, oh yeah, you don't need to buy through us. Here's how you do it because I'm sure a lot of people, like you said, are searching for stuff like that or how to fax without a fax machine. I know I've searched that quite a bit, but making fun of it and you might actually be able to convert someone who's like, Oh, I actually just do need a laminator to do this, but having a humorous video around that. Jeff: Yeah. As well as maybe they decide that they want to buy some cold laminating pouches. The idea is, if you can be really helpful in the long term, going back to that idea of video. We've done a lot of videos over the years. We understand that many, many, many times people use our videos post-purchase not pre-purchase. People are going to the video to figure out how does this thing that I already bought work. Well, that doesn't really help us but it does help us in the long term. Jeff: As you look at it and say, it's not going to win us the sale today, but it will win us brand awareness. It does potentially when you do supply sales. Because we're a very supply driven sort of space. If you think about it, if you buy a binding machine, you got to buy some supplies for it. Longterm, we want to have an awareness and be in front of customers so they understand who we are when it comes time to buy the supplies that they need. Stephanie: Just like you said, it's really important to continue to stay in front of that customer so they come to you to buy supplies and remember you guys. How do you go about doing that and keeping a customer retained? Because it seems like it would be easier with these legacy customers who are maybe in these year or three year long contracts. Now when you're moving towards Ecommerce and they can hop around really quickly, it seems like you wouldn't be able to retain customers as easily. So how do you go about staying in front of them? Jeff: I mean, there's a lot to that, the question. To give you maybe a general overview of our thoughts is a big part of our business and something that's really important to us. Especially on the E-com side of things, it really starts with delivering a really awesome experience upfront. So you need to be able to help them find what they need and then deliver it to them in a really reasonable timeframe or meet their deadline. All that kind of stuff. To have the product in stock and all of those kinds of pieces. That's actually harder said than done when you deal with a really large niche category. Jeff: That's the beginning piece of it. Once you've given them that positive experience, or if they've had a negative experience, you use your customer service to basically earn a customer for life. That's actually the motto of our customer service group. Earn a customer for life. As you look at this idea, you say, okay, well, we now have a shot at their business longterm. Now the challenge for us is, okay, what's the best way to reach them? The easiest way is email. We have a ton of automation in our emails. We send emails based upon what you've purchased with replenishment. We send life cycle campaigns based upon... Welcome to the store anniversaries campaigns, and then also best customer campaigns, win back campaigns and reactivation campaigns. Jeff: We have all these automations that go out. They're really helpful. We also have sales that go out on a weekly basis that keep people engaged and keep things front of mind for them. You combine all of that on the email side, but then you recognize that that maybe only gets you half the customers. The question becomes... Because there's a bunch that are opted out in the B2B space, it's really hard on deliverability to get into the inbox. More and more people are using advanced filtering programs to prevent spam from getting through to their employees. Jeff: As you look at that, you say, okay, well, email only takes you so far. So then what do you do? The real question is, back to that conversation we had earlier about lead scoring, how do you determine your best customers or your best potential customers and make sure that you get somebody to call them? To send them a personal email which are easier to get into their inbox or to find another way of touching them. For us right now, the two other ways of touching them that we're sort of exploring, one would be SMS and then another would be direct mail. We're kind of in the process of exploring a test on SMS. Jeff: I'm not too sure how we feel about it, honestly. We have to figure out how our customers feel about it, just from the standpoint of as you look at customers giving their personal cell phones for business purchases and getting text messages. But you think about it, that's a great way to get in front of people and stay in front of them as long as you're going to be super, highly relevant. Then the other piece of it that we do a little bit of would be on that retargeting side of things. If you don't know who that customer is exactly, or don't have their ability to email them, you can at least sort of [inaudible] do it, make sure you're sending or placing ads more frequently into their feeds on different platforms through retargeting. Stephanie: That makes sense. It seems from, especially in SMS perspective, it seems like the only angle you can go about is being helpful. Like oh, you probably are running out of supplies, order now. I don't know, you can get a discount or something. It seems like there's not too many ways for B2B companies to use texting without the customer being like, "Oh, I don't want to be thinking about work right now." Unless it's a trigger for them to be like, "Oh, I need to reorder this or else we're not going to have it on the day." Is that true or are you seeing other avenues? Jeff: Well, the first step would be to be helpful with order cycle. For instance, think about what Amazon has done with allowing you to get a text when the item is delivered. Which is a big problem for a bunch of our customers, especially in pandemic, but even outside of that. It might be delivered to a central desk or to the shipping and receiving area of their company like an alert. Alerts are a pretty good option for us to sort of get our toe in the water a little bit and to stay active. Then yes, something that's personalized. Jeff: Then also, what we're struggling with is what is the best time of day to do this? Probably don't want to send it to them in the middle of their evening. They're disconnected from work, but you also need to make sure that... It's got to be time adjusted for the time that they're in and they also really needs to be followed in their workday probably. Those are some of the things that we're sort of figuring out and testing right now and saying how is this going? Then what's also the most appropriate way to collect where people don't sort of get freaked out. Because it's one of those things, do you want to get text messages from your binding company? I don't know. You got to ask it in an appropriate way. Stephanie: Yeah. That's a really good reminder. All right. We have a couple minutes left and I want to jump into a quick lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Jeff, are you ready? Jeff: Okay. I'm ready. Stephanie: I'm going to start with the hard one first for you because I feel like you're in a game right now. I got to keep it going. What one thing will have the biggest impact on Ecommerce in the next year? Jeff: Well, I think obviously it's COVID. It's pushing people online in completely new ways. It's shifting customer expectations around a whole bunch of different things. It's ruined the Amazon two day expectation, which I don't mind, but it's also shifted the way that people shop, where they're shopping, how they're shopping, and even their mentality. I don't know that we even really totally understand how it's affected everybody yet because everybody's still sort of in this scrambling mode. But ultimately I think as this shakes out, it's going to change the landscape of how we market, but it's also going to change the landscape of how our customers interact with us. Stephanie: I like that. What one piece of advice would you give a new Ecommerce entrepreneur? Jeff: I would probably say stick with solving the customer's problems. I know that tends to be a B2B thing, but it's not really a B2B thing. If you think about it, I need the right sweater for me. Really be customer centric. That becomes really cliche and that's why I go to the idea of solving a problem. You got to think about what sort of value proposition are you offering to this customer that's unique, that is going to allow them to accomplish something that they wanted to accomplish when they came to your site. Jeff: I think by focusing and being really focused on the customer problem, I think you can build out really awesome experiences, and then that deep understanding of your customer will take you really far. Stephanie: That's a good one. What is your favorite day in the office? I'm trying to imagine what a binding company feels like. What's your favorite day in the office feel like? Jeff: I mean, most of my days are pretty full of meetings. A day without meetings would be an awesome day in the office. Stephanie: That's a lot of people. Jeff: I think so. In the world of the binding company, a day in the office doesn't look all that much different than a day in a normal office. It might be a little bit like an episode of the office. Stephanie: That's what I had in my mind honestly. Jeff: Yeah. It's like paper company. There is a little bit of aspects of that, but I mean, we're just like any other company. We're a retailer, we're a distributor. We deal with customers all day long. I would say the other thing, the best day in the office is the day that you have customers that love you and that are just heaping praises, especially on the customer service people and your salespeople. When you have customers who are just singing your praises, those are great days. Stephanie: Yep. That's awesome. I'm glad you mentioned the office and I didn't have to. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about and who would your first guest be? Jeff: That's a tough one. If I were to have a podcast. I am super passionate about entrepreneurship. I'd probably do an entrepreneurship sort of a podcast about starting a business, growing a business, and the creativity that goes around that. If I could get anybody on the show, I would probably pick an entrepreneur. Maybe I pick the person from lemonade stand or one of those organizations that's really making a big impact on starting up entrepreneurs with kids. That's something that I really love. Stephanie: Yep. I like that. Brings back the memories of my parents make me [inaudible] my neighbor's yard for 25 cents which is well below market. Jeff: I think you could make at least 50 cents for that now. Stephanie: I think so too. All right Jeff, this was very interesting, such a good conversation. So many good tid bits that people can actually use from this interview. Where can people find out more about you and Spiral? Jeff: Sure. You can definitely visit one of our websites. We've got SpiralBinding.com. We have MyBinding.com and Binding101.com. You can find me on LinkedIn as well. Shoot me a message and ask me to connect and I'd love to meet you. Stephanie: Awesome. Thanks so much for joining Jeff. Jeff: You're welcome. Thank you.

In this episode, Tracey and Myles revisit something that Sachin Wadhawan of BigCommerce said in Episode 43 of the podcast.  Topics covered include B2B Ecommerce, B2C Ecommerce, and how the two are converging on each other at a rapid pace. For more on MoJo Active's Ecommerce capabilities, visit https://www.mojoactive.com/ecommerce 

Looking to learn about Ecommerce and how it could positively impact your business? Listen to this in-depth interview with the Sr. Director of Strategic Business Development for BigCommerce. Learn more about MoJo Active and our partnership with BigCommerce here: https://partners.bigcommerce.com/directory/partner/362472/mojo-active-inc  Overview of topics: [1:59 to 2:53] BigCommerce company demographics [5:57 to 10:21] The difference between open-source and open-SaaS Ecommerce platforms and key questions to ask when vetting a provider at any stage of your business. [11:03 to 14:33] How emerging trends around new payment solutions, augmented reality, artificial intelligence, and video are altering the Ecommerce landscape. [15:50 to 20:35] B2B vs. B2C Ecommerce: what’s different, what’s the same, and why more B2B businesses are adopting Ecommerce practices.

Hablaremos con dos expertos en transporte y logística, como son Juan Sandes y Carlos Zubialde. Con ellos revisaremos cómo está afectando la situación actual al transporte y la logística, tanto en B2B como en B2C (eCommerce) y cuáles son sus previsiones para próximas fechas.

Hablaremos con dos expertos en transporte y logística, como son Juan Sandes y Carlos Zubialde. Con ellos revisaremos cómo está afectando la situación actual al transporte y la logística, tanto en B2B como en B2C (eCommerce) y cuáles son sus previsiones para próximas fechas.

Ciaran steers the ship at Kooomo HQ, has spent over 20 years growing and developing internationally focused online media and digital commerce businesses. Since taking the helm in 2016, Kooomo has made it into the Gartner Magic Quadrant for digital commerce 2017 and is now positioned to service clients in the B2C market as well as cater to the explosive growth in the B2B eCommerce space.

Pinterest Ads is growing in use cases and audience sizes, and it is a great platform managing B2C Ecommerce paid media campaigns for direct response and branding. This episode talks about the general structures and strategies for Pinterest Ads and how you can use it. It is not a platform for every scenario, but it […]

Ken Kline is CEO and co-founder at VHC Brands, wholesaling premium home décor – think bedding, curtains, rugs and more. The business was founded in the 1980s and since 2015 has pivoted from using traditional sales channels into a B2B eCommerce operation with teams in the USA, India and China. In 2018 they achieved over $11m in revenue. We discuss all that PLUS the challenges of managing multiple marketplaces, why now isn't the right time for them to buidl a B2C eCommerce site, and much more. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

Top Conversion Optimization Tools for B2C Ecommerce and B2B Lead Generation - Surge Session #19 In this Surge Session, we discuss ecommerce conversions. We talk about features, functionalities, and apps that you can use to help increase your conversions. We also go over which conversion optimization tools for B2C ecommerce and B2B lead generation we recommend as well as the best CRO metrics to optimize your website. www.optimum7.com/surge

Show highlights: 05:30 - Blake's background, talking about how he did eCommerce around college and mastered it. Then took sales role and realized that he liked marketing just as much as sales. He loved the new customer part. He also describes why enterprise outside sales is a tough role when it comes to closing deals. 11:00 - B2B vs B2C, and why B2C marketing is harder. We take a quick sidebar into eCommerce affiliate marketing and why it's a good side project for any B2B marketer. We also talk about how B2C eCommerce is closer to Inside Sales because of the quicker time to close, but with eCommerce you can't hide if your efforts are working or not. The ad sped directly correlates to payments on the website or not. 14:50 - We discuss Inbound, outbound, and paid. What are the differences? Inbound - how do you know what to be writing about, what will be interesting to your buyers, and what will get traffic. Creating the content isn't enough because you have to get the traffic SEO. Inbound marketers also need to understand how to execute on conversion and high level strategies that get results. Typically, bringing this in-house requires writers and designers. Outbound - setting up Inside Sales, how do we set up cadence tools, and how do we get to our buyers, plus how to be leveraging marketing automation. Paid - this are is difficult to just dip your toe in because it's complex. Outbound View, Blake's company, does all three of these because even with a good engine going, companies need to diversify because a channel can quit working at any time. Paid efforts enhances inbound and outbound. 19:00 - Hiring internal marketing resources is hard, and every single marketing agency service is easily $1,000-2,000. Smaller business owners either have to figure it out on their own, or find the local "cheap guy" in the city to get some tactical results at a lower cost than the big agency. 21:00 - ADRs and SDRs - are they becoming a marketing function versus just appointment setters in 2019? Blake is seeing more ADRs rolling up to marketing, but really the ADRs and Inside teams simply need to belong in the group with the best nurturing and oversight. So whichever function can provide that gets the SDRs, which is organization-specific. Typically, there is no compensation plan for Inside Sales people to want to push a white paper, event, webinar, etc. The proposed fix: doing an ADR or Inside Sales rotation where Inside Sales is dedicated to marketing content promotion for entire month in a quarter. Personalized emails work better than email blasts. 27:40 - It's not groundbreaking that Inside Sales should help marketing promote content, but if there's not structure to do this it becomes everyone's part time job which isn't effective and not thoughtful. Instead, Blake argues that there needs to be a human caller dedicated to providing buyer value. They're not asking for meetings out of nowhere. They're doing soft call to action, not hard. This method is a good introduction to your company to entire strangers (individuals or departments in existing accounts). 29:30 - Account Based Marketing with personalized content promotion, use for new logos or account expansion. Soft to use the call to action as events or webinars. 33:00 - How do sales and marketing get aligned for ABM? It can get complex quickly. It requires a legitimate marketing plan for an account, but that won't happen without executive sponsorship. 34:00 - LinkedIn ads for targeted accounts. $10 per click is expensive, but it depends on what buyer level you're shooting for. You can pretty easily get to very specific people on LinkedIn. Consider Facebook and Instagram targeting for cheaper if you have a list to upload. 37:00 - We discuss free LinkedIn organic methods, and doing social sales cadences. 40:00 - Executives are getting more involved in sharing knowledge with the community (especially on Social and LinkedIn) because they have something unique to say versus their ADRs who are new and don't have an opinion yet. Blake says he does podcast interviews or guest blogging because it leads to sales and pipeline and ROI on his time invested. 43:00 - Closing remarks from Blake at Outbound View.

On the Bright Ideas podcast, host Trent Dyrsmid from BrightIdeas.co shares the story of how he's building his eCommerce business (on Amazon as well as his own site), interviews other successful eCommerce entrepreneurs, and answers questions from his audience. If you are an aspiring entrepreneur looking to build a real business that can one day replace your job and give you the lifestyle of your dreams, eCommerce is an excellent choice and on this podcast, you will learn the exact formula to follow directly from Trent and his guests.

Buying from Amazon versus ordering from a catalog. One is a lot easier than the other.  One is a lot faster than the other. And one feels a whole lot more “2018” than the other. So why do many B2B companies still make purchases through outdated means?  John Tomich is the CEO & Co-Founder at Credit Key, and he believes that many B2B practices are lagging 10+ years behind B2C, and that includes ecommerce.  But the tide is shifting. As people are getting used to purchasing B2C products so easily through Amazon and other online retailers, they are starting to expect the same experience on the B2B side of things.  Why should they have crawl through a clunky, poorly designed distributor site? Or order manually through a catalog? Yes, that still happens! John’s company, Credit Key, is bringing that simple shopping cart solution to the B2B world.  Their platform allows B2B companies to offer innovative payment options and real-time credit extensions all within an easy to use interface that matches B2C Ecommerce experiences.  There’s a B2B payments revolution happening, and Credit Key is on the front lines! In this episode of the Payments Innovation podcast, we sit down with John to hear about the B2B payment space, delivering credit extensions in real time, and competition within the industry.

I am asked all the time, what is the core differences between B2B and B2C eCommerce?  Isn't eCommerce just eCommerce?  The answer is yes and no.  There are things that we in B2B can learn from those in B2C, but the reality is that we are completely different animals from our retail counterparts.  And that means we have to pave our own way and make our own best practices. Links: New Book: www.b2becommercesecrets.com/xes www.b2xpartners.com  www.DigitalBranch.co/join 

Links from the Show Trellis How To Make B2B eCommerce Work With Your Sales Reps Isaiah Bollinger Sponsored by Spark Shipping - eCommerce Automation Transcript Charles:            In this episode of The Business of eCommerce, I talk with Isaiah Bollinger the founder of Trellis. This is The Business of eCommerce, Episode 17. Welcome to The Business of eCommerce, the Podcast that helps eCommerce entrepreneurs start, launch, and grow their eCommerce business. I'm your host Charles Palleschi. I'm here today with Isaiah Bollinger, one of the founders of Trellis. Trellis is one of the top full-service eCommerce development agencies right here in Boston. I recently saw a post by Isaiah, or on the Trellis blog actually, that was about the rapid growth of B2B eCommerce. That's one of those topics that you don't see many folks talking about B2B eCommerce, so I wanted to bring Isaiah on the show here today and chat a little more about it. So, hey Isaiah, how are you doing? Isaiah:              Good, good, thank you for inviting me to the show. You know, we've been connected for a while now, so it's great to be on the show and talk about eCommerce. Something that we've both been doing for a while now. Charles:            Yeah, it's great to have you, it's unusual actually to have someone from here in Boston, someone I've actually met in real life. Isaiah:              Yeah, it's funny how you mentioned we're one of the top eCommerce, we just actually got rated as the top eCommerce agency in Boston by a firm called Clutch. They organize agencies and help people find the top agencies locally for different things. Boston, surprisingly, it's not as robust for lots of eCommerce firms, compared to New York. Locally, most of our competitors are mostly in New York. There's so many of them there, but Boston's not quite as many here. Charles:            I feel like it's a big eCommerce city though. There's a lot of start ups in a small ... on the software side. A few different products went out of the city. Isaiah:              I think New York is just also an agency hub. Charles:            Yeah. Isaiah:              It's a hub for agencies and funny enough, one of our bigger eCommerce competitors moved their headquarters now to New York, and then one of the other ones, their headquarters is now in California, and they both just disappeared from Boston, so it's good for us. Charles:            That's a good thing. Isaiah:              Yeah. Charles:            Awesome, so, we were talking about the blog post on B2B eCommerce, and the rapid growth and it's not something that a lot of folks talk about so I figured you guys have, it sounds like, some significant experience with that. So, wanted to chat a little bit more you know, what is it, what are people doing, and what you kind of see now. Isaiah:              Yeah, absolutely. We started doing B2B eCommerce back when the company started in 2012. We kind of fell into it. Started with a mid-sized distributor, and it was a Magento project, and I think we quickly realized hey, there's some potential here for not only the customers but also the agency size so it felt like a good synergy of an area for us to focus. We've just kind of grown up from there. B2B eCommerce has been a pretty large industry for a while. It's just not talked about a lot because I don't think it's very sexy in the sense that it's a lot of behind the scenes. A lot of the sites are actually password protected sites, or you need to log in to see pricing, or you basically have to be a customer to get the true experience. From that sense you might not even know about these sites, or be able to get to these sites that are doing millions and millions or even billions of dollars online. I think that's kind of a big reason for why B2B eCommerce is so kind of behind the scenes even though it's actually more than double B2C eCommerce in terms of total sales volume.

Rob Boyle is the Head of Marketing at Homespares, a B2B & B2C eCommerce retailer supplying spare parts, accessories and consumables for in and around the home everything from washing machines to powerwashers. They carry over 13,000 items in stock which can be supplied within 24 hours, many of which are their own-brand ranges. Founded in 1962 they now ship about 300 products a day, turnover is around £6million. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

B2B eCommerce is poised to explode in the coming months.  In fact, Forrester predicts that B2b eCommerce will be twice the size of B2C eCommerce by 2020.   If you are a B2B company or if you're a service provider working with B2B companies, or if you just want to see how B2B will shape eCommerce - this episode is important to you.     In this episode I'm honored to welcome two veterans of eCommerce - Darren Sepanek and Carrie Weidenbach.  Darren joined the Magento team in 2010 and helped launch and run the worldwide Magento Partner Network.  Carrie has been in the eCommerce industry for 12 years and has served in both COO and Director of Project management roles launching over 20 large eCommerce site builds annually.     They are both now at E7 Solutions and work with the OROCommerce Platform (Co-founded by Yoav Kutner the co-founder of Magento) to build custom B2B eCommerce solutions.     In this episode, we cover some really important B2B eCommerce Topics including:   - What is OROCommerce, who's behind it and why should B2B companies consider it. - How has B2C eCommerce shopping experiences (from Amazon and others) shaped B2B expectations?  - How important is Mobile to B2B? - How "commodity" products can really benefit from new eComm trends. - How re-order and subscription models are impacting B2B - Plus more!

Rob Wing is the founder of The Cornish Fishmonger. He started the B2C eCommerce site to increase the sales of his traditionally B2B wholesale business - and the eCommerce side is now driving 1,000 orders a month. Whilst the core focus remains wholesale, he and his team have put a lot of effort into making sure their customers are well looked after to make sure they get a great experience from the food, and come back to buy again and again. This podcast uses the following third-party services for analysis: Chartable - https://chartable.com/privacy

In this episode we were joined by Matthew Bradley, Investor at Forward Partners. Matthew discusses his background and his experience that led him to start his own business in Italy and to invest in early-stage companies by later joining Forward Partners. He explains how the Forward Partners business model differs from others, by supporting and backing solo Founders at the idea-stage, offering in-house product development and growth support to give them the greatest chances of success. Matt is an investor at Forward Partners — a B2C eCommerce fund based in London that invests in and provides support to entrepreneurs at the idea and seed stage. He did an undergrad BA in Politics and International Relations. An atypical background for a VC, Matt worked in Trading, Structuring and Sales at Barclays Capital and Lloyds for 5 years developing a deep understanding of risk (and reward!) solutions. He did an MBA at SDA Bocconi and spent a couple of semesters at Duke Fuqua to do his finance concentrations. In this podcast we talk about his journey into VC and what’s keeping him busy at Forward Partners, including their new site: http://thepathforward.io/

In this episode, we go behind the scenes of an eCommerce business that sells high-end cat furniture. Dan Andrews join us from Vietnam for a quick interview about Modern Cat Designs. Modern Cat Designs provides upscale and functional cat furniture that fits into the stylish modern home. Topics Discussed: Why should you sell expensive products? Dan’s B2B vs B2C eCommerce ... The post #4: Modern Cat Designs – A High-End Cat Furniture Business appeared first on Build My Online Store.