Master B2B Friday 15

Andy & Brian discuss the pros and cons of B2B companies making their pricing available in online channels. They're mostly aligned with the common wisdom that pricing should be transparent, but they offer 4 reasons why it may make sense to hide some prices: 1) Withholding prices gives the seller pricing power. 2) Making the customer call for price raises their commitment to complete the buying journey. 3) The “price available upon request” notice carries an aura of exclusivity and status. 4) Withholding prices selectively pushed the customer to certain items and away from others.

This week on the podcast, Andy & Brian discuss: - How will Amazon react to being deemed a "distributor" by the US government, and will that make them liable for the products third-party sellers put on the platform? - Does digital investment necessarily lead to improved profitability? - 3 steps to improving your digital profitability.

This week, Andy & Brian talk about why frontline employees and executives have such different views on the state of their businesses: - What's the "purpose gap" and is there a way to reduce it? - How can companies ensure they're allowing their staff to make forward progress on their projects? - Is having differing views on the customer the biggest disconnect between executives and rank-and-file staff?

This week on the podcast Andy & Brian discuss: - How B2C promotions (like Prime Day) impact B2B sales - Why internal challenges are the reason why digital strategies fail - 5 strategies for fixing internal challenges

This week on the podcast, Andy and Brian talk through the 6 characteristics of a great culture and how to implement them in your company... 1) Build your culture based on real-world dilemmas 2) Move your culture from abstraction to action 3) Pain your culture in full color 4) Hire the right people, and they will build the right culture 5) Make sure the culture drives the strategy 6) Don't be a purist

The Friday 15 podcast is off this week for the July 4th holiday, but we wanted to share a recent webcast we hosted about how companies have accelerated their digital maturity. Join Andy, Brian and expert practitioners including Zoro.com’s CTO Andy Goodfellow, Theresa Kuske from medical device marketplace Chamfr, and Steve Baruch, formerly of MSC, on this special Webcast as they walk through how they overcame obstacles to speed up digital transformation in their organizations. Master B2B has just released a research report titled Accelerating Your Digital Vision to offer companies a roadmap for how to accelerate their digital maturity. This webcast will bring the findings from that report to life, as we hear stories from the eCommerce trenches.

This week on the Friday 15, Andy & Brian provide a template for getting and sustaining buy-in for digital initiatives, including: 1) How you build the business case. 2) How you measure value. 3) How you sustain alignment.

This week Andy & Brian take a look at why the hype behind first-party marketplaces has cooled, and whether we'll ever see the promise of the model fulfilled.

This week Andy & Brian share some of what they learned while hosting the Master B2B Summit in Chicago, including: - Who owns the customer experience at different companies? - Where should your next budget dollar be spent? - Who should be the next hire on your team? Plus answers to those questions and more...

In this week's episode, Andy & Brian give a preview of Master B2B's State of eCommerce Report, which will be released in July. But we didn't want to wait to share some of the key findings about how both B2B buyers and sellers have changed their behaviors over the past year.

This week on the Master B2B Friday 15 podcast, Andy & Brian talk about how to accelerate your digital maturity in 2024. The discussion centers around a new report Master B2B published in association with commercetools called, "Accelerating Your Digital Vision" that's digs into how organizations can quickly speed up their digital maturity. You can download the free report here.

On this week's Friday 15 podcast, Andy & Brian talk about whether brands should sell on Amazon, even if they don't get access to customer data. The resounding answer is, "yes," but with some caveats: - Brian believes the Amazon 3P Seller Central approach makes more sense than the 1P approach...so why do brands still sell to Amazon directly? - Don't discount the value of Amazon as an awareness tool. - Brian shared a survey of companies that don't sell on Amazon and the number one reason why they don't is that they don't have the internal resources necessary to manage it -- it wasn't that they have an issue with Amazon in general.

Andy & Brian give a recap of their experience at the B2B Online conference in Chicago. Plus, they discuss what the latest Forrester Wave of Commerce platforms means for industry. And would you rather work with Gen Z or Gen X co-workers?

In this week's Master B2B Friday 15, Andy & Brian discuss: - What the unemployment numbers mean for digital investments. - Why personalization is so much more challenging in B2B than in B2C. - How you define "the customer" in B2B will define what types of personalization you actually need.

This week on the Friday 15, Andy & Brian discuss: - Does it make sense for an online marketplace to have brick and mortar locations? - Should you buy a PIM early in your digital journey, or once you've built up a sizable amount of product data? - A PIM won't solve your data problem, but it will force discipline on your organization around product data. So why doesn't everyone have one?

This week on the Friday 15, Andy & Brian tackle: - Is Amazon being unethical when they started selling on other marketplaces to gain intel? - Do you need to bring in outsiders to help you revisit a digital strategy? - How do you prioritize the changes you want to make to your digital strategy?

This week in the Master B2B Friday 15 Podcast, Andy and Brian talk about the balance between sticking to a plan, and reacting to external factors - and how do you know when to make a change to your plan. Andy talked about the difference between the 3 year vision, the 18 month strategy, and the constantly evolving tactics.

This week Andy & Brian talk about: - Amazon's bigger investment in Anthropic and what it means for the future of eCommerce - A new AI chatbot tool called Hume and how it's going to affect first-line customer service workers in the future. Plus, Andy shares and example of an interaction he had with Hume...

This week, Andy & Brian talk about: - Home Depot's $18 billion purchase of roofing distributor SRS Distribution, and how that will impact Home Depot's strategy moving forward. - Who should own customer experience? Master B2B recently held an executive roundtable in Atlanta and asked this question and the answers were all over the map. The guys discuss where they think customer experience should live in an organization, and why that matters.