In Episode 13, Timothy and Isaiah talk with guest Mark Sutherland who has decades of experience in digital and eCommerce on both the client and agency side. He has been in both B2C and B2B eCommerce for small and large companies that have scaled internationally. We hear first hand how he brought a B2B eCommerce business to 8 figures that were previously struggling before he joined. He knows what it takes to scale internationally and how to scale a B2B eCommerce into the tens of millions of dollars.
In Episode 13, Timothy and Isaiah talk with guest Mark Sutherland who has decades of experience in digital and eCommerce on both the client and agency side. He has been in both B2C and B2B eCommerce for small and large companies that have scaled internationally. We hear first hand how he brought a B2B eCommerce business to 8 figures that were previously struggling before he joined. He knows what it takes to scale internationally and how to scale a B2B eCommerce into the tens of millions of dollars.
Everyone to Episode 13 of the hard truth about b2b e commerce. I'm your co host, Isaiah Bollinger and I'm here with Tim Tim, take it away.
Unknown Speaker :I am Timothy Peterson having a great time Welcome to the hard truth about b2b commerce. Our sponsor, punch out to go is a global b2b integration company specializing in connecting commerce, business platforms with E procurement and E RP applications. So punch out two goes I pass text seamlessly links business applications to automate the flow of purchasing data. Thank you to our sponsor, and I'm going to send it right back to Isaiah to continue.
Unknown Speaker :Yep, thank you. Thank you, Brady and the team at punch out to go so very excited to introduce our guest, Mark Sutherland, who I had the pleasure of meeting you know, on Zoom earlier this year of via introduction just because we're both kind of in the b2b space b2b e commerce space and he's been in b2b e commerce for, you know most of his career. And Mark, you've been in kind of the trenches on the customer side. And now you recently switched over to the agency side, maybe the dark side,
Unknown Speaker :moved to the dark side.
Unknown Speaker :So yeah, tell us a little bit about kind of that evolution and how you came into b2b e commerce.
Unknown Speaker :Sure, sure. So um, I actually had a different career. I'd worked in face to face sales and project management and construction business for 10 years, and then the recession hit in 2008. So I finally got a project management qualification. After all those years of buildings, putting buildings up some things I finally got a qualification and I found myself in a small company that was doing ebanking, building websites with a development team out of India, and clients here in the UK, putting websites together and testing go through that process very quickly morphed into a company in Sheffield, called insight, who I very quickly discovered, we're actually a global value added reseller of IT equipment headquartered out of Phoenix, Arizona, but over here in Europe, their operational center for a lot of their web development and, and e commerce was in Sheffield in the UK. And they picked Sheffield because for a number of reasons. It has two universities. So lots of graduates who speak lots of different languages. It was relatively easy to find developers. It's a city that people like to stay in. And I joined as an E procurement consultant initially. So I was essentially a out on the road talking to clients, linking them through platforms like a rebrand Cooper, but also European specific ones like Picasa, which is the Scottish Government system and linking them into to drive commerce online. Shortly afterwards, I was promoted to run their sales and trade operations across 14 countries for the e commerce and we we ended up with about 10,000 b2b clients, while here in Europe,
Unknown Speaker :multiple display while
Unknown Speaker :and at the time I started we were trading about 100 and 10 million euros, we ended up with about 100 and 90 million after three years. So big growth, a lot of it through connecting big clients and people like Thomson Reuters and I'm hoping that this many years after I left them I'm allowed to say his name but also finds Siemens people like that, who were sending through huge volumes of orders, relatively low value, but lots of volume. And that was that was a real experience in this sort of trading and customer side looking very closely with how their sales teams worked, so that we could drive the administration and the order processing out of sales teams and free them up with with time. And that's become a real focus for me. Subsequently, I built a b2b e commerce site for construction materials company,
Unknown Speaker :which was operating across six countries in Europe. I had a little bit of segue into BTC for one of the UK
Unknown Speaker :banks national savings and investment, and then ended up being headhunted by Rico to run their e commerce proposition across Europe. So they built a website and they've done the classic thing of getting an IT team and a marketing team and the e commerce people whatsoever.
Unknown Speaker :How did that go?
Unknown Speaker :Two years later they hired me.
Unknown Speaker :Essentially, what are the challenges was the user experience didn't really meet the client's needs. So if you think about the variety of people ordering office print product ordering it and associated hardware, you've got a lot of product in a site 70,000 skews on an individual country site. You've got personalized pricing all the challenges I'm sure you've discussed with lots of your guests before. And you haven't surfaced that data of quickly, accurately so users can find what they need. And, and that's, I suppose, it's it's easy to say that sounds easy, but it isn't. And then you throw in the challenges of translation. languages and currency, all these fun things. So I left Rico in April. And I've set up a business with a couple of colleagues who've been through similar sorts of routes. And we're really focused on the challenges that businesses face when they're doing this. So how do I change from a an organization that sells predominantly over the phone or face to face to be one that at least my day to day run rate business businesses, relatively low value but can be quite profitable is driven online. I free my sales teams up so that's, that's what we spend our time at transformed the digital doing.
Unknown Speaker :All this exciting stuff, Mark, I'm gonna dive in and ask you. One of the first things that's on our minds, I think our listeners are going to be really interested in this how do you demystify digital transformation I think that, you know, I've worked in this space as well. And it's not easy for people who are not necessarily technically savvy. So how do you how do you approach that? What do you do?
Unknown Speaker :I think that's a really difficult challenge. And it's one that almost everybody who's worked in the e commerce space, we'll face it some some spare time. I think what we need to do is think very clearly about how much do we need to speak in. I'm going to use the word English, but you know, whichever your native language is, versus the jargon that we adopters, professionals within the e commerce space. And remember that when you talk to a board or senior stakeholders in a business, they're generally experts. But within a narrow field, they've either been with the organization that they've worked for for quite a long time, work their way up, so they'll know the jargon and the expertise of their business. They'll know their niche, they'll know how to be a really good finance director, or how to be a great sales director. But that doesn't mean that they've any experience of the language we would use, you know, the sort of call to actions that you'd use on a website and to get people to do things. You know, why is that button green and not red? Those kind of really basic breaking down the technical language that we use into things that people can understand and get a hold on. But I think one of the one of the things that's always come across to me is that you have to say simply, say often, and say again, and focus very much on what are we trying to deliver, rather than the technology we're going to use to deliver it. And I think this is really challenging for for people that are really comfortable with jargon, and we often fall into, you know, what's my er p today, when I go to a new organization that I'm using CRP, I'm using this CRM system, those acronyms often don't mean very much. And, you know, I, I work with people from all sorts of nations and cultures. But speaking in that very plain down to earth language, what is that I'm going to do that is going to make your job easier, I think really comes with comes full simplification.
Unknown Speaker :I think that that's a theme that we've heard from a number of people, it's just really simplifying the message to get to get things done and really understanding what you're focusing on. That's great.
Unknown Speaker :Absolutely. And particularly with boards, you know, what's the return on the investment? How do you express all the technical language Wait, we were going to come up with in a project in terms of people will understand and ultimately what is the bottom line that we're trying to deliver?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I like the idea of just being Focusing on the ends and not, we're gonna do this custom development in this platform and all this stuff that they're probably not going to understand or appreciate, like, oh, we're gonna make it headless or these new, you know, jargon terms for some of the new new ways of of things that we do in our space, but focusing on like, Hey, we're gonna automate 50% of orders so that your salespeople can spend 50% more of their time selling new customers instead of being on the phone taking orders.
Unknown Speaker :Absolutely, I found it really powerful sometimes to, to break it right down to you what is the cost of processing an order, and the extreme examples are often useful to get across. If you've got a million euro order, or a million pound order a million dollar order, versus a 10, euro dollar or pound order. Often the cost of typing that into a modern AARP user jogging yet is exactly the same It's a person for a few minutes typing that order in. But the profit that you gain from those two orders is vastly different. And potentially, the percentage profit is much greater on the smaller value order. And you retain that profit to a much greater degree if you automate that process than you do on the million dollar. So if I've got a spread of orders where 7080 90% of those orders are relatively low value, then automating those orders first, although you won't take as much value online, you will retain profit to a much greater degree than if you focused on the big exciting orders that the business loves to take and boast about. But ultimately, your sales force can still handle those big orders improperly will want to do you think the psychology of being a salesperson and that kind
Unknown Speaker :of ties into that Next Next topic, but I love that idea. And I think that's such a smart way to think about it is like, what's the cost of taking an order. And obviously, it might not be exactly the same per order, but you know, figuring that out. And then you could probably make a business case, hey, all orders under $50,000 or whatever number that the company feels comfortable with. Let's automate that. Let's focus on all orders under this number, get that online, really make a business case to drive that online. And then the organization's working towards something that salespeople understand it. The processing people understand it. So you kind of have this like goal as a company and the salespeople, you know, they're probably still going to want to be hands on on the million dollar orders. Because you know, no one wants to type in the wrong key and mess up a million dollar order, but
Unknown Speaker :it's not just that it's the natural human instinct. Yeah, this is my next paycheck. Yeah. But I want to make sure that goes smoothly.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, they don't need to be on the phone with $1,000 order every time. So. So yeah, going into kind of the next topic like how do you envision, you know, Salesforce integration into e commerce. And I think we can kind of look at that holistically like with CRM, and it might not be Salesforce. It could be Microsoft Dynamics, just generally CRM and then also the actual Salesforce like, how is it kind of become unified instead of this? I think a lot of organizations I still see it's like, salespeople, and then e commerce and they're just way too separate.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I think for me, I think the silos that you can sometimes inadvertently create, when you add an e commerce system, that is probably taking price and product data directly from your E Rp. Without notion of what sales people are doing in the CRM. I think that's done One of the things that you need to consider in your architecture. And Salesforce is is one example, as you said, but I think I think the key bit is for me, we need to think about the customer experience here. If If I build a relationship with you as a customer of mine, and I also have an e commerce site, then you expect that the the price and the product negotiation that we've been through in a face to face or telephone encounter will also be reflected on my e commerce site. So if you if you step back and say, Okay, let's forget about the internal competition or silos that we have, and start thinking about it from the customer's point of view. What's the customer experience I want to give? I want to give that customer the same product, the same price, however, that customer chooses to engage with me, essentially an omni channel approach rather than a multi channel approach. So for me, I think the crucial bit is tracking that product data and that price data through to make sure that your ecommerce site is not just linked to an E. E RP, but also taking any inputs that are necessary from a CRM, where a salesperson may have logged in that I'm giving this person 3% off this month. Gotcha.
Unknown Speaker :So you you think about it more as how do you unify their experience so you know, maybe 50 you know, they order online most of the time, but one day they're on the road and they just call you up and say, hey, I want to place this order. I'm like going to a job site and need an order of these 10 things. But later the next day they go back and log in order some new stuff, they want to see their orders. They want to see how much they've bought make sure everything should be kind of unified in terms of price ordering.
Unknown Speaker :Online,
Unknown Speaker :that comes directly from a suppose what is written Been 80% of all of my jobs. It's not so much. Can I build a website? It's how do I get an existing legacy b2b organization, and its sales teams to want to engage with that website, and not seen as a threat. So, if I am a salesperson, and I've dealt with this customer, four or five years, I've built up a great relationship. But suddenly, the website has failed them. Because it's presenting the wrong product on price or something goes wrong, then why would I push my next customer or even encourage that customer to place their next orders online and not over the phone with me? I'm here to protect my commission, my sales, my customers. And so if you're an e commerce teammate, you're wanting to make sure that that sales person feels really comfortable and really confident. And it's very easy to say, well just tell us a little tend to do things. But the reality is in most jobs in most organizations, you have to win the hearts and minds as much as rely on diktat to get things done. And certainly, I think, you know, different sales cultures in different countries do work differently. Don't get me wrong. But I've always found that the biggest challenges salespeople have is where they think the website is doing something, they're not in control of that they still own the relationship with that customer and often a b2b selling particularly if you're not just focused on the individual commodity, it's about a contract or a longer term relationship. And that that's still a people thing, to a very large degree. The individual product order might not be the the big thing. But you know, how am I going to maintain that relationship and, and therefore, what do I need to do with that sales team to give them the confidence that the e commerce is a real bonus for them?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, so really making the sales team view that ecommerce as an ally, like, they're all on the same team playing.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, same data, the customer experience is good. Whether they are looking at the website buying from the website, maybe they're creating a quote on the website, but the phone in the salesperson upset, can you do me a deal at the end of the month, on the prices and the products that have already specified linking that process so that you really integrated together? I think that's that's a really critical step. Whenever you will, not in a pure play scenario. If you if you're a business, adding an e commerce proposition to an existing sales force, you've got to take them with you. Because whatever your long term plans are, in the medium term, you've got that sales force. That's,
Unknown Speaker :you know, just a quick comment on you know, this, this great topic. I mean, one of the things that I've found and I think you would agree with That I've gone into your meetings of the sort in recent years, you know, and I, I say, well, where are the salespeople in the stakeholder meeting? Right? Like, where are they right? Making sure that they're there. And then really also pointing out that, you know, we're trying to, you're trying to help them do their job better. So you're going out and saying, What can I do to you know, help you? It's not like, what can I do to replace you with a robot? Right? And because it's almost the same, you know, concern that I've heard from people, it's like, automation is sometimes legitimate fear, you know, for people, but that's not the story here at all. The story is, I'm trying to add efficiency layers, let's say or personalization layers or, you know, other things that will allow you to do your job better.
Unknown Speaker :Absolutely. And maybe it's because I started as a salesperson with my age does that map on my car going around to see customers? But for me, the beauty commerce in a b2b environment is that if you're the sort of salesperson who essentially acts as a checkout operator does in the supermarket, there's a bit, my order is going to go through our typing. I'll take it over the phone not tight, hopefully, that that job, let's be honest, is probably it's time limited. Yeah, because that can be automated that can be shopped online. It can be often these days just on an IVR system on telephone. But the majority of b2b selling that I've worked in requires expertise requires knowledge and value of handling rely requires a relationship to be built between the individual representing my company and the individual representing your company. And that relationships, it's going to be really hard to build an e commerce system. I'm not saying that 10 years time, we won't have a bot that will do everything and react to people's facial gene. Some things, but that's gonna be really hard to do. And I think where the good salesperson will succeed is in understanding that the relationship and those value ads are absolutely where they're going to be. But the day to day ordering, that's where e commerce comes in. And it's a partnership. It's essentially the modern version of sales administration that used to exist those desks where orders would get sent in triplicate, and somebody would type that into a system. That's what e commerce does in a in a big b2b context for me.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, and I like that idea of I think a good sales rep should be going in and looking at Okay, my, you know, here my 100 customers that I manage, you know, here's what they're buying, or, you know, you look and you see all the e commerce they bought these 10 things, well, maybe they have some project coming up, give them a call, like Hey, did you think about these things you might be able to add a bunch of value to what they're buying online or they might not be aware of things that you guys can do as a company. So you could use the data coming in from e commerce to get, you know, call up your customers, and also those sorts
Unknown Speaker :of things. This is the big win, I think for salespeople, if it's if it's made available, and if it's thought through in the process is, what is that going to tell you about the customers behavior that is going to drive you to more sales in the future? How many more customers can you handle? Because the e commerce system is taking the day to day ordering? How much more efficient how much more commission you can earn? Let's boil it right down. If you are in good sales, people are focused on what they can order. And, you know, how much more profit Can I make you make me essentially, by driving this processing? And I think for sales directors, who are often the key stakeholder in that process, you know, how do ecommerce people help them think about what changes about their sales team structure. How does their role change? What's their day to day time? And diary going to look like when an e commerce platform is taking 5060 70% of their business? In terms of the day to day ordering? What is the role changed? And how do I make that efficient? And I think that's where there's a really interesting dynamic if ecommerce people can really support sales and sales teams in that process. It's a virtuous circle from company
Unknown Speaker :makes a lot of sense.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, like, like this term, virtuous circle, by the way, sorry to cross over the term virtuous circle. I've used that in some other recent conversations. And this is exactly that. It's not vicious cycle. You know, like for some other things, this is a virtuous circle, where you're doing something it's really, for example, it's allowing you to do new things you were never able to do because it's freed up time. Right. I mean, so that's also something really important. It's not just the personalization and the efficiency and what have you. totally new things can happen as well.
Unknown Speaker :Absolutely, absolutely. Well,
Unknown Speaker :so I have a segue over to something else, just for a second because he, you know, you you are across the pond as people have, you know, often phrase, and, you know, here we are in beautiful USA, tell, let's talk about inner internationalization. You know, as a topic and b2b e commerce and specifically, I think our listeners are going to be interested in going beyond just currency or language. So what sort of things should people consider what Neil wants us to talk about that for a few minutes?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, so I think I think the first thing to say is
Unknown Speaker :my experience is predominantly European.
Unknown Speaker :So yeah, whilst I've got contacts and I've worked with people in Asia pack
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, Mike, my experience is predominantly there. But I think I think the the danger, often, particularly with Brits and Americans is the language is a little bit of a double edged sword. We speak the same language, so we assume everything's the same.
Unknown Speaker :And it often just isn't.
Unknown Speaker :And the obvious things, as I say, the language currency issues, you know, I spent a call once at InSite, where I was on the call at 10 o'clock at night, my Australian colleague was having breakfast and the team in Los Angeles were on the call with the client at lunchtime. One of one of our American colleagues through to the client, we could get this job done in two weeks. I messaged my colleague in Australia said I've got 14 countries, seven currencies. Every one of those countries and currencies has a unique set of skews that deal with unique prices and local teams that need to be informed and negotiated with. How's the situation for you? Makes it well, much the same. I said how many skills and prices and languages that the American team deal with myself, he said war. And I thought to myself, well, that really sums it up. I mean, and a lot of that is is just the complexity that comes from what looks like the same product being supplied into multiple markets. So the obvious things you know, us is on 110 volts Europe is on to 20 to 40. Little things like Well, okay, that's fine. But Switzerland, which is not in the EU, as the UK know, isn't operates with a requirement for a different electrical connection, and you have to provide the right documentation with that. Even though the machine that you're selling might be normally identical. So what are the implications in terms of the product that I'm supplying? And the skew set that I'm supplying? And are there additional skews or additional taxation? issues that I haven't perhaps thought through when I'm building something and I suppose the chances are your audience is probably US based. And it's very easy sometimes to think, actually, I'm going to sell the same thing. But you've got different legal and taxation restrictions, often that really come into play. And again, I'll give you an example from Rico. Rico is an office print manufacturer. And selling products like printers incurs different challenges in different markets, even within the European Union, which has gone a long way to standardizing these things. So in most European countries, there is a document tax that has To be added to the value of anything that involves the production of documents, that taxation varies, and is not necessarily the same, or even applied in the same way between European Union states, even though it's a standard taxation process, the UK don't care about didn't even care in the single market. So how do I present that on my website? Does my customer need to see that as a separate line item? Because they've got to build for that. And you know, when I was challenging going through this process in Rico, the UK site, the Swedish site, no issues in English, think about Germany, Switzerland, Spain, absolutely a problem. We've got to present that as a separate line. So thinking through how markets work, is potentially pretty complex. And that's where it's important when you're building these global setups to think about how do I get that local knowledge? How do I Make sure I express that so that I'm presenting that that forward in the, in the right way. And you know, how am I going to ensure that the user who comes on the site sees the things that make them feel comfortable making the purchase that you're trying to sell? A little example. One very early on in my time insight, I asked why the Canadian website was being run from Europe. And it was as simple as the US Corp at the time, I'm shortchanging now couldn't cope with the notion of $1 that was not the same for the requirement to produce a website in French as well as in English. And, you know, if you want to do government business in Canada, you have to have friend it's just and you know, they haven't succumb to quite the same dollar at this point. So it's the real subtlety sometimes it's things that people just don't think about.
Unknown Speaker :And the same is true in the other way. If I, if I write something in UK form of English, which chances are you're looking at it and think I understand it, I can read it, but it doesn't feel like my English. There's used and things in was like
Unknown Speaker :why are they there? Guys?
Unknown Speaker :Why are they here?
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I mean, it builds more trust when you're like, it's in my native native language.
Unknown Speaker :And you know, you often see say it's very easy for for organizations either side of the pond to go well, okay. English in particular, is the same. But it You didn't as a native of on either side, you'll notice if it isn't, and that that applies to Spaniards. Yeah. The difference between Spanish spoke in Spain spoken in Spain, and the Spanish spoken in Latin America can be quite marked. French is not the same in different countries, even within Europe. The Swiss being efficient and having a good portion of their population mean German speakers have a word for 70 in French, the French Don't they have 323 20s and a 10. And it's these these kind of things that when you're thinking about how do I express this in language really come forward and my sight is truly internationalized or not. And I think that comes through. But I think the other thing Sorry, I'll quickly say was culture and how do I buy for example, in Germany, people prefer not to buy on credit and if you're buying a you know, If you're running an operation, credit cards are not a big thing in Germany. In the Netherlands, the ideal system is much more popular as a name option than tools like PayPal, or the sort of standard integration you get with banks. So understanding again, that local knowledge can be really important.
Unknown Speaker :I heard like Germany is a Germany that does a lot of like check, or, you know, you can literally just check out and then pay like pay when they get it or you send them a check.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, I mean, obviously, you know, a lot of b2b business tends to be on account, but certainly they are much as a culture again, and it dates back to that if you look at the whole sort of history of post war Germany and their, their mania for savings. It comes really from from the tragedies in the 20s and 30s, of hyperinflation, and people literally shifting wheelbarrow As cash. And that cultural background means that Germans tend to save for purchases. They tend not to want to have credit cards. They you know, they'll go and they'll save up to buy their new new Mercedes.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, the UK and shooting the us a much more like
Unknown Speaker :us very credit card. Yeah. So it sounds like you know, to sum this all up in SharePoint, it's not like they said, oh, let's get this all done in two weeks. It's it's pretty complicated when you're trying to expand to all these regions, then you have a lot of different stores to manage in terms of nuances between the different experiences and it just becomes this magnitude of complexity.
Unknown Speaker :There is an additional complexity. I think the other thing that I would say is the way that users prefer to work, the level of approvals that may be necessary in some countries to get orders approved. will often be different. So if you're all, you know, working in organizations where essentially, the director of the organization has to approve spend, and that that can be much more formal in some countries in some contexts than it is in, particularly in the UK is fairly, fairly straightforward. But people can often require written approvals to be able to be the person that says, I am going to sign this off. So it's just I think that the point I think it's worth making, probably cuz I am from across the pond is just, it's not always as straightforward as saying, we're just going to sell there. You're going to need some local knowledge and you're going to need to look to think through each of those markets.
Unknown Speaker :Awesome.
Unknown Speaker :I mean, one thing I would just underline also said I, in some of the conversations I've had recently and when people Talk about internationalization. It really is, like a category of personalization, right? I mean, because, you know, our abilities to get more, one on one in b2b and b2c e commerce, you know, have changed in recent years. And now, you know, Why leave out internationalization or just say country? You know, and it's, it's really something much more as you're saying, you know, the people and the culture and all of these layers, because, of course, you know, here we, Isaiah and I are in the US, some people will talk about regional differences, you know, in the US when you're targeting certain types of approaches or what have you. But, you know, there are regional differences in every place on earth. And those things need to be recognized if you're really going to build out your b2b e commerce operations.
Unknown Speaker :Absolutely. And I think the two other things that are sort of associated with that, firstly, that country and language and not necessarily synonymous. I've seen a need for English is a language in most European countries? Because certainly where you have international clients, they'll often have expats or native speakers to native Standard English, who may be not from that country. And there'll be much more comfortable in a business context using English. But I think you know, Switzerland for example is a great example you what you want one country, but you're going to have at least three business languages and probably for
Unknown Speaker :in French, German, Italian English, potentially rematch, but predominantly those those four,
Unknown Speaker :if people know, I mean, is this something like 50,000 people speak romance now it's a it's that Isaiah you may know.
Unknown Speaker :It's like this Latin remainder. No,
Unknown Speaker :yeah. It's crazy. It's how many customers most most would be able to speak perfectly fluent Swiss, German or French. This was French.
Unknown Speaker :And I think this is, you know, to your point where you have to make these rules. business cases because all of a sudden it's eat, like you said, it's easy to say, oh, we're gonna expand all these countries, but the amount of complexity and time and effort that you might be putting into all these regions, and then you're getting two orders from this region and three or like,
Unknown Speaker :obviously, you need to think very clearly. Is it worth the time, effort and money spinning up your site in a particular country? You know, for example, you look at the Nordics, a significant proportion of the, of the spending in the Nordics is Sweden. You know, the others have relatively small players, and all of this, but you may have an individual client that you need to service. So do you have your site able to cope with Norwegian orders occasionally from this one client that's based there?
Unknown Speaker :And do you need Norwegian or would English do
Unknown Speaker :and it'll depend on your client base. If they're International, nine times out of 10? They'll be English. That'll be fine.
Unknown Speaker :Soon enough, like a, you know me. And I've seen some companies do this where they just have regions like not necessarily countries like hey, if you're in this region, it's English or whatever they just I guess
Unknown Speaker :it depends how well established you are certainly in the north of Europe and the smaller countries, the Netherlands, generally. Nordics, they tend to be fine with English. If you certainly wouldn't, you failed miserably if you tried that in France. only have a hard time in Germany is bigger the country the more likely it is they want you to speak their language and be Yep.
Unknown Speaker :Makes a lot of sense.
Unknown Speaker :It's, it's, it's one of those things you need to think through. Clearly if you think you might know strategy, you're probably if it's first time into the European market, you're probably thinking well, Germany is the biggest country, UK, France, Italy. Okay, once I've got those four, where do I go next and a half
Unknown Speaker :Those are the things you need to think through. So I'm
Unknown Speaker :gonna ball up my remaining questions into, you know, a moment and you can kind of tackle it. And then we can segue over to Isaiah to, you know, to ask, you know, a few more things. So here's a couple things to kind of capture here. So success and failure, right? I mean, I think we are talking a lot about this, as you know, through line, you know, going going with all of these things that we've discussed, like what allows for success, or you know, what can cause failure, those kinds of things. So that's important, and I want to make sure we get a, you know, maybe a specific tip or two, but also that's also tied in for me with maybe ideas that you've seen in B to C, that haven't yet, you know, moved over into b2b. So, you know, just how would you, you know, address those two areas that our listeners, you know, usually look forward to? Well, I think,
Unknown Speaker :I think the point about success and failure, I mean, Is, is really about understanding two things your market and your product that you're ultimately trying to use e commerce for. So I think if you are a, an organization that relies at some level on volume orders, whether that is I've negotiated a contract with you, and for the next three years, all of the x y Zed machines will be delivered, or whether that is I'm a widget distributor. And here's a million different types of widgets for you to come and visit and buy. I think that's where e commerce really comes into play. The the challenge, and I think, really, this came across from b2c. But the challenge that b2b offers is around personalization. And the most common personalization in b2b is price. I think we often in b2b take ourselves as secondary to b2c. We talk about the wonderful b2b To see personalization for the user, but actually, most b2b e commerce people have been doing this for decades, but they've been doing it in terms of customer price that's been negotiated. And that level of personalization is often the reason our sites tend to be a little bit slower than the site that you might get to buy your clothes or your shoes. We're having to serve you up your personalized price on a range of product that might be 50 60,000 skews deep, with potentially different margins in different product categories. And we're having to serve that up to you. As you log in, as we find out who you are as an individual. That's a pretty epic piece of personalization. That b2c doesn't even have to consider. Nine times out of 100. So I think, I think why wrong, I think we can learn from b2c and we have done I think if you look at the typical b2b e commerce invite And now, it's it's mobile enabled, it's responsive. It's available in formats that that you would see in a b2c environment. The challenge is, what's coming next from B to C? And how do we adapt that to an experience that reflects the essential contractual relationship between one company and another? Because I think that that that obligations is slightly different. And for me, the businesses that succeed in doing this are ones that listen to their customers and listen to their sales forces. And I know that sounds really simplistic, but, but those are the two things that for me work in a b2b environment.
Unknown Speaker :Gotcha. No, that was it. That was a great answer. So. So really like making sure your site actually is supporting the team and the salespeople. It's not just this siloed thing that
Unknown Speaker :You're envisaging that you aren't going to go to a pure play ecommerce operation and essentially getting rid of your sales force. And there are my belief is that very few b2b organizations will want to do that. Because most b2b organizations that I've worked with them I've seen are even if they supply a commodity product, you know, I am widget manufacturer extraordinaire from Hertzberg in Germany, it's the best widget you'll ever find. The chances are that your sales team is talking about the value add of using this widget engine is that support this widget? Have the extensive knowledge in the applications? Yeah, I mean, react on pieces. It unless you're going to be that sort of organization that says okay, I'm just gonna sell whatever I get in from a product for you somewhere. Then I think you've got to win hearts and minds in your sales team and keep them front and center. You have stakeholders and your customers and your stakeholders and your ecommerce sales team.
Unknown Speaker :It makes so much sense. So what do you think? We talked about prices being one of the big differentiators and how complex prices with b2b versus b2c? Where it's just one price, you know, Persky, oh, it's pretty straightforward. Besides price, which we've talked a lot about, like, what are some of the key features or differences that you're seeing from e commerce then, you know, b2c where you're not seeing a lot of b2b with Shopify, because it's more of a b2c platform.
Unknown Speaker :And I think I think the platforms are are starting to realize those differences. So yeah, increasingly, you'll find that some level of approval management system is built in some level of integration to punch out and round trip.
Unknown Speaker :You know, or an easy connect to to a service like Punjab. Go.
Unknown Speaker :Those things are required from from volume b2b customers, I think the ability to restrict users and restrict the catalog that you're seeing, that's one of the major differences for me between why Amazon business isn't yet a medium and large company player to a large extent compared to the likes of a Ribeiro Cooper. You know, if I've got 60,000 skews, but only want my ordinary people day to day users to order 10 of them, I need to be able to lock that system down. So I had a client at InSite, who wanted every user to be able to order a select group of 30 products, but wanted their IT team to be able to order from 60,000 products and setting up a dual contract system based on based on user recognition. To be able to enable that those kind of facilities, I think, essentially replicate the process of a salesperson and a call center in an e commerce environment. And those are the things I think that are going to be the biggest differences and they're going to maintain that. Because the difference between you know, myself or my wife going out and shopping online, it's much less complicated. I'm much more concerned about the individual product price and the delivery and what I'm going to get it versus the levels of service that I might need for free to the environment.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, it's funny, um, are one of the last guests we had. Unfortunately, it's not released yet. It'll come out. Once we, once we release it. The Internet wasn't I hope the internet didn't ruin it because it was a little bit. The connection wasn't as good because I was traveling and he was in South America. So they they've developed this pretty amazing Fully automated b2b experience in South America. And one of the things that he was mentioning that they've spent a lot of time thinking about is that with b2c, you know, you're going and buying five shoes or, you know, 2315 items. But b2b like we have customers that might spend five hours or the entire day, building a, like a robust cart on the website of hundreds of products. And that experience is much different than b2c and that kind of tier point, that personalized catalog experience and how their buying could be very different
Unknown Speaker :flavors, lists, quick orders, you know, I repeat my skews. We've even thought very, very seriously about subscription products for commodities. Yeah. Which I suppose is taking from big to say, you know, I know particularly on Amazon now you can, you can order some of your groceries and have those deliver But every month or every three months or whatever, but you know, when you consider that Well, how about a pallet of paper for a primary school, every term?
Unknown Speaker :Those kind of fundamentals, you're going to need 40 boxes of a4 paper.
Unknown Speaker :And it's got to be delivered at the start of the school term, so they can use it over that period of time. And then the next one doesn't need to come till start the next term. Those sorts of things. Well, how is it How can I make it easier for the business user to to order, but also how can I retain their business? How do I entangle their day to day job with my website in a way that makes it a an experience that most is not necessarily pleasurable? It's not like sitting in front of Netflix. But it's an experience that doesn't make that user feel I don't want to use that company. Well, I'm not gonna give the procurement team a bad bad reputation. This particular
Unknown Speaker :boy, one thing I'll interject to just for a moment is that it's really fascinating to me how long some things have taken to happen, how quickly other things have taken because for example, and you know, Isaiah knows some of this I've had a crazy career, I've done a lot of different things. I was a personal shopper at Bloomingdale's decades ago, it was I was a sales guy doing that, but my, my job as a personal shopper was to work with the big ticket clients and corporate clients. So it was individuals who are often like celebrities or whatever and then it was corporate clients. And it was a it was managing all of these books and paperwork and yellow forms and we had a register that was just for the personal shoppers and they would be typing all day, you know, getting things set up for all these deliver it was this little mountain of work right? So you know, time passes, and in more recent years in the last, file safe Five, six years ago, something like that I was the head of e commerce for b2b and B to C, a company selling LED light. Right? And but they were in that transition about sales teams, you know, on the b2b side and consumers on the b2c side and how all of this was connecting. But on b2b, what they still had is that were humans sitting at computers in their access to the that version of the e commerce site, typing eight hours a day, the orders that would be coming in from the salespeople. So it's like, you know, decades past, right, you'll go from that state. So that's, and now all of a sudden, boom, you know, in the last couple of years, it's an astounding change. You know, we're all of this can be automated and people can be freed up to you know, really personalized service and help these customers, you know, with everything they need.
Unknown Speaker :I think you're absolutely right that the steps forward have been phenomenal, particularly last few years, but I think If you're if you're considering building an e commerce site, whether it's b2b or b2c, you don't go far. And if you think about what is the user, the persona of that user that you're going to be building for, and it might be, you know, I'm going to sit there eight o'clock at night, I'm going to watch something on Netflix, I've got my second screen, and I'm gonna do something, whether it's, I'm shopping for me as an individual, or I'm shopping for my business. If I'm shopping for my business, how do I make it a good experience? So I can still follow the plotline that I'm watching on the telly, and I can I can do the job that I need to do. And that's the same whether you are Yeah. Looking for shoes or looking for large quantities of commodities, what's what's that experience going to be? And then, you know, what is my job role? Am I the decision maker, or am I simply getting a list of things that I've got to procure because I'm in procurement operations. And how mechanical is that? If it's a list of things, can I make it easier for that user? can I provide a service that allows them to upload a list of skews, and just instantly, all of them all? Those some of the most basic looking b2b e commerce sites do really well, because all they do is they have a webform that essentially allows them to the user to select a bunch of skew data, drop it in, and away you go. And those kinds of applications don't really exist in b2c. But it's if you think about how does that make like users life easier? Okay, it's a 32nd job, copy paste from my Excel document, into my website, Bosh done. And that, that making that life easier for that user, whether it's the junior procurement person who's given an admin task, or whether it's a manager who's going to approve 50 different requests from from people across a team, I think those are the bits that really start to make a difference. What and it's exactly the same skill set, as if I'm trying to make sure that I prove that present the right experience to someone in their personal life. So,
Unknown Speaker :so, now that we're, we've talked about a lot of different topics, what do you see? I mean, we talked about how the last three years have really improved a lot. What do you see in the coming, you know, 510 years as kind of this next wave of evolution? And like you said, it's probably not it's going to be pretty hard for someone to build a robot that gets your facial expression and is like a human salesperson or a robot salesperson. So we don't think that's going away. But
Unknown Speaker :I think I think the really interesting thing for me, is just how many business to business organizations haven't even started this joking
Unknown Speaker :around the podcast, right? Just to help people know something.
Unknown Speaker :So I think I think there's two two things. Firstly, the biggest challenge, I think, for b2b e commerce is actually broader than the e commerce structure itself. It's how will those organizations and companies cope with a world that is changing increasingly quickly? Where things like COVID mean that we don't work in the same way that we did? We maybe use offices much less. We're not in the same kind of environment? How do how do you as a selling organization, support your buyers needs, when their work patterns are changing? And can we do that effectively? How do we deliver our product? Did my product require an engineer to install it? Is it going to be safe for that engineer to install it? And if not, how do I do that now? So I think if you've not started this journey, and you think about it pretty badly Quickly. And if you are on that journey, you've got zero really, really clearly on what your changing customer needs are. And how is that job persona changing? And I think that's going to be the challenge is not so much the technology, there'll be wonderful technology that comes forward that we can't necessarily predict over the next few years. But how do you keep zeroed in on what are my customer needs? And how am I handling that? How am I reacting to that? How am I justifying to my board that I need to iterate my website again, for the latest piece of technology for the latest change in user behavior? Because those are the changes in the challenges I think most b2b organizations will actually face much slower is it from a technology point of view, you'd like to think Well, okay, it's the latest, the the next singing, all singing, all dancing piece of tech that'll come along. It'll change it.
Unknown Speaker :Gotcha. I like that answer. Because most people, you know, including myself will say, you know, it's headless ecommerce or which we're big on, you know, this, you know, react or kind of disjointed front end from from the back end and creating this unified user experience. But like, to your point, there's the technology, and that's going to evolve. And that's going to get better, as we all know, but it's really these cultural shift that's going to happen in these organizations that, and I think COVID-19 is a big accelerator of that, where companies and we're getting more of that to where they're realizing we can't rely on the sales rep, you know, flying out and, you know, showing up at their door, like we have to create a more unified digital experience. And that's a cultural shift. That's not going to happen overnight. Like it's going to take
Unknown Speaker :what I would add to so it's really, it's kind of like there's used to be more like innovation in a way was isolated in these teams in the same way. A lot of other Things were siloed over the years. But now it's like the recognition that that innovations are ongoing and it's everyone's responsibility and there's got to be a process in place. And, you know, you've when you launch a site, you've got to know that you're making changes, and it's not it's gonna have a life and there are other things that are going to need to happen. It's it's no longer like, early and I'm sure we've all had this experience, but earlier in these waves of e commerce, you know, craziness, people would sit down and say, Well, this is my, you know, five year plan and I'm just done now. Right and, and, you
Unknown Speaker :know, this website, that's what all that's all need.
Unknown Speaker :You can, that's not gonna happen.
Unknown Speaker :And I think it's really easy for techies, people that like technology to fall into the trap of thinking technology is the thing. For me. technology's always been about 20% of the job. The other 80% is people and culture, whether that's your customers or your existing business. It's how do you best keep them on the side and catered for with the technology that you use and placing them from the center? Rather than necessarily being technology LED is my my one, I suppose a nugget I would pass on possible.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah. And to sum that all up what I like about e commerce and b2b e commerce and I think, hopefully what gets people excited is you know, a lot of the b2b companies they had like you said, innovation, I think that was a really good point was it? Like when you we talked to all these b2b companies, there's the IT guy, the IT director, maybe they have a couple engineers but there's like this siloed IT department and I think what e commerce can do and people in e commerce roles and hopefully more b2b e commerce, or b2b organizations hire an actual ecommerce person because I would bet you that still the average b2b organization still doesn't have a dedicated e commerce Roll person and that person kind of bridge all like they're kind of the the bridge to everything right sales marketing it operation I
Unknown Speaker :think the the fascinating thing is depending on which consultancy, the business has got got involved, that e commerce person that the finally gets hired will either be in marketing or in sales or in it. Yeah. And the reality is you need a little bit of each of those skill sets and know exactly, to be able to be successful in the role.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah, yeah, I like to say e commerce is kind of your business. It is like we the way that we look at it, it's your business. So it's sales marketing operations, and in it
Unknown Speaker :it's what we said before to another episodes, you know, ecommerce is commerce, right? I mean, that's, that's really what it is now. I mean, it's, it's just like, you know, that little letter at the beginning doesn't really be there
Unknown Speaker :anymore. It is. That's so yeah, that's such a good point. We were we're actually working on kind of like refining Our mission statement and vision. We do that every so often that kind of, you know, things change so much. And we were just joking around with ideas. I mean, we call it auto calm automating commerce. Like that's really what it is, right? We're thinking joking about coining the term auto calm. It's like sounds like a transformer some.
Unknown Speaker :Well, I think I think it's a good time to wrap up. Mark, do you have any kind of last remarks before we let you go? or How can people find you?
Unknown Speaker :Well, people will find us at our website, which is transformed to digital.com. We work in all across well, essentially, across the globe. Got contacts in Singapore as well as the States and Europe. And we're, you know, essentially focusing on that piece about how do we make this easier for for businesses that have sold many maybe the same products for years, but how do we make life easier for them To come online, we're not we're not techies in the sense of, we weren't build websites. And we're not going to do our job either.
Unknown Speaker :There's there's plenty
Unknown Speaker :of room for competition.
Unknown Speaker :What we do is help organizations shape themselves for the digital future. And that's, that's I think it's an area A lot of people a lot of agencies aren't necessarily working in. But it's the bigger in my view, it's the bigger challenge than putting up a good website. I love that.
Unknown Speaker :Yeah. Thank you so much for kind of clarifying that. And I think if you're expanding internationally and b2b e commerce, you got to talk to to mark he's been there and he's dealt with growing European countries. So I hope that some of our listeners, reach out to you and, and try and expand and learn from you and we got a really exciting episode. Coming up Episode Four Team Justin Finnegan, former owner of gorilla Group, a pretty massive ecommerce agency, so stay tuned and thank you so much, Mark,
Unknown Speaker :for joining us. Thank you, Mark. It's been great.