79: Unlocking E-Commerce Power- with Jason Greenwood

Artwork for podcast a BROADcast for Manufacturers

Episode 79 • 21st May 2025 • a BROADcast for Manufacturers • Keystone Click

Jason Greenwood

Kris Harrington: [00:00:00] Ladies, I am curious what you're drinking these days. Any favorite beverage? Because I've got a new one, but I'll, I'll wait to hear what you, what you're drinking.

Erin Courtenay: Are we talking hydrating or drinking?

Kris Harrington: Drinking.

Erin Courtenay: Oh, okay. I was thinking the hydrating thing, but it was like some health drink, [00:01:00] no water. Oh. Oh, no, no, no, no.

I'm, I'm, I'm just a boring old IPA girl. That's all I got going on. I-P-A-P-A. Do you have a favorite one?

Is something local or is it just any IPA on the menu?

I, I had a really good one recently, uh, that my buddy brought over, but I can't remember what it was. I'm sorry, I can't re recommend anything. Okay.

No, sorry.

Lori Highby: Um, I haven't really changed my palette. I guess it's still like my go-to bourbon, old fashioned sour or a good dirty vodka martini. Ooh. Um, those two are probably the, the go-tos and yeah, and IPA citrusy juicy.

Erin Courtenay: Yes, I do like a citrusy.

Lori Highby: Yeah, I do too. I'm with you there honey, if I'm gonna do it. But, uh.

Yeah, I guess, uh, I'm curious what your, your news. Yeah. What, what do you.

Kris Harrington: All right, so, okay. I'm gonna drop this for everybody. Anders Erickson, look him up on YouTube. [00:02:00] He does different drink, drink concoctions. It's in our world of bourbon and the things that we like. Yeah. But he has, uh, a drink. Monte Carlo.

Okay. Which is a rye whiskey with a Benedictine. Have you guys ever uh, had a Yeah, mixed with Benedictine it in?

Erin Courtenay: A b and BA Wisconsin drink, like it's a classic Wisconsin drink 'cause it Benedictine and. Whatever the other bee is.

Kris Harrington: Oh, I don't know. I've never had, anyways. I've never had it, so. Oh, okay.

Erin Courtenay: Okay.

Kris Harrington: Okay. So this Monte Carlo, uh, it has basically three ingredients and then the twist of lemon at the top, and then you rub it around the rib. It's so good. It's just like so good. So that's the one.

Erin Courtenay: Thank you. Try it. Yeah.

Lori Highby: Okay. You did rethink remind me of something new I've learned that I do like. Okay. Which is a French 75.

Oh, I never heard of a French company. It's like champagne and gin.

Jason Greenwood: Oh, [00:03:00] yeah. Um, and the pain and gin. What a, what? A combination and a

Lori Highby: little bit of lemon juice. Yeah.

Jason Greenwood: Wow. I like the sound of that. Actually it a champagne, because I'm a gin fan.

Lori Highby: I'm not a gin fan, but I like champagne and I like lemon, so I gave it a shot and I'm like, huh, I can do this.

Oh yes.

Jason Greenwood: Yeah, yeah. To boost up the alcohol content of the champagne a little bit, which is nice. Give you a little bit of, bit of a kick.

Erin Courtenay: Yeah. It's all about the efficiency, isn't it? Exactly. Jason, yeah. Rewind

Jason Greenwood: that stuff.

Kris Harrington: We should have brought a drink to this episode, but I had, I

Jason Greenwood: known, 'cause I'm a big bourbon guy.

Uh, like that's my, that's my, that's my spirit of choice for sure. And, uh, like buffalo trees tray. Yes. I like a good, just a regular maker's Mark. I'm good with, uh, I've had some very expensive bourbons, but yeah, I, I, I just like a good quality, consistent. Bourbon, but Buffalo Trace and Makers are probably my two most consistent go-tos because they're, [00:04:00] they're in every bar.

So you can kind of get them everywhere,

Kris Harrington: for

Lori Highby: sure. Yeah.

Kris Harrington: Well, I definitely recommend all of you trying this one and let me know. Send me your feedback. I'm curious. Sounds good. I'm up it. Alright.

Erin Courtenay: Hey, how about we put that recipe in the show notes. Let's too, totally do that. So folks, you can, you can try it out and let us know what you think too.

Jason Greenwood: The Monte Carlo. Cool.

Kris Harrington: The Monte Carlo. All right. Well, it is time. You've heard his voice now, but it's time to introduce our guest, uh, today. Jason Greenwood is here with us. He's the founder of Greenwood Consulting, a specialist B2B e-commerce consultancy. For more than 25 years, Jason has been helping brands and suppliers, expertly architect compelling digital buying and brand engagement experiences.

Along with hosting the E-Commerce Edge Podcast, he is a passionate e-commerce mentor, commentator, keynote speaker, and content producer who loves [00:05:00] giving back to the industry. Jason was born and raised in the USA, spent nearly 30 years in New Zealand and is now based in Mexico with his wife, Sarah, and their two dogs.

Jason, welcome to the broadcast.

Jason Greenwood: Uh, thank you so, so much for having me, Kris. I have been a fan of yours for a very long time and had you on my podcast previously as well, and we had a great conversation there and I'm super, super stoked to meet your incredible two co-hosts, uh, Erin and Lori. And this is my first time to meet them.

So I'm just really looking forward to the chat today.

Kris Harrington: Yeah, we're so excited to have you here and, you know, the milestone that you just reached, we certainly know, uh, how difficult that is to, you know, congratulations on 500 episodes. That is really outstanding in, I highly recommend people give it a listen.

I mean, after you hear, uh, Jason today, you're gonna, you're gonna know why. So, [00:06:00] um, congratulations on that milestone.

Jason Greenwood: Thank you so, so much. Yeah. You guys know, and now that you're in this game too. It is. It is a commitment and I spend about eight hours a week on content across all the different channels that I put out content across in addition to the, to the podcast.

But I tell you, when you, I. When you go into it, and, and I started my podcast really with the vision that this was a, this was my love letter back to an industry that has provided me with a lifestyle that I could have only dreamt about, uh, 25 years ago. And, you know, I, I often say that, that, that the selfish aspect of it is being able to speak with people that I probably wouldn't get an audience with any other way.

And you know, on LinkedIn, if you slide into somebody's dms, you see somebody's content and you really like it, you slide into their dms and you say, Hey, I like what you're doing. It seems like we, we, we've got some synergies here. Hey. Can we have a virtual coffee for 15 minutes and talk shop nine times outta 10, they're gonna think you're trying to sell them something and nine times outta 10 it's gonna, the answer's gonna be no.

But when you have a podcast and you get 100, 200, 300 episodes and you kind of come across as a little bit more legit, and there's a little bit [00:07:00] more of a quid pro quo for why you slid into their dms in the first place and say, Hey, I'd, I'd love to have you on the podcast to talk about this stuff you're working on.

And I love that piece of content that you put out. 99% of the time they say yes and, and it's just opens up opportunities that, that just, it's difficult to get any other way.

Kris Harrington: Yeah, totally agree. Yeah. And you know, I, I think, you know, for manufacturers out there who haven't started podcasts on their own, this is, uh, you know, he's evangelizing why you should do that.

I mean, it's a great way to connect with your audience. We've been having a lot of fun doing it, and it, it's amazing the type of guests that you can talk to. But for a manufacturer who we would even wanna get into this, imagine the things that they can explore with their customers. Very unique opportunity to have a different kind of voice in the industry.

This episode is brought to you by AdCirrus ERP, your trusted partner for cloud ERP solutions. Learn more at adcirruserp.com.

Kris Harrington: So I am, uh, I'm gonna [00:08:00] jump in here with a first question to you, Jason. You know, uh, because I'm in this industry myself, I understand that one of the biggest challenges in manufacturing is internal resistance to digital transformation. Um, and it's not just digital transformation, right? So yeah, I think it's all types of change, any change management that we go through.

But what are some of the most effective ways manufacturers can overcome pushback and get leadership fully committed to digital growth?

Jason Greenwood: Yeah, you, you raise a very good point, which is that we have this clash of generations happening right now and I. We have, you know, the Forrester report came out at the end of last year that showed that 71% of B2B buyers in the United States today are millennials and Gen Z.

So they're, they're, they're, they're digital natives, right? Mm-hmm. So we've had a massive shift over the last few years, uh, [00:09:00] and we have more, um, I guess we have a variety of changing. It's not just the age of the buying demographic that's changed, but it's also, there's more minorities in there. There's more women in there.

There's a, you know, we've just got such a. Huge change and, and just a quantum shift where I, I like to say the B2B industry has historically been been male, pale, and stale. Uh, and I can say that because I fit straight into that demographic. And so I, I, I can get away with saying, saying that, but that's.

That's changing really, really rapidly. And so, you know, um, what I'm seeing is that the, the selling demographic, the manufacturers and the distributors for that matter, they aren't evolving as fast as the buying demographic is changing. And so what that means is we have manufacturers and distributors that can't meet their buyers where they are because they don't have the digital capabilities to do so.

And that is, that is a real, real challenge. And when I go in and I start working with a new manufacturer. And, you know, they have been led [00:10:00] historically by a field sales team that's going out there and building relationships with distributors, maybe, maybe building, uh, direct relationships with channel in some way, uh, to get their goods into the channel.

And so they've always based, I. The entire premise of their business on personal one-to-one relationships, knocking on more doors, making more phone calls, sending more emails, uh, and that's how they've built their business historically. And oftentimes these manufacturers, if they're a 50, you know, 25, 50, 70 5-year-old manufacturer, sometimes they are, well, oftentimes, in fact, in almost all instances, I'm working with family owned companies that are second, third generation family owned businesses and.

Now the grandchildren or the children of the founders have taken over the business and they're going, why do, why do, why do we still do things this way? Like, why, uh, you know, I understand that 15 years ago, this made sense, but it doesn't make sense today, but you still have to overcome the resistance of, of what my friend Jason Hein from the industry says.

Uh, he, he, he's a fan of saying that. Sales reps [00:11:00] are coin operated, meaning that, you know, they, you, you put the money in, you get the result out. That's the way they work, right? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And so the problem is, is that especially for manufacturers who have a large field sales force, and they have, you know, exclusive relationships with distributors, et cetera.

They feel very, very threatened by anything digital. Any, any, any, any automation, any kind of e-commerce, any kind of even EDI punch out with their distri distribution partners that wanna order via e-procurement with them as a supplier. I. They just feel threatened by all of it, and they feel threatened because when I go in and I first start engaging with them, they say, oh, you're the guy that's gonna replace us with the machines.

You're the guy that's gonna, you're the guy that's here to take our commission away from us. You're the guy that's here away here to basically automate away my role out of the business or. Even customer service in these manufacturers oftentimes have a significant role for sales and revenue in the business because they're taking phone calls, they're taking live chats, they're helping the [00:12:00] customer identify the right product.

Uh, you know, and they're, they're, they're helping to facilitate the relationship with the distributors. They're, they're, and so when I go in, one of the first things I have to do is to kind of disarm them a little bit by saying, Hey, look. I'm actually not here to replace you. I'm here to give you superpowers.

I'm here to take away all the crap you hate doing and automate that away, not automate all the stuff that you're good at and where you value. Add on the relationship side of the business relationships, at least for the foreseeable of the future. I don't care what AI does. For the foreseeable future, relationships are going to matter.

People are going to matter. People like buying off of other people. And so, you know, regardless of where and which channel and which channel type, the transaction act actually happens. People and the relationship will always matter. And so I, I usually try to disarm them and put them at ease. And I say, you know.

For the manufacturers and even distributors that track their sales team's time by activity. [00:13:00] What we find when we start digging into the CRM system that tracks this, anywhere from 20 to 60% of a sales rep's time is spent on non-value ad admin tasks. That is just crap. And, and I don't know, a singles salespeople don't get incentivized or commissioned on admin tasks.

They get, they get, they get incentivized on. And commissioned on sales, on revenue, right? And so the reality is anything we can do to help them from get, get from point A, which is relationship to point B, more revenue in the door is gonna help them. And so that's where the conversation usually has to begin.

Lori Highby: I. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Well, you, you hit on so many, so many important points, and I love just starting with the research that you, um, Forrester shared about just the majority of the buyers. Now digital is where they're spending their time, so you're missing the mark if you're not leaning into that. Um, but, um, you know, also just the point of making it, uh, [00:14:00] well, just making it easier for everyone and elevating, leveraging automation and AI to make our lives easier and to be more human. And I know both Kris and Erin and have heard me speak about this, like AI is there to give you those superpowers, and I love the way you position that. So, um, amen. Everything you're preaching.

Kris Harrington: Yeah, and I'll just add that I talk a lot in, in my speaking engagements that, you know, e-commerce and digital presence does not replace relationships. It enhances it. So I'm so glad you touched on that.

Jason Greenwood: Yeah, and I think the other thing also that, to your point, Lori, where I'm seeing AI start to play a much bigger role in a manufacturer's tech stack or in their digital stack or their e-commerce stack is, and I've coined 2025 as the year of manufacturers and distributors meeting their customers where they are.

Mm-hmm. As opposed to forcing them into channels that they're not familiar [00:15:00] with, that they're not comfortable with to try to justify spend on digital capabilities. Well, we've got, now we've got technologies that have AI at their core. You know, we, we have not only some e-commerce platforms and, and Kris, I'm sure you'll speak to this, but some standalone technologies that act as, as middleware and they can ingest right where I.

Regardless of what channel a PO comes through or a quote request comes through, whether it's email, whether it's WhatsApp, whether it's Slack, whether it's teams, it, it doesn't really matter. Now with, with effectively headless commerce technology for B2B. We can then take those attachments that come in. We can, so there's, there's a, there's a platform for example, called Motivate out there, and you guys may have heard of it and they're a standalone technology that does this, but there are other, you know, B2B focused eComm platforms that have this kind of functionality built in at their core.

And what I'm seeing is that, you know, we used to have. Technology that could [00:16:00] do a little bit of, of OCR that could kind of convert some documents into something digital just by scanning them. But they, they always required, so sort of a human review. They, they required a lot of human input to get right.

Whereas with AI and especially multi modal ai, it doesn't really matter what format the data comes in. AI can now interpret this and map these. Request whether they're an order request, whether it's a quote, request an RMA request, doesn't matter. Map this directly into the commerce system on behalf of the sales rep.

Now the benefit of that is that. Now instead of forcing customers and say, Hey, we've got this shiny new portal, and trying to onboard them into your portal, let them continue to do business with you in the way that they always have. But that automatically increases the, the return on investment of all your digital investments because now all of this activity is mapped directly into the commerce platform as the first step.

And the beauty of that is at some point, if that customer wants to now move into your [00:17:00] Portalized experience, all of their data's there, their order history is there, their custom price lists are there. Their restricted catalogs are there, their, their status of their, of their credit account is there, like everything is there in a portalized experience.

If and when they want to leverage it and, and I like to call that A-D-S-L-A digital services layer that you know, even your customers that buy via EDI or Via punch out with you today, they still want all these other digital services to go along with that. And you can extend that through a Portalized experience.

And so that's where, these are the kind of really practical AI applications that are really transforming the manufacturing space.

Erin Courtenay: Love that. Yeah, I'm not ready to let go of that. That sounds so amazing that it's a little bit dark arts kind of. Is it on, are we doing that? What, remind us again, of the, of the platform that is doing the service.

Jason Greenwood: It's, it's called Motivate, is what we're called Motivate

Erin Courtenay: and like [00:18:00] that. That sounds fantastic. I, I love the idea of let's just do it the way, let the customer do things that not, because that's the. Oh, the hard part is to change the behavior of your customer, then you're kinda screwing 'em. Right? They don't want that.

Jason Greenwood: Yeah.

Erin Courtenay: So where, I mean, I just wanna dig a little bit more into Motivate, so. How widespread is its usage and is it, can you just give us some sort of top lines on its pop on where it's at? Yeah, they've landed

Jason Greenwood: some pretty big accounts, like, I can't remember, like if you just go to their website.

I recently had, um, the founder, uh, on, on my pod and they're doing some pretty good things. They've patented some of their technology because some of it is pretty novel. Um, but I, I, I wanna also stress that there are some e-com. Dedicated B2B eCom platforms out there that are doing similar things directly within their own platform, but.

The, I I liken it to, you know, today, right? Today I can literally, you know, sometimes I'll, I'll have a recipe and it's only in Spanish, or I'll have a, a [00:19:00] label or something that's, that's only in Spanish. And look, my Spanish is, is passable, but it's, it's not, I'm definitely not fluent yet. I can take a photo of it, I can upload it to, to chat pt, and I can say, can you translate this for me?

And you know, it's just an image. It's just an image. That's all it is. Yeah. I can translate for me. It can, it can summarize it for me and, and, you know. The more that you do. And, and I was, I was shopping for a dirt bike recently, and I'll tell you how awesome chat GPT has gotten. Um, I was looking at a, at, at a used dirt bike.

The person who listed it on Facebook marketplace, they didn't put the year, they put the make and the model, but they didn't put the year. And so I just, I just, I. Took a screenshot of the image of the bike. I uploaded that to chat GPT, and I said, can you tell me what year this bike is? And it said, okay, based on these five factors, this, this color of the frame, this color of the plastics, this color of the seat, X, y, Z, it should be between this year and this year, for example.

So that's an example of what I call multimodal ai. That it can take, that it can ingest. Any format of data from an image to a spreadsheet to a PDF to a to plain text. Yeah. And it, [00:20:00] and it can, and it can read that and parse that as if it was humanized looking at that thing. And that is at the heart of what these technologies do because instead of having to, because in the manufacturing world, if I get an order, like let's get, say I get a, a PO from one of my distributors.

As a manufacturer, I get, I receive that as an account manager. It's an attached, it's attached to an email, uh, that I have to download it to my desktop. Then I have to manually type that in, into an ERP, uh, for the order to be processed and for it to be shipped out by our WMS and everything else, right.

What if we could digitally map that directly into the commerce system as if the account manager did that manually. Uh, and and that's really I think, the power of, of multimodal ai. And eventually we're gonna get to a place where agentic AI starts to take over. And then we're gonna have the, the agent on the distributor side.

Conversing digitally with the agent on the manufacturing side, and we're gonna have agent to agent conversations as if it was two [00:21:00] humans talking to each other. So that's all coming and it, it, it's not far away.

Lori Highby: Yes, I believe it, but my mind is exploring all of it. Um, yeah, I'm, I'm probably the biggest AI nerd amongst us, three gals, so, uh, yeah.

This is so cool. And I, and I'm even picturing what you're talking about, like the chay PT example, which I've got plenty of those. Myself, because I just intentionally try to challenge chat GPT every single day. Same. But I think about this, like, yes, someone can just upload their, their design files. Yes. And the whole quote can be generated because it can read every single element of what needs to happen.

So, and that's the, the tedious, boring stuff that I think salespeople don't wanna be doing. I love this so much, so get me so excited.

Kris Harrington: Just as a resource for all of our listeners, there is a document that, uh, chat GPT published in September of last year related to [00:22:00] agents and it, it really is a very good breakdown.

Uh, it's easy to understand. It describes how this works, uh, technologically so that people understand you know, what's happening and it'll blow your mind. Uh, what can be done? So I, I think this world that Jason's talking about, it's coming. It is coming. It,

Erin Courtenay: it is, but it, I'm, I'm, I'm almost in a panic mode.

Not because I'm, I'm young enough and old enough to get both worlds, but we're, you know, at the opening of this conversation we're talk, we were talking about that generational gap. I mean, Lori really sort of highlighted that, and I know this is a special interest. That's the

Lori Highby: intention. But,

Erin Courtenay: well, and this is no

Jason Greenwood: shade,

Erin Courtenay: Kris is, Kris is particularly interested in, in this as well, so.

Like, while we are getting excited about the future and while we are talking about the [00:23:00] comfort with which the younger generations are engaging with all of these things, sort of the, the task at hand, what's sitting in front of us. Is moving folks who still have a lot of, let's just say levers of power, um, deciding how their organizations or when, or if their organizations are going to move into this new world.

And so, you know, we're still, we. I just wanna be sure that we don't get ahead of ourselves when we're helping people kind of navigate what is currently available. And so my question for you is kind of two part, and it's really about helping people. Who are making these decisions, once again, understand the benefits of, you know, this digital transformation.

First question is, can you just explain a little bit about, and then I'll ask the second question before I let you go. Um, what, what is self-service and what self-service looks like in a B2B environments? [00:24:00] Because I think that you kind of can have it. Heuristic, but not a very clear one. And then once we talked about that, um, you know, that self service is a major driver of efficiency and customer satisfaction, but manufacturers often struggle to implement that effectively.

So like, when you're thinking kind of about user experience, what are the key elements of a truly successful self-service experience in B2B e-commerce? So first of all, kind of walk us through what is self-service and then like how to get it done.

Jason Greenwood: Yeah, so very, very good questions. Usually when I first engage with a, a manufacturer, and, and to be fair, even the distributors that I engage with very, in fact, I can't think of a distributor engagement that I've had.

I. In the last four years that didn't do some form of manufacturing as well, so, so the distributor will maybe manufacture 10, 20% of their catalog and like the other 70, 80% they're a distributor for, because they don't wanna just sell skews, they wanna sell solutions, right? So that's the [00:25:00] first thing is that very rarely do I encounter pure manufacturers that don't do any distribution or pure distributors that don't do any manufacturing.

Usually they are a hybrid of some variety, but in all those cases. Oftentimes they have done zero. When I get to them and I'll ask them, I'll say, you know, as a first, as part of my discovery with them, and I've got about 150 question discovery process, one of the first questions we ask is, have you done any canvassing?

Have you had any conversations with customers? Have you asked them what pain points are of doing business with you? Any friction, anything that could make their life easier, better, faster? More efficient. Anything that would make it a more of a no-brainer to do more business with you or, or, you know, give them the opportunity, create an environment where you say, Hey, tell us two, three things that you love about doing business with us and give us two or three things that are really challenging about doing business with us.

Have you create in an environment that's, that's, that's a safe place for your customers to give you that kind of feedback in the business so that we can start from. The [00:26:00] areas where your customers are already telling you you need to improve as opposed to making assumptions, and 99% of the time they have never had this discussion.

So the first, the first thing that I recommend usually when I go in is, Hey, look, let me help you run those discussions. Mm-hmm. You tee up the, the bookings that I can speak to some of your customers, but let me run that. Independent of you not having their account manager on the call, not having anybody from the business because if they have to go back to work.

With working with this account manager the next day, the last thing they're gonna do is say, well, this is shit. Because, because they have to maintain the relationship. And so for me, I'm like, I will be a neutral third party that can go in and, and ask those questions with nuance. Because if you just ask them, Hey, do you want us to create an e-commerce portal for you?

Or do you want us to create a trade portal or a sales portal for you? Nine times outta 10, they're gonna go, nah. I like Bob, my account manager. I like Jane, my account manager. I do everything through them. They give me great service, you know. But if you ask more [00:27:00] nuanced questions than that and you say, Hey, look, what if you could continue transacting exactly as you do, you send your PO through to your account manager and you could, you could continue doing that, but.

Also, in addition to that, you had a portal that you could log into, that you could check the current state of our inventory, that you could check the, uh, availability of our catalog for you and what your pricing is on those items where you could make digital quote requests online that you could, like I said before, check the status of your credit account, that you could download historic invoices.

If you could do all those things, but you could continue to transact the way that you do, would that be of interest to you? Or if you could log in because one of the key things I, I ask, or when I. When I get that answer and I say, what are the, one of the, what are, what are some of the challenging things?

If as a distributor, if you're doing business with this manufacturer, what is one of the challenges you have? Oh, well, we, we, we, we don't know when they're gonna ship our order. And then we don't know once they've shipped our order and we don't know when it's gonna hit our warehouse. And so therefore, we can't schedule our receipting team to receive a [00:28:00] carton, a pallet, or a container, right?

We don't know. So if I could log into a portal and I could track that order from the time it leaves their warehouse to the time it hits our warehouse, then I can manage my receipting team more efficiently instead of having this container of goods sitting out in our freaking parking lot until we can get Devan it.

Into our warehouse and make it available as a distributor. So these are the kinds of nuanced questions, and you have to be able to give tangible examples of the kinds of digital services you wanna extend via your portal before the customer can unlock their mind and say, I. Yeah, that would be super beneficial to me in my business.

But, but if you never create an environment where the customer can tell you how your baby's ugly, they won't.

Lori Highby: Mm-hmm.

Kris Harrington: Yeah. Yeah. It, it's, it's, it speaks to how an e-commerce environment is so much more than a transaction, right. You're going there. For information that your customers would love to just be able to go check themselves and, and again, [00:29:00] it goes back to that relationship.

They still may wanna have a conversation about these other things, but checking on all the nuanced things you just talked about, they love that aspect of a portal. Um. Yeah.

Lori Highby: Yeah. I love the, I'm a big fan of third party research. We take a similar approach with, with our clients and what I find is there's a lot more transparency because they don't wanna have any issues with their account manager letting 'em know like, Hey, I'm actually not happy with this situation, and they don't necessarily feel comfortable.

So that is, that's huge for sure. Um, definitely, definitely a big fan of that. And I had another thought and I lost it, but That's okay.

Jason Greenwood: I'm sure it'll come back to you. So Erin, I don't know if that was a, I know that was a really roundabout way of, of talking to things that can be self-service, service, service size.

I don't know. Yeah. I love it. That's not, that's not even a word I'm sure, but it

Erin Courtenay: is now. Yeah.

Jason Greenwood: Yeah. We're gonna make, we're gonna make, we're gonna coin a new word, uh, on this podcast. Self self

Erin Courtenay: service. It. Yeah, it gives t-shirts.

Jason Greenwood: That's, I love it. I love, I love it. Yeah. No, I

Erin Courtenay: think, I [00:30:00] think that's actually a really good way to explain it, because the reason that I asked, I think self-service can, can sound like they're just gonna do all of it and we're not, you know, I.

What, what are we here for? But it's not, it just means there's things that they want done that they're not gonna be calling you every, you know, 15 minutes with their questions. Um, so I think that's really great and definitely appreciate you illuminating the start with the audience. I mean, that's such a.

Yes,

Lori Highby: strangely overlooked. Came back. It came back. It came back. Oh, okay. So I've been a big believer, and I've been preaching this for years, and you're kind of confirming this and that anything that happens in the B2C space, it takes about five to 10 years to become active in the B2B space. So we as consumers.

Like, we can track when the pizza's gonna be delivered at our house, right? Mm-hmm. I mean, we can, we go on Amazon, we know exactly when the box is gonna drop on our front porch so that we can make sure no one steals it from [00:31:00] us. I mean, there's, there's so many things that as just our daily lives allow us to have this instant gratification for information, and we are now expecting to have that same experience in the B2B space, and this is why this is so important.

Jason Greenwood: Yeah. And I think you're speaking really to like the Uberization of, of B2B for Yeah. For lack of a better term, you know? 'cause we, we, we wanna track the Uber from the time they accept the, the ride Yeah. To the time they turn it up at our front door. Right. Uh, you know, and, and I, I think a lot of people have, have, have used the term, the consumerization of, of B2B.

And I've never been a fan of, of that concept because Sure. I don't, you know, people say, well, you should, you should try to do. Everything in B2B, exactly like you do in B2C or D two C, and okay, maybe there are some parallels. Maybe not, but the reality is that the goals of those buyers are usually totally different.

Uh, and, and therefore the experience you need to create for them is totally different. Like when, when, when we're thinking about, and I [00:32:00] spent half my career in B2C and D two C, so I, I really understand and empathize with, with that side of the industry too. And nine times outta 10, they're trying to get customers to stay on their site longer.

They're trying to get them to browse more. They're trying to cross sell and upsell the crap out of them. They're trying to inspire them. They're try, they're trying to create a, a, a, not necessarily a buying a, a really good buying experience. They're trying to create a really good shopping experience, right?

And the buying is a byproduct of that. But, but, but they're really trying to create an aspirational, inspirational type of experience. Typically and, and therefore, the goals of those shoppers oftentimes are very different. They might not even come to the website with a specific item in mind that they wanna buy, and they're looking to be inspired themselves.

Or if they're looking for a gift for someone, for example, they're looking for inspiration within their price range and making sure it's in stock so it can get to their friend end time and all that kind of stuff. B2B buyers are totally different. They, they're doing this as their day job. They, they have a task to complete.

They need to get [00:33:00] in and out of your experience as fast as humanly possible. They need to identify the right product for the right application. They need to get it on the way, and they need to know when it's gonna hit them like that. That's what they're trying to do. And, and so their goal as a buyer is totally different.

So you actually need to remove friction from the buying experience. Right. I'm not saying there's not room for inspiration and aspiration, meaning that. There's no room to help expose new catalog items to them that might be applicable to their businesses. I'm not suggesting that, but it's just that the, the primary focus of a B2B buyer is this is a task that they need to complete and move on to the next one as fast as humanly possible.

And so if you, you are not removing friction at every point along that journey and enhancing the efficiency with which they do their job. Then they're probably not gonna continue to do business with you for very long, because I can tell you that in wholesale distribution, the margins are so freaking razor thin that if they can buy off of a different manufacturer, a similar good, and it will save them 1% of their procurement [00:34:00] costs.

That is an additional 1% straight into their back pocket, which is why many distributors will dictate to the manufacturer, okay, you, we use Jagger, we use Coupa, we use Ariba, you know, whatever. As our procurement system, as our e-procurement system, if you can't integrate with our procurement system, we're not gonna buy from you anymore.

Because, because that is the only way we can become efficient as a procurement team.

Lori Highby: Yeah. Yeah.

Erin Courtenay: Yeah. Oh my gosh, I wish the listeners well, they're probably like us. Was everybody listening Like a bobblehead? The three of us are just like bobbleheads. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Exactly. Great. And I really appreciate, um, that differentiation because I think that the conversation always stops at you should be really.

B2C, and then it's like I point made, and then the, the further exploration doesn't really happen. And I really like the distinction because it, it elevates [00:35:00] why digitization is so important in B2B relationship. What are those advantages that you can convey through a, um, digital services? So I, I just, I really.

I wanna say thank you. That was great. Yeah.

Kris Harrington: My pleasure. Yeah. Yeah. And after all that, I, oh, go ahead, Lori. Go. You go. Nope. Yeah, you go. I, I, I was just gonna say, you know, building on all of that, if you were advising, uh, a manufacturer on their digital strategy for the next three to five years, what would you tell them?

What should they be working on that's gonna help them grow their business?

Jason Greenwood: Well, I always try to meet my clients where they are for a start off, uh, because it can feel overwhelming. But I'll tell you that oftentimes my clients, when they first get to me as a manufacturer, they're going, what? How can we leverage this AI thing?

Right? That's like one of the first questions outta their, their mouth. Mm-hmm. And they don't even do e-commerce. They don't, they don't do EDI, they don't do punch out. They don't do, they don't, they don't do any form of [00:36:00] digital commerce today. And they come to me and they go, how can we leverage AI to grow our business?

Right and make us more efficient. And it's, it in 99% of the time, it starts with an internal focus instead of an external focus. And I say you have to have at least as much of an external focus as you do an internal focus. It's all fine and good to try to be finding efficiencies and it's all fine and good to try to automate.

It's all, uh, finding good to do systems integration and it's all finding good to upgrade your ERP to where it's not a. 30 5-year-old green screen, ERP, like that's all fine and good and it's, and it's gonna by itself, gonna bring some efficiencies to your business. But if that doesn't bring tangible benefits to your customer.

To at least the same degree as it benefits your business. You are not going to see sufficient adoption on the customer side to make that investment justifiable. You're never gonna be able to build the business case, so you have to both be able to build both an internal and an external business case for everything you are looking at doing.

Right. And this, this is where [00:37:00] we have to start. We have to start with, okay, you're, you're currently naval gazing and you're currently looking inside your business at all the areas that you think you can make yourself more efficient using digital technologies, but have you thought about the customer and I, I just, I beat this drum and, and I know I sound like a freaking broken record.

Uh, but, but I just, I just continue to see it so frequently mm-hmm. That the focus is inward instead of outward. And I, and I think, let's, let's. Let's at least bring it to a place of balance. Uh, before we look at that and look, if you've got a modern ERP and you, you've implemented a modern ER ERP within the last five years.

That's, um, API centric can be, can be easily integrated with other systems. Great. Let's not look at that. Hey, you, you've implemented a modern cutting edge. PLM or you know, as a manufacturer usually would have a PLM plus. You would probably have a PIM plus. You would probably have some sort of syndication technology to get that data out into your distributor's hands.

Well, if you've just implemented that in the last couple of years, well then maybe all we need to look at is the commerce technology that plugs into [00:38:00] all of that. But if you have none of that, it's 'cause I'll tell you, probably greater than 50% of the time I am brought in solely to look at an e-commerce.

Platform or technology or project. But then I get under the bonnet and after discovery, I wanna cry because they've got creaking at the seams, aging back office technology that is totally not fit for purpose for a digital world. Then I get an extract of their customer data and I get a simple extract of their product data, and it makes me wanna cry again because their customer data isn't structured in a way that's meaningful for digital channels.

Their product data is not structured and it's, it's incomplete, it's inconsistent. You know, half the data's sitting on a network drive somewhere. Half of it's sitting on a sales rep's desktop. Some of it's in a printed catalog, like it's just. When you start peeling back the layers of this onion, half the time, greater than half the time, what I thought was going to be an e-commerce project turns into a full stack solution architecture exercise.

Because, because they've never had an enterprise architect [00:39:00] to look holistically at their entire business. Right. Wow. And, and that's the, that's the challenge is opening up their mind to saying, well, you know, if you implement a new e-commerce platform on top of what you have in the back office today. All we're doing is putting lipstick on a pig.

You realize that? Right. And so you have to be on and, and I, and I oftentimes think my role as the consultant is to be the bad guy is to, is to be the disruptor that comes in and kind of challenges the, the, the business wide thinking in ways that employees cannot because they're afraid of losing their job.

So I, it is my job to come in and tell them where their baby's ugly. And it is my job to come in and say, well, you thought this was gonna be your program of work, but does it make sense to do it in this order when the back office is an absolute disaster? Um, you know, and then you just by asking smarter questions.

You let them lead themselves to the answers. Right. And so I just pride myself on trying to ask the smartest questions that I can possibly ask. So it comes across as their idea.

Kris Harrington: Yeah.

Erin Courtenay: [00:40:00] That is such a responsible way to conduct, conduct digital transformation. It is. I hear that.

Jason Greenwood: Oh, thank you. I appreciate it.

Well, look, I'm, I just call a spade a spade. That's, it's just the way I'm wired.

Lori Highby: I feel like I wanna talk to you for like another four hours here, because we're on the pa, same page on so many things, and yeah, I, I love everything that you're saying, but I feel like we should move on to the next segment here, right?

Yeah,

Kris Harrington: no, thanks for all the, the great, uh. Everything is shared. I, I know people are getting a lot out of, it's, it's a reminder. I, I hope it's lighting a little fire under everyone so that, you know, they take a little initiative after this. So, yes, we're gonna move into our next segment. Our, you know, the, the way we wrap up every show is I just learned that and Lori.

What'd you just learn? Ooh,

Lori Highby: this is perfect. 'cause it aligns like with this whole conversation here, [00:41:00] um, Amazon, Amazon's advertising department just completed some research, so I'll include a link to the whole study. Um, there's a lot of little data points here, but what's really interesting, and this is obviously more on the consumer side 'cause that's all, but it still aligns, but mm-hmm.

A lot of buying decisions are made in alignment with life events, which I think is really fascinating. That's what their research was done, which totally makes sense. Yeah. And so they're trying to find ways to better market and promote certain products based on triggers of life events. Right. So I think that's really fascinating.

And some of the data that they found was that, um, six in 10 consumers say they rely more on online sources, reviews. Search, um, do, um, to find the solution of those life events as opposed to, you know, like an ad on a TV commercial or a flyer in the mail or something along those lines. So, um, tons of really fascinating data points in this research.

And yeah, we'll [00:42:00] definitely include it in the show notes.

Erin Courtenay: Oh, interesting. But I am, I am really, I just, you know, I just moved into a massive remodel. Mm-hmm. And so all my buying decisions are around that, and they are exclusive via looking for reviews. And, you know, Reddit for me is like, that's my shopping channel, basically, because, um, that's, that is, that's a really good observation.

Hmm. Cool. Thank you Lori.

Kris Harrington: Yeah. All right, Erin, you're up.

Erin Courtenay: Okay, so one small life event was I finally got my daughter into the allergist That takes. Forever months, six months. If you're feeling sniffly and you think you might wanna go to an allergist, just call them now. Stop listening and call them in any case, um, he, you know, did the test or whatever, and then I learned from him that cat allergies, I have a cat allergy it.

You're actually just allergic to their saliva. [00:43:00] So if you have a cat, you can wash that cat. And then you won't be allergic to it 'cause they're, you're just allergic 'cause they lick themselves not So I thought that was interesting. I didn't know that.

Jason Greenwood: Here's a hint for you. Try ultra high dose vitamin C.

It's, it's, it's one of the best. Ways to get allergies under control because it controls the histamine response in re in response to allergies. So, uh, most people that I know that have bad allergies or, or suffer from hay fever, for example, they go on a high dose daily regimen of vitamin C. It usually clears within two weeks.

Erin Courtenay: Wow. I'm gonna go get some. Yeah, we're gonna inside here right now. I'm gonna get online,

Jason Greenwood: so there you go

Erin Courtenay: and buy it. Yeah. Thank you.

Jason Greenwood: No worries.

Kris Harrington: Kris, what can you, yeah, I, I, I'm curious if you guys have ever heard of the doorway [00:44:00] effect? Anybody heard of this?

Jason Greenwood: Oh, is, is this the Amazon one, the one versus two-way doors?

No.

Kris Harrington: No, it's a, but it, so it's a psychological phenomenon. I know you guys have all experienced it, but where people tend to forget what they were intending to do when they enter another room. Oh yeah. That happens to me.

Erin Courtenay: Yeah. This is so common as we age. So common. So no doors get rid of the doors.

Kris Harrington: Yeah, I guess, you know, you gotta be in the same room all the time if you don't wanna forget.

But you know, I've certainly had that happen to me, and I didn't know that there was any name behind it, but psychologists suggest that doorways serve as event boundaries,

Erin Courtenay: you know, in mind. Wow.

Kris Harrington: And helping us, Carmen, you know, they compartmentalize experiences and tasks. So when we move into a new location, we've.

Essentially are in a new environment and we forget what we were intending to do when we moved in there. So [00:45:00] I just thought that was very, and we just walked through a portal

Lori Highby: and our brain

Kris Harrington: was blank or what.

Lori Highby: I

Jason Greenwood: mean, it's just gonna, that's so cool. I like that. Fascinating. Where, where did you read this?

Kris Harrington: Yeah, well I discovered it because I was mentioning to somebody the other day, I am like, I just forgot what I was doing.

And we were laughing about age and she said, well there is this thing called the doorway effect. And I had to look it up 'cause I had never heard of it before. So

Jason Greenwood: Cool man. That is cool. That is cool. I like that. Yeah. I don't know

Kris Harrington: about you guys, but I like have the tag on my backpack. Now I've got the, the iPhone tag.

I've got, I wish I could put one on my remote on, you know, I've got the notification on my watch where my phone is. 'cause I forget these things. I have spots that I put them, but if I, I just, yeah, I don't

Jason Greenwood: know. I love it. The air tag, the air airification of your life.

Kris Harrington: Yes. Mm-hmm. Keys, backpack. Anything important to you?

Wow. So Jason, [00:46:00] what have you just learned?

Jason Greenwood: Um, I haven't necessarily just learned it, but I, I, it get, it keeps getting reinforced to me. Uh, I've lived here in Mexico for the last two and a half years, and, and just how, and I, I know, I know this because I've traveled extensively. I lived. I've lived outside of my home country of birth for over 30 years now.

Um, and, and so I, I do know this at its core, but I keep getting surprised just a little bit by the fact that every country does things slightly differently. Mm-hmm. Every culture does things slightly differently. Mm-hmm. And one of the things I had to learn when I first moved to Mexico was the fact that.

There are street addresses and then there are pathway addresses, meaning that, meaning that if you live on a hillside in Mexico, for example, that isn't serviced directly by a road, you, you ha you have a pathway address. You do not have a road address, you do not, you don't have a street address. You have a pathway address.

So, you know. [00:47:00] Okay. And, and there's literally. Street signs at the corners of the paths, so the paths get their own name. So that way when an Amazon driver goes to deliver a parcel onto a hillside with houses, if it's serviced by paths, not roads, they have to walk, they have to walk up the pathway. They have to know, okay, I turned left at this pathway.

Okay, cool. I gotta go up to this pathway. And then they have a, an address number. On that pathway name. And that was something that when I first moved here, I thought, wow, that adds a serious, and I, and I often wondered why Mexican Street addresses were so radically complex. They, they have like four or five address lines associated with them in addition to the postal code.

And now I understand why. Because, because it has to be able to cater. For all these weird and wonderful address varieties in the country, and it, it has to be able to support those different ways of getting to someone's address. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I, that's just one [00:48:00] of those weird things that I thought, okay, this is how they have to deal with it.

Kris Harrington: Yeah. So if you're listening, you wanna expand into Mexico, make sure that, uh. You can account for this, right?

Jason Greenwood: Well make sure you work with a, with a courier company Co. That knows how to deliver inside Mexico, because I tell you, sometimes those parcels will not get, oh, another thing, never use the standard Postal Service in Mexico.

You'll never get your goods. Or it's a, it's very hit and miss, and even if you do get it, it'll be like six months after you expect it to get it. So you should only ever, if you're shipping goods into Mexico, like let's say you're shipping something to a friend in Mexico, you should only ever send it via a courier service, like a DHL or like a, you know, like a, like a, like a FedEx or proper courier service that has their own internal courier capabilities inside the country.

Otherwise, you're probably never gonna get your goods.

Erin Courtenay: Wow.

Kris Harrington: There you go. Well, if you're gonna send Jason a bottle of bourbon for all of his advice, make sure that you use that special courier.

Erin Courtenay: Yes. Just deliver it in person. Exactly. Come, [00:49:00] come and hang out at our house. Hang out in this beautiful casa.

Lori Highby: Yes.

Erin Courtenay: Yeah.

Kris Harrington: No. Well, this has been wonderful. Thank you so much for all your, uh, sage advice here today. Jason, if people want to reach out to you, how should they do that?

Jason Greenwood: Look, I'm everywhere. You can chat, GPT me, you can Google me. But you know, probably the easiest way is LinkedIn. I try to post there almost every single day.

Uh, you can go to my website, greenwood consulting.net. I've got all my contact channels listed there on the website. Uh, but I'm kind of on most platforms, so, but yeah, LinkedIn or my website or yeah. Carrier pigeon email, however you want. I'm everywhere.

Erin Courtenay: Wonderful. We'll include all of that in the show notes.

Jason Greenwood: Love it.

Erin Courtenay: Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much.

Jason Greenwood: Yeah, I really enjoyed this. You guys are awesome hosts, and you guys are running a very, very cool podcast. So I counted a great privilege that you hosted me today. Thank you.

Lori Highby: Very cool. It was super fun chatting with you as well. All right. This is [00:50:00] three broads wrapping up. We want you to go out there and make something awesome. [00:51:00]

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