Exploring The Amazon B2B Strategy With Brian Beck

Foreign welcome to around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by LeadSmart Technologies. Tom, Kevin and their guests review the news of the week and dive deep into the topics impacting manufacturers, wholesale distribution, independent sales agents and the global wholesale supply chain. Whether it's m and a SaaS and cloud computing, B2B, E commerce or supply chain issues, we peel back the onion with our guests into the topics that impact your business the most.

Good morning.

Hey.

Hey, how are we doing?

Good.

Great to see you this morning. Tom, Brian, welcome.

Thanks for having me, guys. Good to see you.

Yeah, it's great to have somebody separating us, Brian. Thank you. You know, keep you guys. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, I'm not going to make the comment that I made a couple of weeks or I think somebody one of the guests made or one of the listeners made the comment about. We had Kristen Krikely with us a couple weeks ago and that was the rose between two thorns. But I'm not, I think today, sorry, buddy, but today might be three thorns.

I'll take it, man.

All right.

That's very good way to treat our guest. Kevin. Nice job.

I was just thinking, I know Brian well enough, I can say that. So happy to, very happy to have you with us today. So we have our friend Brian Beck with in Siba, well known B2B guru, Grandmaster. I don't know what else to call you other than that, but an author, a consultant, a coach, researcher. Did I kind of catch all of that?

I guess, yeah, pretty close. Too many jobs.

Well, but you know, it's, it's great. We're going to talk about and we're going to see this throughout our broadcast today. I think of your background and your strength within the B2B E commerce world. And you know, our goal here on our broadcast each week is to bring people but not only bring the news, but as often as we can bring guests in that really bring value and understand the B2B marketplace. Wholesale distribution, manufacturing. You're certainly, you know, having, I think the first time I met you was at a Affiliated Distributors E Commerce event in Washington, D.C. in fact, it was the first time I ventured out of the house in about two years. And I got to hear you speak and I knew that you were somebody I needed to be associated with. So happy to have you with us.

Well, likewise, Kevin, Tom, thank you so much, guys, both for joining or for having me today. So excited for our conversation.

Good.

Well, Brian, before we dive into all this, maybe you could do a little bit better job than I did about introducing yourself and in Siba and all of the work that you do. Let's just kind of crack into that and then I'll do our housekeeping and we'll get diving into the news.

Great.

Well, yeah, just, just. So thank you, Kevin, for the introduction. Yeah. 20, 24 years in E commerce. It's unbelievable. Yeah. Most of my career guys was in, was actually operating e commerce businesses on the consumer side, Harbor Freight Tools. I ran their e commerce business for a while and I was in the apparel business. I was in all kinds of different, you know, categories in econ. But about six, seven years ago got into the B2B side. And Kevin, as you alluded to, I, I, I, I took on the, the foolish task of writing a book about B2B E commerce. That's this book here.

It's called the Only One that Hasn't.

Man, you got to step it up and, but it was, you know, it was a lot of work. But you know, I learned a lot and you know, a lot of the things that, you know, a lot of the same challenges we saw in B2C over the years and I was in it in the late 1990s, the same kinds of challenges and opportunities that exist in B2B and that's what got me so excited about B2B. So today I, you know, obviously do a lot of speaking, Kevin. That's where we met, right? Yeah. Series called Master B2B where we put on events for the industry, both physical and virtual. And I also am a partner and co founder of a company called In Siba where we help companies with their Amazon business strategy. So we work mainly with B2B firms, manufacturers and some distribution companies that really. How do they position themselves with Amazon and Amazon business now doing $35 billion a year in revenue? Amazon is a distributor, guys. And you know, we, we can't ignore Amazon. We have to have a strategy whether we're distributors or manufacturers. And it can vary. Right. Based on who you are. But so that's what I do every day. And you know, guys, thanks. I'm excited to dive into some topics with you guys today.

Good. Well, we've got some good ones that really are right, right in your wheelhouse, so to speak, that we'll talk about today. So we've got some information that we're going to talk about a little bit about logistics and supply chain stuff. We're going to talk about a lot today about B2B buyers, buyer journeys, where E commerce fits into that. That's the Per couple of perfect articles that tie in with you, Brian, being with us a little bit more about as always, chatgpt. The government's trying to start poking around at that a little bit. We're going to chat about that, but a little bit more about AI. So we'll get into that. But before we get started, let's talk about why we're here. So I'm Kevin Brown to the far side of I'll call you the Rose today. Go. I'll say it Brian. Between Tom and I is my co founder of Lead Smart technologies, Tom Burton. LeadSmart is a industry specific focused on manufacturing wholesale distribution, CRM customer intelligence platform that is AI enabled to help wholesale distributors and manufacturers gain deep insights into both their businesses and their customers and put that data together to get great customer experience which drives revenues ahead in their companies. Lead Smart is our sponsor each week. What we do though, and we're coming up on a year of having done this now, which astounds me. I heard a statistic recently that like 90% of B2B podcasts don't get past 10 episodes. So we're growing fast here. But we do this each week because what we do is throughout the week we take all the news that we hear going on in the economy and mergers and acquisitions and e commerce and B2B issues and, and sales and marketing and we boil that down into how it relates to wholesale distribution and manufacturing. We put it into our own newsletter called around the Horn and wholesale distribution. And then Friday mornings at 9 o' clock we get together live on YouTube live, Facebook live, LinkedIn live. So wherever you're watching today, if you're live with us, thank you for being with us. And then later in the day, this is now available on all the top podcast formats around the world. Last week I think we had six different countries the podcast was downloaded in. So we're getting some nice traction with that. But the reason I share all of that is if you like what we do each week, come back each week, hit the like the follow the share button on Lead Smart Technologies page and you'll get those notifications. But keep coming back and certainly share it with your friends if you like what we're doing. If you don't get that newsletter that we send out every week, every week we get requests for it. We love that. Reach out to us directly. Helloadsmartech.com and we'll get you added to that list as well. So great to be with everybody today. Tom, did I miss anything?

No, I think we've Covered it all. Good morning to Brandon. Good morning to Andy from Portland. And yeah, please, if you're on, let us know you're here, where you're from and we have. And bring your questions because I think we've got some really good topics and we're going to. We're going to give Brian a workout today. So let's, let's get at it.

That's good. Awesome. Let's jump right in. So the first article that we talked about in the newsletter and again, if you're listening later on to the recorded podcast, what we have live on our screen here is that newsletter I mentioned. And so that's what we're referring to. There was a modern distribution management Meg article that popped up this week citing some statistics about wholesale revenues. You're being down year over year and inventories being up. And you know, I kind of popped this in here. I don't want to spend a lot of time on it. But we're just, it kind of goes back to. We're seeing this like lukewarm boiling of. Or lukewarm water of, you know, little bit up, a little bit down. Good news in this. Not so. Not so good news. And we're seeing that across the board, I think, in the economy right now as we kind of sit in this. What would you call it, no man's land, so to speak of. Of not knowing where things are going to go. Exactly.

Yeah. I think it's a simmer. Right. Kind of a summer all the way along. And again, just another piece of data that doesn't really tell a direction. But it's a summer, you know, or kind of showing things are kind of. I don't know. You guys are sailors, right? Kind of when the boat sort of doesn't Right. Quite go in any one direction.

That's right. Yeah. Guys, I don't know if. Did you guys watch the prime day results this week? Amazon Prime. I think that to be bellwether for how the economy is doing. Yeah. What was interesting. I'll just. Just two seconds, Kevin.

Thank you.

Yeah, the, you know, so the full numbers are now, but Amazon said it was the biggest day ever. Right. So now you're gonna say. Okay, consumer.

Yes.

Right. So. So a lot of that volume is consumer. And it did lift overall. E Commerce, I think 6% in the US overall is what the early statistics I've seen Amazon. I don't have an Amazon number yet, but again, biggest day ever, which means it was bigger than last year as an event. But what we also saw is that for the first time, Amazon doing a lot with B2B. So Amazon Business Promotions, Amazon B2B Promotions. So again, my earlier comments about Amazon being a distributor, they're taking advantage of these, these events, these moments in time that have historically driven revenue for Amazon. Now they're doing it for B2B. So, you know, yes, as we look at wholesale and wholesale distribution, you get these numbers where maybe they're a little bit, as you say, lukewarm. Right. But, you know, it seems that Amazon is starting to, you know, migrate itself into some of these, some of these channels here.

It's a great, great point. I'm glad you brought that Tom. Tom reference. Brian, we're both, both sailors and yacht racers and I think maybe the economy's in irons.

Yeah, that's right.

If you use a sailing term. Right. It's like you can't sail directly into the wind and when you try, you just sit there vacillating a little bit.

That's a good analogy.

Right. I think that's what we're seeing. And we, we, you know, we, we don'. Propose or position ourselves as economists or experts in these things, but we do like to kind of keep track of what's going on in the economy. So we'll kind of jump ahead from this in just a moment. But Brian, one quick question that goes with that from, and I'm not aware of this, and I'm guessing that they probably do. When we get those final Amazon Prime Day numbers out, will they break out the Amazon business sales in that?

Probably not. So for the first time ever in their shareholder letter this year, Andy Jassy, the current CEO, did give Amazon business numbers and did actually cite Amazon business as being one of their key investments. That's the first time they've ever done that, you know, three, three months, four months ago or so when that letter came out. So, so, I mean, maybe, Kevin, maybe they will. I don't know. I would be surprised if they did. They usually don't, but we'll see.

Is that a competitive nature thing? They don't want the Grangers, the Fastenal, other players to know or maybe a little bit.

I think they're less. But I mean, they're focused on competition to some degree. But really, at the end of the day, it's, you know, the story to the street. Right. And, and so, and to customers. So that, that's the context that they're putting it in versus competition.

That's, that's helpful. I, I want to ask one last question because I, I'VE I've experienced this in earlier days of my career. In fact, when it was. Was it Amazon Supply when it first started? Right.

Yes.

And I. So I was still in consulting with a couple of large manufacturers and got out and saw some of their customers here and there at that point in time. And I know there is a lot of B2B buyers that do what I do. Right. I buy things for our company all the time for the office or whatever it might be. But I use my Personal prime account. Right. Is that, do they even. Do they care about that? Do they try and break that out at all?

Yeah, they have an active program to try to move folks from. Yep. You get the email. So there's a diligent or deliberate effort at Amazon to get people over to the Amazon business login. Right. So you as a business owner, creating that login and buying through Amazon business because frankly, you're stickier. There's more tools, there's more capabilities for you as a business buyer. The estimate I have is about half of B2B volume is done through Amazon Personal prime accounts. So you can take that 35 billion Jassy talked about in 2022 and double it. Right. So what is their real B2B number? It's probably 70 billion. It's huge.

Yeah.

Crazy. Okay, great. Tom, any thoughts on that? Are you ready to jump ahead?

Yeah, no, I think jumping ahead makes sense because this next article about the logistics companies flashing payroll and cutting costs and so forth, they're saying the reason being, which Brian, kind of flies a little bit in the face of what you're just talking about is, you know, that people are buying less products and spending more money on services. And I think we even talked about this a few weeks back about we did, you know, experiences. Right. We all got kind of starved for experiences during COVID And now we're coming out and we're spending all kinds of money on services and experiences and, and less on physical goods. Now, maybe the prime day is a little bit of an anomaly because, hey, it's like, you know, the deal of the day type of thing. But, you know, overall, again, Brian, interested in your take on this? Is what is, what are you seeing from the B2B world and the Amazon world in terms of product and physical good sales. And clearly if these logistics companies are slashing payrolls, then there's got to be some sort something going on here.

Yeah, well, it's. Tom, great, great, great point. I mean, I think if you look at Amazon, so, yes, let's set Prime Day aside for a moment, if you look at Amazon's retail numbers, they are, they're, it's hard to say tepid because they're enormous. Right. But the growth rate on the retail side has slowed. Just look at their public filings. I mean, this is all public information, you can see. But what's interesting is the B2B side is still growing at significant double digits. So what does that tell you? Amazon, you know, has reached some level of maturity as it relates to the consumer side of their business, but the B2B side of their business is growing enormously. And why? It's because they're, you know, frankly, and they're doing a good job with certain types of product, you know, accommodating the need of the B2B buyer in ways that traditional distribution hasn't in some cases now. Doesn't mean distribution's dead. Right.

So, no, that. And that's going to tie in big to some of our further articles we're going to discuss today.

Right.

About buyers expectations and so forth.

Yeah, but, yeah, so, so I think, I think Tom, you're right. I mean, prime day, I think in some ways is, is an anomaly. Right. It's, it's, it's a, it's an event, it's a moment in time. But overall, I think if you look at the trends. Yeah. To your point, there has been a movement towards experiences. Right. Versus product, particularly on the consumer side.

Yeah.

Well, we had a couple calls this week, Kevin, with some different distributors and even I believe customers who are working with distributors are looking for a lot of more full service. In a lot of cases, I don't know, experience may be a, an extreme, but it is, I think it's a good, at least business experience, a good buying experience, a good service experience, a value add on top of that. So I think there's some definitely carryover as well from the consumer into the business side as we see that as well.

Well, this goes way deep. Deep tentacles.

Right.

And Brian, we were emailing the other day about doing another webinar together here shortly and you had some great topics. So I'll send a note out to both of you here in the next day or two and let's get that scheduled and we'll get that information out to this audience because, you know, we were on the phone yesterday, Tom joined me on a call with a really high quality distributor and, and, and they're in five or six different states and one of the things that they were referencing. Right. Is, is kidding or combining packaging of. And it's not just, I'm putting this item from this company and that item from another company into a box and shipping it out. And it's, hey, we're making something new from these two companies or we're kidding products. You don't get that from an Amazon. Right. And so I think we'll, we'll dive into that kind of topic on ways that, that, you know, regional, local, wholesale, independently owned wholesale distributors can really stay stay relevant in the marketplace and then leverage the things that are going on in Amazon and Zorro and places like that that are true marketplaces. And I don't, I mean, if I think about marketplaces, Brian, you're the guy that comes to my mind to talk to. So we'll put those things together and dive in on a webinar with that. Because there are ways to combat this.

Absolutely. Yes.

Yep. Good. So just this piece just in closing, kind of on, on this logistics company's payrolls, the reason that I really kind of wanted to talk about this is a little bit is that, you know, I think there's. And we. Tom, you made a great point about this a couple weeks ago. Right. We've never said these words, but we should have. Right. Typically, these discussions that we have on Friday mornings is about the story behind the story. Right. And if you look at this like last week, we talked about the port strike, you know, that was averted on the west coast here, but now is going on in Canada and the US Ports in Seattle and in the Pacific Northwest. The US Union workers are saying we're not unloading ships of stuff that's supposed to be going to Canada. Right. We've got the end of the month. We're less than, you know, we're right about a month or right about halfway through the month, end of the month. Is that UPS strike looming? Right. There's a huge UPS facility 10 minutes from my house, and they're practicing. I don't know why you need to practice picketing, but they're, you know, just watch the news and watch the, the writers and the actors, but they're, you know, they're preparing for this. And so the whole logistics world is a little bit tenuous right now, and it's something that listeners to this broadcast need to be thinking about in planning.

Right.

We've got shipping issues. We talk regularly about onshoring or near shoring. Again, whole nother discussion. But these things are pieces that we need to pay attention to. So we're going to try and continue consistently to cover this stuff. All Right, let's get into B2B buyer experience, huh? You don't have any opinions on this, do you?

Well, I just thought so much opinions. I thought there was some great takes in these articles. We'll start off with this Performance Food Group one and, and Brian, you know, definitely have you do a deeper unpack of this, but sure. What they were basically saying, right, is Performance Food Group, which has acquired a bunch of companies over the years and essentially had again, we talk about experience, right? From a buyer experience, they had a bunch of siloed experiences depending upon which part of the company. Not just siloed data, but siloed experience. So they took a fair amount of time and investment in trying to figure out how do we bring these different siloed experiences together and build a better online buying experience. But what I really liked about this article that really hit me was how much time and energy they put into understanding their customer journey and their buyer journey. Right. They didn't just go here's how we sell. So let's organize everything around the way we sell. They looked at how is our buyers buy and how do they best facilitate that in putting that together. So Ryan, love your take. Is this, is this becoming more common? Is this a, a unique situation?

Yeah, well, it's great, Tom. I mean it's so Jim Lyman, who was the speaker who's runs, you know, E Commerce for Performance Food service. I mean he's, he's the fellow that they were cited in this article. I know Jim and you know, he's got a great background at, you know, US Foods et other places where they've, you know, he led the digital transformation. And so what I think people like Jim have learned is the importance of centering this all on the customer and the customer journey and understanding where E commerce plays in that journey. Right. So, you know, there's this inherent fear. So. Yes, Tom, Yes. I mean to answer your question, there are definitely this, I see this happening more and more through our, you know, work with, with B2B companies. You know, this approach really is the center of success, right. Is understanding what role does it play. There's this fear of at B2B companies that, you know, particularly amongst the salesforce and the traditional relationships that, you know, E Commerce will, will replace those. But as a matter of fact, and I think we'll talk about this, right? We got some other articles in here we'll talk about, but really understanding how do those channels work together because this isn't, you know, the death of the salesperson. This is a An evolution of the physical sales function and it's informed by you know, the, the digital aspects, the E commerce aspects of the business. And it's allowing is really putting the customer in charge of how they want to interact with you. So the thing that Jim did right, understanding and I have a whole chapter about this in my book, understanding what that customer, the different types of customers and what they need from you digitally is critical and also for a particularly for you know, manufacturers understanding what the ultimate user of your product, how they're, they want to interact with you, what value the, you know, the distribution channel adds. And as a distributor being brutally honest about are you adding value beyond just product price and assortment? Right. So the things that Jim was talking about making the buyer's job easier, you know, in this article, I think that that's one of the things that resonated for me Tom was, you know, and, and in talking to and knowing Jim, the kinds of things that they do to understand that customer's need. Like he talked about in this article, easy reordering. That sounds so, you know, motherhood and apple pie. But allowing your customer to easily reorder products, they always, they re frequently order from you on an automated basis and making recommendations to that customer about what they ought to order next before they even know they, you know, they need to. I mean this is making the buyer's job easier. And those are the kinds of things that he did as doing at Performance Food Group. And it sounds, you know, again it sounds easy and basic to many of us who've been in e Commerce for 20 plus years. But this is the kind of stuff you've got to do and it doesn't take, it doesn't take away the relationship. It makes it better. Right? Key message here. It's not the death of a salesperson.

I love that. And you know what's interesting? It's really one of the reasons I wanted I selected this article to add this week because I think what it's nice is seeing and it doesn't matter whether your performance food service, which you know, gets the popcorn kernels to your movie theater or you have snacks to a vending machine or whatever it is get it doesn't matter what you're distributing, right. I've said for forever and anybody that's listening today, feel free to challenge me on this. But wholesale distribution is 75 to 85% the same. It doesn't matter what widget you sell. We may have a few little different terms. Our buyer may do a few little things differently, but it doesn't matter if it's lettuce or it's a hammer, it goes to market pretty much the same. Which is why 75% of worldwide commerce goes through a channel. Right. But what I thought was, and I talked to, you know, every day I'm on the phone with wholesale distributors and manufacturers and I see this broad array and Brian, you could really speak to this is I see a broad array of people that are doing the types of things discussed in this article that are clarifying their data. You know, the what, what product information management tools they're using. They're refining things, right? They're going through this methodical piece that we see outlined in this article. And then there's others that said, hey, I went and got this, you know, generic off the shelf E commerce solution that my trade association or my buying group may have a partnership with and it gets me access to all these SKUs and I already have and I can add some of my own in and they don't go do things like this. I love this comment. It said we asked customers what they wanted to be able to do. That sounds simple. But then we watched what they actually did. It's amazing how those are usually two different things. And, and I'm not saying this to belittle or promote any one company out there but there this I thought article was a really good roadmap across the board of things to be considering. So whether you're just bought that off the shelf solution through a trade association or buying group and you're just getting started with E commerce or you're doing something like Performance Food Group is doing here, this I thought was a nice roadmap, right?

Yeah, we did a. So through my Master B2B Thought Leadership Series, we did a survey and released a State of B2B E Commerce 2023 report about a month and a half ago. And Kevin, one of the interesting things we found is that 50 and we surveyed buyers and sellers, right? B2B buyers, B2B sellers, manufacturers and distributors. One of the things that we found is that 51% of buyers said they would research a purchase online before they bought offline. Right? So you know, we see this, this trend towards convergence of channels, but the same thing. But interestingly what surprised me is that almost a third of buyers said that they research offline before they buy online. So at the end of the day this is these things don't live in a bubble, right? So as you think about, you know, the interaction between the two, it's you, you must have and be investing in a digital channel. Right. And it's not the days of, you know, you know, just, just maintaining the traditional selling channels is not. They're gone. You have to have digital thinking.

Right.

And he brought that on this article. Right. You've got to move yourself away from legacy thinking.

Yep. Well, and the other one other thing, I'll call out. Sorry, Tom, to interrupt you, but the other thing that I found really interesting about that article was that he pointed out data also, and you mentioned it, Kevin, that is we in the same thing and that's in. We talk about this in our, in our state of B2B E commerce. That data is one of the things that holds companies back and they always underinvest in it. They're not investing the way they should be in it. And let's just call it what it is. You have to have an investment in this and to organize your data. And it takes people and it takes people that understand the product. And you know that we found that to be one of the biggest barriers to, in this study to growth for B2B companies. Sorry, Tom, you're going to say something.

No, we don't talk about data on this.

No, you don't talk about that.

We never talk about.

Never talk about that. But.

And I think before we move on to this next article, which I think will dovetail into it, I really want to kind of amplify, Brian, what you were saying about when it, when what does it mean to start defining and understanding the customer journey? It's not, hey, let's get up on the whiteboard for an hour, outline it, and we're done. Right. Which we see all the time. Right. Okay, we'll get on the whiteboard, we'll outline what we think are. What we think our customer journey is. What you're talking about is there's layers to this that you have to go through on the research to understand. Yes, ask them, but then observe too, and then adapt. And then it's not, it's not like you're done either. It's like it's constantly optimized based on the data and feedback you're getting from. From what you're actually doing. But the biggest thing is getting that mindset of I want to evaluate and look at this through the lens of the buyer versus my own business lens or my seller lens or all of that. And I think that's that legacy thinking trigger that really has to change from a mindset perspective.

And one other statistic that goes to that point, Tom, from Our State of B2B E Commerce Report. Check this out. This is another one that surprised me. 55% of people of, of sellers said that they lose sales because of a disconnect between what the website offers and what sales people offer customers. So we're not, we haven't solved this as an industry. I mean it's. And they're losing sales. Right. So you know, and this gets back to the data argument. It gets that to what you present, the pricing, you present on these different channels, a whole bunch of things. But to me, you know, this, this is more of a cultural issue, meaning internal process evolution versus a technology or what the right solution or best practice is for these, these channel alignment efforts. It's not, it's not the tech, it's, it's not the approach, it's not the best practices. It's how you're managing your business. I mean, it's an indictment in some ways. Right?

So yeah, I think, I think it is and I think the, the, the technology is a component of that. Right. Because if you're not managing your business well, with technology, you're probably not managing your data well, which means you probably have legacy thinking and you're, you potentially stuck or mired in what you've always done. And you know, I say this all the time, right. It's not that I think people are going to go out of business. Their business is just going to be very different.

Yeah, right. Yep, agree with that.

All right, let's move ahead. This, this next one is really good.

Well, and I think it's just an extension of what we were talking about, right. Is the, you know, self service, B2B sales. One of the things, Brian, you were just talking about 55%, I think the number was researching products before they would go offline. What I going one step further in here there again, this is from Fortune saying that in the research that they did is that 20% of, or only 20% of people said they even would ever want to deal with a salesperson again in their experience. Right Now I think that part of that is we bring that on ourselves in the sales world. I think there's a lot more value that we could add from the sales perspective that would raise that. But still, that goes back to this rise of self service. I'll just say one thing on this and then we'll let you guys jump into it. But what I've seen is that when you make things too self service, sometimes the customer can end up or the buyer can even become more confused and Go more down rabbit holes that end up with complexities and confusions that aren't necessary if they had the right offline or sales support along the way to get them there. So what's your thought on kind of this as a balance? Because I don't. To me I think going to extreme may not be the best solution for the bot.

Brian, you want to hit that first?

Yeah, go ahead Kevin. Sorry.

Yeah, I want you to kind of bring us home on this. So I'm going to call this out a little bit and that those comments.

Right.

So this article in Forbes, it's written by the co founder of Magento.

Right.

One of the top tools out there and, and solid all the way through those statistics came from a McKinsey study that he quoted in here. Right. And I think what we have to. And I just, I want to keep this honest because we don't know you know what market those B2B buyers were. You know, so called they could be in a very unique niche and a lot of the people that, that are tuning in with us here and joining us for these episodes they live in a world where they are seeing their buyer changing. But as it talks about a little. We'll talk about this much more further is how these two things work together. Right. But it's, it's just interesting because I, I think we've got to be careful with statistics like this. Right. It says 90% of B2B decision makers say they expect remote digital for sales tools to stick around for the long haul and 99% so they're perfectly comfortable placing substantial orders using self service tools with no human interaction. But that's one moment in time there and that study with. And we don't know where those numbers came from. So a little cautious about that. You know, never interacting with a sales rep again until you need him. I think is the right. And what we don't talk about here is what types of product products. Right. Because we have people here that could really, you know, that are, are on. I would even suggest Andy Mitchell who was one of the first commenters today, you know, runs a safety equipment distribution company. You know what you have trouble with a gas detection system for critical life threatening environments. You want the sales guy there. Right? Right. And so this will tie. I just kind of wanted to, to, to throw a little red flag or yellow flag so to speak on that data a little bit not knowing where it came from. And then I think we should now move through this article. Brian, I'm going to throw it to you and talk about where these two worlds intermix to bring that best, best customer solution.

I mean, yeah, it's easy to get wrapped up in the headline, right? Oh, no one's ever going to talk, you know. Yeah, it's not true. It's not true. So when you get into highly complex consultative selling, service support. Absolutely. And that's actually frankly the, you know, the highest and best use of the salesperson's time. I frankly, you know, doing this now for seven, eight, nine years looking at, you know, how companies are integrating these two functions. Digital and the sales team. Look, if you're doing this right, you're taking repetitive tasks that the customers know exactly either what they want, what to buy, they know they want to download something about it, they want to understand compatibility of one product with another. If you're doing, you know, the, the basic commonly asked questions or commonly transacted products or like Jim from Performance Food Service, commonly ordered products and you're making the customer, you're empowering the customer to. They don't, they want to ultimately they want to save time, be efficient. They're doing their job right. This isn't about, you know, shopping for my next vacation or buying a beautiful shirt. This is about doing my job faster. If you allow the customer to take some of those functions which they can do themselves and know exactly what they're looking for and do that digitally, you should defectively doing is freeing time in the salesforce for them to be more strategic for them to answer those questions, Kevin, and be available to that customer who has that critical application. Whereas if, you know, if you know, we work with like big ass fans, you know, that is like they make big ass fans, you know, big ass fan with a 35 foot wingspan. If it falls from the ceiling and kills half of your employees, you need to install it right. You need to make sure it's configured in the system correctly. You need to make sure that all that's engineered correctly. Well, Amazon and E Commerce and things like that are not going to do the engineering for you. You need sales engineers. You need people who understand the product and the complexity of the product and the compatibilities and what works together with what and all that stuff. Amazon, E Commerce, your own E commerce marketplaces, those have a role, but it's a different role. Everybody gets wrapped up in. Oh my gosh, you know, E Commerce is going to destroy my relationships, take all my sales. You know, it's no, it's about a different role and it's supporting the sales. So Kevin Gardner released Some data a couple years ago that showed how much interaction happens between E commerce and you know, the digital and the physical and it's all the way through. It's back and forth. Customers are looking online, they oh, I think I know what I want but I'm not sure let me, oh, I need to call Joe, my sales guy because he'll know how to do this. I've only gotten so far. It's about making the buyer's job easier. Right. But the two interact and you have to have both. You have to have both.

And I think Tom commented on this in the previous article. Right. It's that self service stuff. It lets, in this article quoted the same thing. You know, it lets those, those, those mundane or week after week orders that we order week after week. Right. It's a part. Right. I don't need to talk to my guy. I'll talk to my guy when he becomes really valuable to me. And you know Tom and Tom's book in the revenue zone, you know, talks about buyer journeys and the buyer wants to make the decision how they want to buy. So if we're at, where are we at now Tom? 65, 70%. I can't remember what this number is of B2B buyers or millennials. They research differently.

Right.

But, but this is a combined effort and you know Mike Thomas, can you see that comment from Mike there?

Yeah, no, I wanted to spotlight that because you know Mike runs a big really well respected distributor and he's right on the money. Right. Is that our reps, they want customers want our reps to act as service guide and application engineers rather than showing up to take an order. A trusted guide versus somebody who's there just to try and get an order.

And I, I see it as a, that Mike, that's a great comment. I, I see it in talking with again manufacturers, distributors as an up leveling. Right. So you're if, if, if your sales team is doing nothing but taking orders and on repeat purchases, well they're really not adding that much value. So it, what this, this will, if you have a highly capable salesforce and you have good E commerce it is going to make your sales force more productive and make them shine. They will love E commerce. They were going to resist it at first but they're going to love it because it actually makes their life, their lives easier as long as well as their customers. So it's yeah. To your point Tom, it's not in Mike's point. It's, it really is an up leveling of the whole function.

Right. And I also want to touch on Andy's point here, which I think is is a good corollary to all of this is that a salesperson doesn't have to be, what does he call it, windshield time. Right. He doesn't have to be there in person all the time. That inside sales team or, or even hybrid model where again they have that expertise as Mike was saying, they're looked at as more guides and application engineers. A lot of opportunity here to cover a lot of ground but you know, eliminate some of the expense and just inefficiencies of having to be on the road all the time.

Yep. Well, before we, before we. And those are great comments. Thanks Andy and Mike. For, for those the couple things that hit hit for me right within this article. Again, this is in Forbes. Side note, if you're listening on the podcast and you came in late, what we're doing here is we're reviewing a newsletter that we send out every Friday morning called around the Horn and Wholesale Distribution. If you would like that and you don't get it, email us@helloadsmartech.com we'll get that out to you. Brian. I try and bring this up a couple of times because sometimes people are listening on podcasts and they're fast forwarding through and they don't know what we're looking at. A screen and they can't see it on the podcast. But latter part of this article from Forbes again it talks about why B2B sellers can also benefit from the self service side. They talk about removing friction, right. In a sales process, the more friction is. Tom, you talk about this all the time. It's in your book is friction causes either stalled orders or loss of orders, right. Then they goes on to talk about self service tools can also lower staffing costs. But it's important not to view self service technology supplanting or replacing human teams. B2B merchants should instead view self service tech as augmenting their human agents.

Right.

And that kind of bundles together what what Andy was saying and what what Brian, you were saying and what Mike said in his comment. Right. We're augmenting those human pieces the other side of it, right? We talked about this a little bit here and there is data, the data that comes right. You listen 10 years ago I'll go back to when I was a manufacturer's rep, right. I had no way of knowing when I went in to see an end user with one of my distributor partners what other products they were looking for. Unless I saw them on the shelf or saw somebody wearing one. Right now a distributor can know what their customers. They're buying this, but they're researching this. Now we can also start having technologies where we can see what they're researching other places which now dramatically. Right. Changes when we can feed that. And this is something we were on. Tom and I were on a call earlier this week talking with a couple of different distributors about how we can now take that data from their e commerce system, bring it into a CRM and customer intelligence system, and do AI driven alerts that our product does through our genius feed system. That tells the sales guy, right, your customer is buying DeWalt, but he's looking at Milwaukee on your website. He's looking at lettuce, Riceberg lettuce instead of, you know, romaine lettuce, whatever the products may be. So this is this merging and changing away from this legacy thought, thinking to how do we serve the customer better?

Yeah. And I think that's a great way to summarize. Let's move on. Otherwise we're going to miss all of our.

Brian, did you hear that? I think he complimented me.

Yeah, he said great way to summarize. He did say that.

And it's recorded for. For history.

Oh, we can edit that out. Okay, we'll talk to you.

We'll talk to the, the podcast editor and have them pull that out. Very good.

So let's. We're going to have to probably go through these pretty quick and some of these may end up getting saved for next week, but kind of switching gears a little bit over into our other favorite topic, which is AI.

You like AI, but you're into AI?

I like, yeah, Data, you know, that kind of stuff. I'm lukewarm about it, but the ftc is investigating OpenAI over data leak and ChatGPT's inaccuracy. And they've opened an investigation probing whether they've been providing false information or even slanderous information with people. And yes, the answer is, yes, they have, but they have big warnings. If you look at chat GPT that says, hey, you know, there may be hallucinations and in bad data here, some people are calling this a bit of a shakedown. Whether that is or not, you know, we'll see. I think the thing to be thinking about here, we talked about this last week on when we talked about how you test. Right. How do you test AI? How do you take AI to market? Brian, we were talking a little bit about this earlier is how do you take your AI to Market with your, with your company and your business. And it's just something to be aware of is that with traditional technology you don't have the same sort of hallucinations, so to speak, with what you're getting back. And we're like, even with traditional search or traditional transactional piece that you are, you always have the risk with, with more of a generative AI because it's like it's trying to give you an answer. And if it, you know, if it doesn't have an answer, it will sometimes make something up.

Yeah, you have to, you have to train it. Tom, we, so we did a master B2B. We had a summit at the University of Chicago in May and we had a lot of representation from distributors and manufacturers. One of the distributors company called Beacon, you might know, Beacon Building Products, one of their E Comm folks talked about how they're using AI to actually was they buy companies to actually, they've trained the generative AI chatgpt to actually normalize and bring in product data from those acquisitions into their new, into their main system. So they're thinking about and testing ways to make processes which would have historically taken teams of eight to 10 people and months and months of work to now actually automate some of the process. And the answer was, you know, it's not totally there, but it gets them a lot closer to the end product that they need much, much quicker. So that, so it's much more efficient and requires less people to do it. So that's one application of this. You know, we also recently, as mentioned to you guys, prior to the, starting today, we had a debate about this at Master B2B. We had a debate last month about, you know, is AI, is Chat GPT going to take over site search? Right. So you think about your own site search as a distributor or manufacturer on your site. Can you just put, you know, support Chat GPT there? And the answer is it's not ready. Right. It has to be trained. It doesn't understand context or preferences. You have to bring in your own customer data and other things in order for it to actually do it. But so the answer, the audience voted and the answer was no, that it's not ready yet, but it will be a part of and is becoming a part of site search solutions AI. Generative AI is. So it's got a lot of promise because it solves a lot of the human kind of the natural language search type issues that companies have struggled with for years.

That's great.

And I've been testing some of that you call it site search with first party data. So using language models, but using first party data versus the Internet data. And even then it's funny sometimes some of the things that it will make up with a limited data set, right?

Yes.

So it is something that we have to be really aware of, especially again going back to experience. We don't need to be providing an experience like that. So there's going to be a lot more testing but it's going to get, it's getting worked out and it will get worked out.

So can I bring this home real quick on this article because I know Tom, you've got another one you want to spend some time on. And we're winding down a little bit here, but back to the story behind the story, right. We talked last week about the FTC getting ready to file major lawsuit against Amazon about business practices and so forth. This is the same ftc, right, that is banging their chest. Look at me. Right. And in this article, if you, you know, our listeners, if you get a chance to, to go take a look at this and you can see this, you know, kind of anywhere. This is from the Washington Post, but it's out on all the news wires is there is strong, strong pushback from the Republican side of things on the aisle and these of saying do you even have the authority to do this? Right. So this is going to be interesting. I think part of what's going on with this is this falls right into that whole thing that we watched over the last couple years of Congress looking to have some oversight of social media, you know, and really looking at the growth of the so called fang stocks and so forth and looking at well, wait a minute, you know, is Amazon too big? Is, is Facebook have too much power and too much data? And it's a little bit of this is some big brother reaching here. This Linda Kahn from the ftc, she's, I think she could come out of some of this stuff hero or zero with some of the stuff that she's going after. So I think it's good that you know, we understand and I'm glad we're talking about this, you know, inaccuracies within ChatGPT and AI, but we've got to be looking at this for the future. So anyways, there's, there's a couple sides to this, this particular article, you want.

To zip ahead into the what I.

Want to do just. Tom, I'm going to leave that special feature piece in there about threads, but I do want to mention it because this is a really cool article, but I'd like to unpack it a little bit, maybe next week. Threads is Instagram's or really meta's answer to Twitter, but there's a whole business application here about how it's been handled since it launched. Fastest growing app ever, right? That's to be downloaded. I've got some thoughts. I've been using it a little bit, but the next articles are more important to us. We'll leave it for next week to talk about the business case.

Okay, sounds good.

So good news in the industry scuttlebutt, a little bit M and A stuff going on here. Granger is getting ready to open this half a million square foot warehouse in the Pacific Northwest. So that will set 135,000 SKUs. So that's multiples of each of those SKUs will be there. So you want to know if you want to know if wholesale distribution is suffering? No, it's growing. Right. As is E Commerce. So some good news there in our industry scuttlebutt section. Tom, I'll let you take this away about. We'll pass the Goodreads there this week. There's a good article about keeping employees, but fast in our tech talk. Why don't you jump in on that, Tom?

Yeah, so the, the article is the most important skill your company needs in the new world of AI. And what I really liked about this is they're saying what knowledge workers, what we traditionally know as knowledge workers are going to transition to knowledgeable workers. And if you think about that, what that means is, right, A lot of times we hire people because they have a skill, right? So maybe you're a good writer or you're even a good programmer or you know how to use PowerPoint or whatever the case may be, right? So you have a skill and you have knowledge in a certain area. But I do believe, and I think we could. This would be a fun webinar even, Brian, to incorporate you into is I do believe that with AI, right? The if AI is able to replicate a lot of those knowledge tasks over time, then the worker has to become more knowledgeable on the business and not the specific tasks that they're trying to do. So I got to understand the products that we sell better. I got to understand our business process. I got to understand my customer and their journey and their buyer. So I become a more knowledgeable worker. And then I work on using AI to kind of handle some of those knowledge tasks along the way. It's a very, it's subtle, but I think a Very monstrous shift in terms of mindset and how you hire people and how you train people within an organization.

AI is a fundamental shift, I think, Tom. And it's almost like, it's almost the same as sort of television or radio or the Internet.

Yeah, right.

I mean, you think about, you know, and it's funny, you know, I've worked with, I produce a lot of thought leadership content. Right. And you know, wrote a book, obviously. I do thought leadership, white papers, things like that all the time. And I work with writers that help me do it. I do it myself. And, and I work with writers. And you know, one of the things, interesting things in talking to my, the writers that I bring in, they like, well, you know, my job, my role. It's exactly what you're saying is changing. I'm no longer, I'm the writer, but I'm not, I'm not the, I'm not doing the actual writing as much now. I'm using chat, GPT and other things to, to actually do some of those tasks. For me, it makes me more productive. But I still have to know knowledgeable worker. I still have to know about the subject matter. I have to edit what's there. It doesn't give me 100% of what I need, will it? Eventually, maybe. But you know, at the end of the day, these folks are evolving from, from writers to almost more editors and managers of AI. Right.

And analysts. Right, analysts in a lot of ways.

Exactly.

But that goes back to what you were talking about earlier too, Brian, about training models. Right. Well, how do we train models? We train models because of our expertise in an area as subject matter experts. And then the models can be trained based upon that. And, and frankly, the models will eventually make us smarter about where we were already a subject matter expert.

Right.

We're all headed to the Matrix.

It's a circle. Right, that, that happened. What did you. I missed that was that we're all.

Heading to the Matrix.

Yes, right.

It's coming true.

Right. But it is, you know, it is interesting, you know, how this stuff plays out in that, that setting. Because I look at it as, in fact, Tom and I had this discussion months ago and he, he said something about, you know, AI being able to 10x our, the 10x hour capabilities of getting things accomplished.

Right.

And I commented to Tom and I said, let's find some tools within our company, Lead smart, that can 2x me. I don't need to 10x if I could 2x me. Right. And that's what we're starting to see. To your comment, know about some of the ways you're using Chat GPT. I wouldn't consider myself a really solid or really good writer, but I sometimes, but I like to write once I get started and you know, I've written a lot of magazine articles and stuff like that over the years and you know, in traditional print publications and online publications, but shorter things than you know, you guys in your published books. But I get stuck a lot of times with blank page syndrome. Right. Is that what they call it? White page syndrome? I think where I know I want to talk about this and there's a million things going through my head and ChatGPT has just turned into this wonderful tool where I can say help me with and put a bunch of bullet points in and man, it just starts to frame things. And what I found for me is using that for some, even some blog post type stuff.

Yep.

It gives me a foundation. It doesn't write it for me. It gives me a great foundation. And we're just going to keep building this as, as these models learn more. It's going to be great.

I was chatting with the former SVP of marketing, Steve Baruch. I don't know if you know Steve, he's. He was at MSC for a long time.

Okay.

And he was, we were talking about the implications this has for some of the, some of the stuff we were talking about earlier. Data, product, you know, product data and product information and writing product descriptions for websites with bullets. I mean, you know, he, we were talking about the potential, you know, imagine how, how powerful it is with a catalog the size of MSCs, grangers, motions, whoever, you know, how powerful this is and the implications it has for their ability to solve the product data issue. Right. Because it became, it continues to be an issue. And I think, you know, so that's another whole area that companies, we see companies exploring and using, whether that's on Amazon to create products. I mean we're integrating Chat GPT into our processes at in siba. Right. We're, you know, for product optimization. And now again it's not 100% there, but it gets us, it leaps and bounds forward from you know, where we had a lot of manual effort in the past, now it's much less. So so implications are huge in the area of data and product and information cleanliness and improvement.

And again, just to kind of wrap up this, I know we need to wrap up here, Kevin, but to wrap this up is that it's again, philosophically and from a mindset perspective of how you run businesses how you hire, how you even recruit the type of people you're looking for. It's quite a remarkable shift into how you do, how businesses are going to operate. Not only businesses like ourselves, but in, you know, distribution, manufacturing, all of those things that we talked about today. I think it's a kind of puts a bow on all of that. So.

Yep, that's great.

All right, well, thank you for everybody. Will, good comments. Andy, Mike, everybody. Thank you for the comments, Brian. Been great having you here today as always.

I saw too, Brian, some Of your, your LinkedIn audience was joining us today. We loved having them. And come back Fridays, right. If you just, if you follow, if you're with us on LinkedIn, if you follow Lead Smart Technologies, you'll get the reminders each week that come out automatically. If you're listening to the podcast, click the like button, you know, save it to get downloaded each week. And certainly if you like what we're doing, share it with others. Brian, we're going to get this POD or this web webinar scheduled shortly. Maybe we can do that in late August, something like that. We'll dive deeper into these topics about I really love the idea of us diving deeper into the topics of how E commerce can live and support and help grow wholesale distribution and manufacturing in ways that maybe some people don't think about. So I think it'll be real valuable.

I think we'll include some AI in it too. And maybe we'll talk about it.

Maybe we'll talk about AI. Tom, you think maybe.

Maybe.

All right, great. Well, thanks for being with us everybody. Brian, thank you so much my friend. Tom, Great weekend. We wished everybody be safe, have fun, do good things.

Yep. Thanks everyone.

Thanks guys.

We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests each week we try our best to dig into the topics that are impacting your business. So please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can make the show better or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often and even guests you'd like to see join us. We're looking forward to bringing you next week's session and hope that until then, you stay safe, stay focused and do great things. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to help others in wholesale distribution get access to the conversation. And finally, please check out our sponsor, Leadsmart Technologies and their manufacturing and wholesale distribution industry CRM customer intelligence and channel collaboration platform. That's Lead Smart Technologies atLead smart tech.com.