Jason Hein on Hybrid Selling, AI-Powered Customer Intelligence, and B2B E-Commerce

[00:00:04] Welcome to Around the Horn in Wholesale Distribution with Kevin Brown and Tom Burton. Sponsored each week by LeadSmart Technologies, Tom, Kevin, and their guests review the news of the week and dive deep into the topics impacting manufacturers, wholesale distribution, independent sales agents, and the global wholesale supply chain.

[00:00:24] Whether it's M&A, SaaS and cloud computing, B2B E-Commerce, or supply chain issues, we peel back the onion with our guests into the topics that impact your business the most. Tom, I had no idea you were so talented at piano. Yeah, well, you know, we're going to learn a lot of things today, right? Yeah, I think that could be true. That could be true. How are you guys?

[00:00:55] I'm good. Yeah, doing great. Doing great. It's a beautiful Friday. I think, Kevin, as we move into the 200s, I think we need to change our intro and our music a little bit. I think it's time. I think it's time. Time for a little EDM. Yeah, right. That's exactly right. Yeah, a little EDM, right? Like dance music. That's exactly up Tom's alley. That's right. Yeah. Tom thought it was a new type of software when you said EDM.

[00:01:25] I've never heard of that category. Electronic dance music. Yeah. Sort of like, think of like Daft Punk. Yeah, I know what EDM is. Yeah. Tom's hip. I had a friend who was really into that. Yeah. There we go. It's cool. I have a couple of Spotify playlists with it. But thinking about that kind of stuff, I'll have one. How about Nightmares on Wax? That one?

[00:01:54] You are clearly more literate. I think it's time to move on. It's not necessarily EDM, but it is along that very gentle, soft path there. Very good background music at a dinner party. My wife questions my decisions on that sometimes. But hey, that's not why people came here today. I do not think. We're here for the audience to judge our decisions. Yeah. Hey, and I will say aloha to Bob. Bob, what do you think? Should we change our music? Should we go?

[00:02:23] Should our intro music change from Vince? Or anybody else who would like to chip in? I think it's just time. I think we need a refresh. So this whole thing was an homage to my father before he died. So my dad is, this is a Vince Guaraldi tune. And Vince Guaraldi coined the Peanuts music, right? And my dad was a big fan of his. And my dad was Charlie Brown.

[00:02:51] So, but I'm ready, Tom. I agree. I think we should do that. And I think we could actually find somebody to create our own individual music for our show. I've actually looked into that. So if people have, Bob says, wives question her decisions all the time. It's their job. Okay. That helps. But the, yeah, music is fine. Maybe even some new, you know, logos.

[00:03:20] Yeah, no, I think it's time for a refresh. Website needs refresh. I clearly need a new camera. It looks like I'm very pale. You are very pale. Yeah. I think we need to, cause. We're getting a camera that puts hair on both of you. Yeah. And my dark skin's not showing through for some reason. So anyway, we gotta, we gotta work on that. But as we were talking about wives, mine to compliment mine, mine stopped me from something.

[00:03:45] We were chatting the other night about today's show and they had a great guest on and then I was, had my phone. And so I showed her a picture of Jason. And now, by the way, this is a tough thing to do because we have dramatically more people listening on the recorded podcast than we do on our live show on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn. But I'm the only one with follicles on his forehead. I'll say on the show here today.

[00:04:12] So I told her, I was going to go on Amazon and get one of those little rubber ball things. And I was going to roll with her today with looking more like both of you. And she stopped me. She said, you know, it's probably not appropriate. I prefer the aerodynamic look myself. I'm much faster than you. Correct. Correct. But you don't have an EV yet. I do not. I do. I'm only a hybrid. I'm half. I'm half EV. All right. All right, Kevin, come on.

[00:04:41] We were supposed to be speeding up today and moving things. Right. So you're already. We're a lot to cover here. So I'm Kevin Brown here with our good friend, Jason Hein and my lifelong friend, Tom Burton. We get together every week unless someone's on an airplane in a hospital or on a planned vacation on the around the horn and wholesale distribution and manufacturing podcast.

[00:05:02] And we talked about what's going on in the world, the economy, supply chain, mergers and acquisitions, sales, marketing, manufacturing, distribution, AI, technology, robotics, sales, marketing. And today, quite a bit of discussion about the always unique, changing and powerful world of electronic commerce. So we have brought an expert with us from the B2B e-commerce association. Jason, we're happy to have you with us today.

[00:05:33] And why don't you, as we kind of dive in, tell us just a little bit about you and your background, B2B e-commerce association. And then we'll do that fairly quick. We'll finish our intro to the show. We'll dive into the news. But then when we get to e-commerce, we're going to dive hard and heavy to some thoughts and some questions that Tom is at some thoughts and opinions that I've had for many years that you may be able to dispel or or answer fine. So let's dive in and understand. So who am I and why am I here?

[00:06:03] I'm Jason Hein. I'm the vice president of Academy for the B2B e-commerce association. I have spent most of the last 30 years working in B2B. I've worked for manufacturers. I've worked for distributors. I've worked for consulting firms and agencies. I've worked for software platforms, all focused on helping companies try to figure out how to do this whole e-commerce thing right and how to do it well.

[00:06:31] And I do a lot of what I'm doing in the academy space is really about education and providing resources for members who are distributors, members who are manufacturers, members who are agencies, members who are vendors.

[00:06:46] And I've worked for customers to try to figure out how to have conversations on this topic where the providers can actually like say things that the distributors and the manufacturers can understand in terms of like, what are the things that the sellers can do that can actually materially help the manufacturers and distributors create a digital experience that helps their customers. That's what I do.

[00:07:15] Yeah, I've I've I spend a lot of time talking about product data. I spend a lot of time talking about differentiation. I spend a lot of time talking about, you know, the how technology is actually not the thing it's this is if there's one mistake I see people make the most. It's thinking that digital and e-commerce means I'm going to go out and buy a platform, an e-commerce platform and build a website and launch it.

[00:07:42] And then once I do it, customers will start to buy from me and my business will grow. And this is not field of dreams. If you build it doesn't mean anybody's going to come. And even if people do come, if you don't have something worth watching on the field, they're not going to stick around. Good. Well, let's dive into that a little bit deeper as we get to that e-commerce section that we have in our newsletter.

[00:08:05] So for those of you that have not heard of us before and might be listening for the first time, this is episode number 197 of our Around the Horn Wholesale Distribution podcast. Tom, we need to go back and look at me, you know, work with Dana and John on this and Lily and put a list of our guests together and make a little montage of clips of some some key things that have happened. I think it's been fun. We're going to have a 200th episode extravaganza.

[00:08:35] It will be after we have actually had our 200th anniversary because that's in three weeks. But August 21st, we have, I think, six guests confirmed. Oh, wow. Yeah. It's going to be fun. Tom and I are going to be remote at a fun location on the waterfront in Dana Point, California. We got that coming together. It's going to be a fun one. So, Jason, I expect you to be listening that day and commenting. I will. I will. I mean, well, is it? Yeah.

[00:09:04] August 21st. Yeah. I think I'm in town. I'm around. Dana Point's lovely. I had my rehearsal dinner for my wedding in Dana Point. Perfect. Good spot. Well, I live four miles up the hill from there. So we are going to have a fun spot. It's going to be great. Mark your calendars for the 21st. Before we dive into the news, again, we do this every week. If you do not get the newsletter that we publish, which is what will be up on our screen in a few moments,

[00:09:33] that we'll be talking about it, talking from the Around the Horn of Volsoil Distribution and Manufacturing Newsletter, goes out to 12,000, 13,000 people now each week on Friday mornings. We would love to get that to you. If you'd like to get that newsletter and you don't, a simple way to get it is just send us an email at hello at leadsmarttech.com. You can go to the website for the podcast, which is www.aroundthehornpod.com and sign up for it there.

[00:10:01] Or you can certainly, if you're active on LinkedIn, you can just search for the podcast there. You can also see it if you are on the Lead Smart Technologies page. Click that button. Sign up for the newsletter. We'll get that out to you every week. And if you do it through LinkedIn, LinkedIn will also send it to you in their format as well. And you can get that. We would love it, though, if you enjoy what you hear each week. If you would hit the subscribe button if you're on YouTube.

[00:10:27] If you're listening on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or another podcast format, hit the subscribe and please leave a review. That is the best way that we can get this out in front of more people. Typically, we're out in six to eight countries every week. We get downloads or viewers. Many different countries are listening in and we'd like to get this out in front of more people. We couldn't do the show without the sponsorship of the company that Tom and I work for, LeadSmart Technologies.

[00:10:52] Lead Smart has developed the industries first, what we describe as an enterprise growth platform. That's going to launch next week in its full format, but we've been doing a lot of parts of it for quite some time, where we bring together data from around an organization, your e-commerce data, your ERP, your marketing automation, other disconnected tools.

[00:11:13] We bring those all into a centralized platform, and that's where we use technology and artificial intelligence and other tools to really look across an entire organization, get rid of those silos, bring that data together in one unified platform where we can look at what's happening in all of the journeys of a customer and in all facets of the business and give prescriptive guidance on how to accelerate growth, identify issues and problems, and solve those before they become bigger.

[00:11:39] So if your company is digitally transforming, looking to use technology in a way that truly enhances what you're trying to do in your business, we would love to talk to you. So, Tom, would I miss anything or can we finally jump into the news? I think it's maybe time, yeah. Good. Take us away. Well, interestingly enough, I found this first article, Warsh named Fed Task Force, Task Force, forces, plural, not one, but several task forces.

[00:12:10] Yeah. To, I guess, basically do a lot of deep dive and due diligence in general on things related to the Fed, whether it's their balance sheet, how they communicate, how they, you know, basically how they're using the data, are they using the correct data, all of that. However, however, they are doubling down on 2% and getting to that 2% level.

[00:12:39] So I don't think, Kevin, they listen to you. I don't understand. Maybe we need to send them a couple of the replays or the snippets that you're trying to put together. But everything is really trying to focus on how are we going to get down to the 2% level? And, you know, obviously then trying to really understand what are some of the things that may be just friction or problematic in the Fed in general. Which I think is great. Which I think is great.

[00:13:08] I'm calling Marc Andreessen this afternoon and we're going to have a chat. Okay. Yeah. Just get him on the show. See how he responds first. So, Jason, just to insight when you saw me shaking my hands and pounding my head is the first thing when I read this article, I got started to read it. I got all excited. And they said, man, they're opening their eyes. They're going to start bringing some outside thought leadership in. And then it was like 2%.

[00:13:36] But the upside is, looks like that plot's gone. So, maybe even if we're going to stay focused on the 2%. Jason, what I've been saying for quite some time is maybe 2% isn't the number. And maybe listening to a mid-level politician in a hallway in New Zealand in 1983 or whatever it was, that that's where we got 2% is the world. So, you know, the world is now adopted as a reasonable inflation rate.

[00:14:02] If you ever, I don't know, Jason, if you've heard us talk about this or if you've read the story before, but how the world came to 2% as a number for inflation. And then the benchmarks that we're using based upon the technology that's currently available to us in the world, just, it's astounding. So, I've been banging my heart against the wall. And when I first saw this, I said, oh, we're going to bring some technology leaders and some other business leaders in. And Ben Bernanke is going to be involved in some of this now, too, as well.

[00:14:31] It's like maybe we can get started on thinking about maybe 2% is not the right number because the economy has been cranking, you know, specifically earlier this year and last year at around the 2.75% or 3% rate. So, maybe we should be thinking about something different or at least using some more up-to-date data points that don't need to be readjusted every two months from what we base things on. So, that's a little baseline, Jason.

[00:15:00] I don't know if you have any thoughts on this particular point. Yeah, I mean, I remember, you know, I think part of what maybe has happened is that we have somehow, that the government has gotten trapped at 2% because something happened in the last, like, 20 years or so, because we started talking about inflation so much as a political talking point, it's become something that people pay attention to now. And it has become their canary in the coal mine.

[00:15:29] And they, the average person now, when you talk about, and because everybody's so used to inflation being so low, I mean, I remember, I mean, I don't know. Like, I'm old enough to remember when a lot of the economic indicators were significantly different and that was considered normal.

[00:15:48] But I think this is, it's almost the problem of now that the media has trained people that anything above 2% is bad, the degree of education that would be necessary to convince them of anything otherwise is scary and it would be expensive. And so, I suspect that that's factoring into this somehow. I think that's a great point.

[00:16:15] And maybe, Tom, with this is maybe that bringing these task forces together, you know, wanting to start, they say they want to start working from first principles and figuring out what the drivers are. Or maybe this is the first point in it. Maybe, like, okay, so we're going to stop the dot plot and we're going to, you know, bring this group in. So maybe this is a good first step forward on, you know, yeah, going ahead and figuring out that maybe 2% stays and remains fixed like that.

[00:16:42] But maybe this is the start of finding some other metrics to tie to that. Well, I do think that they'll probably find other metrics and more real-time metrics along the way. I think that would be some sort of byproduct of modernizing, right, what's going on here. But it's an interesting point. And that's, Bob, I thought your point was really on track, is 2% is an arbitrary number, right? It was pulled out of the air. 3% is an arbitrary number if you take 3%.

[00:17:12] Sure. So I agree with you that I do believe that the 2% is sort of what everybody believes is okay, right, is good, right, as an arbitrary number. So if they're going to go for an arbitrary number, why not work towards that and see if it could be achieved, right? It may or may not be able to be achieved. We'll find out.

[00:17:36] But I don't see that there's any real – if you're going to pick an arbitrary number, you might as well pick an arbitrary number that everybody is already kind of understands, to your point, Jason. And then let's work to see if we can achieve it by looking at some of these things here. And then if we can't achieve it, then that's a different story. But at least we might understand why we can't achieve it and, you know, what's happening there.

[00:18:02] And I think there are certainly some risks of achieving it with, you know, AI and productivity and all the – I mean, there's a lot of things that could potentially factor into that. But why not put that as my, you know, B-ag, right? Let's just – let's go for it. Right. Well, maybe this is the first start towards some of that. You know, I think – look, if the administration is who chose – or the president is who chose Walsh in this setting.

[00:18:30] And so, you know, while I don't think he's going to buckle to anything in his first week or two, and he made it pretty clear he was going to stay independent on these things. But there is no question about – he understands the expectations or the goals of the administration. The goals of the administration are to get interest rates lower to stimulate the economy. Sure. So there's going to be that continued pressure that goes here. I think what becomes interesting, even if we look at the next article about – it's so funny.

[00:18:59] I'm going to hit pause on that for a second. You know, Jason, we talk a lot here about poly market and the prediction markets. And, you know, we've got this other one, Calci, that's – you know, it's interesting. NBC is invested in Calci, so you hear constantly about Calci on CNBC.

[00:19:19] But, you know, the next article we talked about from CNBC here was about that Calci traders see roughly 50% odds of a rate hike in 2026 as the Fed is split on a policy decision. And I think – my feeling on this, and if you dive into that really, is that the likelihood is that we'll stay flat for a while. In fact, Tom, you're bringing a poly market right now. So what are you looking at? Yeah, I mean, they're showing 37% chance in September. Of a cut or a hike? Hike. Okay.

[00:19:49] And another 15%. So this is not showing 50%. I mean, maybe if you, I guess, took all of it and averaged it all together, maybe you could – but I don't see that. I don't see how the – no, I don't want the U.S. app to trade. You already have it, right? No, I don't have the app. But you can now trade, I guess, from what I understand. You can. Both Calci and Polymarket is. Yeah, I'm going to have to put my money where my mouth is on some of these things.

[00:20:16] I'm actually quite – Jason Tom is a – he's a gambler. He's a blackjack guy, and we have bets going on this show all the time. And I owe him some tacos, and he owes me a steak right now. Oh, that sounds like you're on the – sounds like you're on the right side of that one. I actually like tacos. You don't know what kind of tacos I'm going to get. That's fair. That's fair. Wagyu and lobster tacos. That's right. The A5 Wagyu tacos. Yeah.

[00:20:45] Boy, that's scary that you say that because Tom and I are going to be together in Florida next week. But for those of you that missed it and that are listening in live, Tom just had Polymarket up on the screen. We are looking at the likelihood of the percentage of increases or reduction in interest rates.

[00:21:06] You know, there's this push-pull going on with this right now, right, is that you've got people within the Fed that want to raise. You've got people that want to lower. And you've got a marketplace that's saying, we're fine, right? What do you do in this setting? And I think it would be really difficult for them to raise. But as we've talked about – I think that would be really stupid. I've said this before. Yeah. Right.

[00:21:36] It's – Inflation or the – And this word inflation is used really incorrectly, right? Inflation generally means the supply of money has increased in the system, right? We've inflated the supply of money in the system, which is where the word came from. But what we really have had is price increases, predominantly due to the war and potentially tariffs, if you want to look at that as well.

[00:22:03] It has not been like during COVID where we actually had an inflationary situation of a bunch of money entering in the system. Right? It's there. Now, what some of these governors are saying as well, with all the productivity and everything that we're having, the job market is going to go crazy and all of those types of things. Like, okay, but does that really – does that introduce any more money into the system, right, that are there?

[00:22:29] So I think any sort of rate cut rate – or I'm sorry, rate hike at this point – and I've done a little homework on this because I was like, am I missing something here? You know, I'm not. And from what I can tell in the homework I've done, a lot of the key governors and people in the – are saying similar things. It's like, why would we do that? Why would we want to raise rates at this point based on price increases that are here

[00:22:54] and potentially take and have a double whammy of increased prices plus increased interest rates, which is going to slow down potentially into a recessionary situation? Why would we want to do that? And I still can't find any good evidence to actually make that happen. Yeah. I don't know.

[00:23:17] Like, I think – I think that this article, like the headline of this article is that nobody really knows anything right now. That we are in a place – So when in doubt, follow what we do at the ground horn. Right. Exactly. Exactly. Do what Kevin and Tom said. That's right.

[00:23:38] You know, the fact that we as a society have gotten to the point where now we're basically looking at legalized gambling markets as a sort of palantir for the masses is almost, in my opinion, laughable. I think that – because here's what I don't like about it. Markets like this work really well when the people that are participating in the market are well-informed

[00:24:06] and are working off of information that is publicly available. What Kalshi and Polymarket, I think, are doing by all of their, like, aggressive promotion and advertising is you are just bringing in more people into the market who know less about the things that they're betting on. And creating incredible influence on that outcome. Right.

[00:24:33] And so I feel like – here's the thing. You don't need to have real money involved in these things for prediction markets to work well. People forget that one of the first prediction markets to hit the space decades ago was a site called HSX.com, which was the Hollywood Stock Exchange, which I have been an account member for for almost 30 years.

[00:24:59] And what it is, is just – it's a simulated stock market around, like, movie releases and Hollywood stars. Wow. Never heard of that. And you basically – you create an account, you get, like, $2 million in fake money, and you can bet it on, hey, is this movie that's releasing this weekend going to make more or less than the market amount? So basically, like, if it makes – if it's more successful and it earns more money in its first week,

[00:25:29] you get, like, an IPO bump, and if it's less, the value drops. You can learn everything about kind of financial investing, and it doesn't cost you anything. And it is just as effective. Tom's logging in right now. Yeah, it's super fun. And, like, so I don't know. I've got some real deep-seated issues with the for-profit prediction markets.

[00:25:58] It's just gambling, and I don't think anybody's going to convince me of anything otherwise. Can they be useful? In theory, they can, but in theory, communism can be useful. I think it's when you actually put it in the hands of real people and folks who have the chance to influence it. I don't know. Humans are – humans are – can get a little – humans will take advantage of whatever incentives are put in front of them. And so –

[00:26:27] I think, John, I think our editor, John, is going to make some clips from that communism comment attributed to you. So, Tom, before we jump on that, you know, I think it is intriguing, your comments about the prediction markets in that setting, and I'm appreciative of it. I think what we're going to see is – well, let me rephrase that.

[00:26:50] I'm interested to see what comes of them because where they really hit was with what Polymarket was able to do in predicting the presidential election. Right. That's what got people's attention was like, wait a minute. You know, you've got, you know, all of these pollsters out there, and you've got CNN and CNBC and, you know, Fox and everybody that are trying to predict these elections.

[00:27:15] And all of a sudden, you've got this movement that was started happening, and it was a gradual thing. And all of a sudden, Polymarket said Trump is going to win. And that was – if, in fact, there is no spin behind it or no manipulation, if it is truly what the market was saying, it was – it had an influence on the election. Yeah.

[00:27:39] All of a sudden, and it gave us real data as opposed to assumptions from a group of people standing outside of some polls or in a mall, who are you going to work for, right? Now we get a broader scope, a bigger data set for that to work from. And I think it's quite intriguing to me what will play out with all of this. The question is, you know, if you want to get a little bit of – what's the term?

[00:28:10] A doomsdayer, but – Dystopian? Yeah. Well, anyways, if you want to get – yeah, that's pretty dramatic, but yes. If there was someone behind this, right, or an organization or a group that has a particular agenda that could get behind one of these that people don't know and try to manipulate the data, then you're getting – you know, there's some risk to that.

[00:28:36] But if this is truly as democratic as it's supposed to be, it does start to play an interesting thing in what we see within the economy. If you get enough people putting pressure into a market like that, you can see some results coming from it. Yeah. If you get enough people who understand the bets that they are making – Well, that's your point, right? Then – The point is – Right. Is that what's happening? Yes.

[00:29:01] Is it a 12-year-old that used his dad's ID to open an account, and now he's trying to influence things with his thinking? That's pretty risky, right? Or even a 37-year-old who used his dad's ID to create an account. I mean, either way, it's the knowledge that they're bringing to the market. You know what? Bob just made a really good point, right?

[00:29:23] He says here elections probably have the most number of uninformed participants, which if you think about that, if you look at the elections that have happened recently in L.A. and in other places where there's accusations of voter fraud and things like that. So what's worse? Is a prediction market worse or is what's really happening at the polls worse? Who knows? Either way, I think we can all agree the problem is the state of education. Okay. There you go. And I would say let's get the interest rates down.

[00:29:53] That's my big push. So whatever we need to do. Tom, why don't we jump into the last article that I was just going to mention in the economy and supply chain was one from MDM. Our good friend Mike Hockett put together. It talks about wholesale sales accelerate far-up-pacing inventories, which is important, right, of what we're seeing. Because the world that we live in, right, in the title under Jason's name there, it says B2B. And we live in a B2B world.

[00:30:21] So understanding what's happening in the wholesale sector. So sales accelerated in May, 18% year-over-year increase in May. So that was far-up-pacing what was expected and a modest 4% growth that was in inventories. So anyways, things are moving fairly well in this market. We've got some data later on that, although some in the HVAC and plumbing market that folks from Artie serve. It's in an article later. Things are off a little bit.

[00:30:50] But good to keep an eye on these. The great place to come is if you want to get the insights every week is get this newsletter. What we try and do is bring together all of the top news stories from other articles that we've curated throughout the week together and get that out to you. So if you don't get our newsletter and you'd like to, please let us know. Tom, you want to roll through the supply chain and get down into the AI world? I just noticed we have the same headline here twice. Oh, look at that. We missed that.

[00:31:20] But two different articles. Well, thanks for pointing out my errors on the live show. It's awesome. I don't think it was your error. I don't think anyway. But it is two different articles. Well, there's different spins, right? So one of them is from GCAPTEN, which is the shipping and supply chain side. And the other one is from another supply chain article. But same topic, different, little different spin. So you want me to move ahead? Well, why don't you stop on where you want to stop next? Let's do that. Let's roll the dice. See what you come up with.

[00:31:49] Well, the Polymarket prediction said I would move right into manufacturing distribution and M&A as our next step. What did Calci say? Calci, I don't know. I haven't looked at Calci, but Polymarket said it was a 83% chance. I'm looking forward to you having an account with both of those and sharing your experience. Well, yeah, because I'm informed better. Well, if the world ever had one, it would be you. That's right. Pull the average up, Tom. That's right.

[00:32:19] Maybe I need to get two accounts. That's twice. Borrow your dad's ID. That's right.

[00:32:50] That's right. Okay. We have a reference to Net Plus in the Pulse Alliance and the good folks over there. Dan Judge, who's a regular listener to the show, he publishes an economic outlook regularly. So what the trade associations and buying groups do from a research standpoint, we always try and share.

[00:33:13] So it's not necessarily good news, but we're appreciative of our friends from Hardy sharing what they're seeing out there and what they have seen so far from their members as well. They say may sales split to a 4.8% decline, which is interesting, Tom, to talk about that. You know, and in the, I had a comment here. There's this magic. Eight ball says you'll be moving to the AI section next. It's coming. Don't worry. It's coming.

[00:33:44] So the. Place your bets. Place your bet right now. That should be it. That should be its whole own poly market. When will Tom move to AI in the around the horn podcast? That's funny. We need to set up like a little betting thing throughout the show that people could bet. Yes. What went on? Why do you want to do that? But, you know, that's a new way to monetize. No, no. That is a vibe coding. Right. Quad code project for your cursor project for you this weekend. This.

[00:34:10] How do we have live our own prediction market on the around? How do you fund each episode? Yeah. The ATH prediction market would be great to have that live during the show. So, man. See how I can help you with what your weekend plans are, Tom? Yeah. That's great. I appreciate it. You work on vibe coding that. I'll have some DoorDash tacos delivered. Okay. Okay. The Wagyu and Lop where the surf and turf was. The Wagyu.

[00:34:39] I don't know if I could DoorDash Wagyu tacos. But, tell you what, we're going out for steaks Tuesday night with some friends and customers and prospects in Orlando. I'll stop at the store and get some tortillas to bring to Vito's Chop House in Orlando. And you can make tacos with your ribeye. Look at that. See how kind I am? You're so kind. I'm a great friend. You are. You know? Self-described. Self-described.

[00:35:08] I hope to one day get tacos from you. You know what? When you are in Southern California next, you let me know. I will find you and I will take you for tacos. Sounds great. I will look forward to that. All right. There's even a couple of great spots right in Dana Point that we were talking about. Oh, I know. I got married in San Clemente. Okay. Right there. Good. Good. Good. Okay. That means we need to get back on track.

[00:35:36] So our friends, we'll be seeing some of their folks next week at Lone Star Electric. Jason, I don't know if you're familiar with the folks at Lone Star, but they are a meteoric growth company. I won't discuss the revenues because I don't have the authority to do that. But the revenues that they've achieved in their 10 years of operation, I don't know anybody that's ever heard of it and their growth.

[00:36:04] So they just did an acquisition, opening new warehouses, expanding their territories. Good for them. We're appreciative of their team there. They've been using our LeadSmart platform for a little bit. We're going to have hundreds of people on our platform very shortly. And a great partner to work with. And it's great to see their growth. So another acquisition in this section here is another great LeadSmart customer, Endries. Endries did an acquisition this week.

[00:36:33] So that's pretty exciting. But the other thing is, and Jason, you might have some thoughts on this, is the folks at Affiliated Distributors just acquired Supply Force. Yeah. And are you familiar with that? Do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah. It just continues the trend. I mean, I've known the folks at AD for many years now. It's a great organization.

[00:36:56] They have done so much to kind of empower independent distributors between the programs that they build, the services that they offer. And it is interesting if you kind of look at the last few years, like they just they continue to expand by acquisition. Commonwealth Group, right? Remarked Division. Yeah. They just keep plugging away.

[00:37:24] And I think that just makes their value proposition that much more compelling. So, like, I think I call out the folks at AD. I think they're doing they've got some really intelligent, smart, strategically thinking people around, you know, just the regular operations of a distribution company.

[00:37:47] But they've got some great programming around digital, around helping to help non-digital or digital immature companies ramp up quickly. Yeah. Carolyn Ertz and her team are doing a great job. They really are. Yep. Yep. Yep. So we're at Lead Smart. We're a preferred service provider partner of theirs. Oh, great. Yeah. So I don't know if I've ever shared that with you. We'll be at their Functional Success Summit next week.

[00:38:12] We're kicking off and launching a whole new array of products and overview of what we do at that event. So that is a standby for some excitement next week coming from us at Lead Smart. And kind of some, I think it's going to do some stuff to really help their members. A couple of the companies we've talked about today, well, Lone Star Electric, as an example, is an AD member as well. We actually met them through AD. It's fantastic.

[00:38:41] But this supply force thing is really interesting, too. There's, I don't know enough about the original history of supply force. I think it's tied together with some key AD members. But the focus of supply force has always been to try and get independent regional distributors tied together to serve national accounts. The simplest way to think about it is, you know, you've got maybe Boeing has facilities in 10 states,

[00:39:10] but you're a fastener distributor in Wisconsin and Illinois. You wouldn't really get to typically participate in that business. But with the supply force relationship and the AD tie to that is that brings the AD members together. I had always thought there was more of a AD almost ownership in supply force than there actually was. And so with this full acquisition, then it just brings that in house.

[00:39:38] I think with AD's now movement into some other arenas, my guess is, you know, they're more and more in construction. And it would not surprise me if we see some things related to fasteners and stuff like that tied into the industrial segment coming soon. So AD's growth is phenomenal. It's great for our business. And we're appreciative of that in the relationship. What I do find interesting and want to ask a few people at the upcoming events, some of the members that we work with is, you know, historically,

[00:40:08] and I was on the phone yesterday with a longtime veteran of the manufacturing side of the world. Historically, that in buying groups in general is you get the top key customers in a market, right? Maybe the top two electrical distributors in Southern California might be AD members.

[00:40:30] But when you start doing these acquisitions, you now likely are going to get more people that are competing against each other in a group. So I have not yet had any significant conversation with any distributors. Think about that. This is, hey, you know, historically, you might have been the safety guy in the Pacific Northwest within AD. Yeah. Right. And now if they end up with maybe another acquisition or two in that industrial and industrial safety segment,

[00:40:58] do you have three or four of your competitors in the same buying group versus just one? And the issue that I question, and I don't know the answer to this, is if you have the power of the buying group, regardless of which one it is, you have the power behind purchasing through the buying group with a vendor, 3M, simplest example.

[00:41:25] You had this power with your 3M relationship that these two or three guys, other guys didn't. And now their smaller buying group gets acquired and now has that same power. Yeah. What does that mean? And I'm sure you answered that question for their members. I just, no one shared it with me. Well, I think that actually goes to Bob's question that he just posted in the chat. You know, is acquisition really growth? You know, is it, what does it improve value to a customer?

[00:41:54] And I think it has to do with the fact that the larger these associations grow, right, the better their ability to negotiate better pricing for their members is. So that's, I think, where I see the value there. Although I do agree that your point on, you know, as I acquire, as we bring more people into the loop, the odds are that, oh, now I've got somebody local who's a competition is a real one.

[00:42:22] I think the flip side of that, though, is if I'm a PE firm and it is actually helping me to target who I'm looking to add and roll up, because if I've got two or three acquisition targets who are all members of the same buying group, oh, fabulous. Well, I know they've got a lot of things, access to a lot of the same resources they're going to be able to kind of ramp up.

[00:42:47] I might, you know, choose to buy those two that are next to each other because I want to improve my regional coverage in an area. Again, I'm just spitballing, you know, what are some of the things that having that close-by competition might change the decision-making? Because there's just so much happening right now in the M&A space. Well, I think you're right. And there's a flood of money, right? They call it dry powder.

[00:43:16] Tom's talked about this quite a bit in the past as well, that are out there in the PE world. We talk to PE folks all the time. And I think that is an intriguing issue. The other thing I think, and I've actually met PE folks at AD events that have been there. Oh, I bet. Yeah. So I think if you look at that, I don't want to say it's always best in breed.

[00:43:38] But what you do know is if you're a potential acquirer of a distribution company that is part of a buying group, whichever one it is, they definitely have more access to best practices and resources that the guy that's not doing that in the marketplace wouldn't have. So that's great. Yeah. Tom, what do you say we roll in and maybe talk about artificial intelligence?

[00:44:07] Yeah, there was just, there was one article here. And again, I know we want to move on and we definitely, I definitely want to get into the e-commerce conversation here in a minute. I think some of this will tie in, right? Yeah. But the one article, I mean, there's a good article here from the American Supply Organization, high level, right? Where it's talking about, you know, how do you get ready for AI and looking at some of the things there. I think there's some, because it's pretty high level, but I think it's got some good points in there.

[00:44:38] My attention kind of stuck more on the second article. I thought it might. About job displacement or, which has really turned into a very big, I believe PR problem, if you want to call it that for, for AI where, and a lot of the, I think politicians have grabbed onto it. And a lot of other people that, oh my God, we're all going to, no one's going to have jobs and no one's going to need to work.

[00:45:04] And, you know, low level jobs are going to go away completely and, you know, we're going to have huge unemployment and all of that kind of stuff. Which, look, I think obviously there will be job displacement, but I think a great example, and I don't agree. So I'll come out and say, I don't agree that AI is going to actually create a big problem, employment problem.

[00:45:31] I think it's going to create an employment problem of that, not having enough people for the jobs that are needed, but it's not going to create a unemployment problem overall. And if you look at, you know, everybody just a few months ago said, oh, software engineers, no one's going to need software engineers anymore. Don't, you know, if you're in college, don't take computer science, don't take software engineering because look at how much AI is just, you know, doing.

[00:45:58] But if you look at the primary use case of AI right now, it's coding. It's building code. Right now, there are more demand for software engineers, more companies hiring software engineers than ever before. So you would look at that and go, why would that be? Right. Right. Well, it's, I think it's pretty obvious, right?

[00:46:22] The ability to create software and to do it in an efficient manner and in a practical cost efficient manner has increased. So therefore, all the ideas that we have, right? I think you even, Kevin, earlier, so go vibe code the poly market thing, right? Well, that would have, you wouldn't have made that statement a year ago. Right. You wouldn't even have thought about it because you're like, oh God, you'd have to hire an engineer and it's going to take months to do it.

[00:46:49] And so now a lot of these ideas and opportunities that before would never have been even considered are being considered. And now you need more people to help facilitate it. And as you know, AI coding doesn't work 100% on autopilot, right? You don't need intelligent engineers and things like that. Tom, to go with what you're saying, and I want you to continue, and I just want to interject this, is I was on the phone earlier this week with a startup that just raised a seed round of $7 million. Okay.

[00:47:20] You know where it's going to? Engineering? Engineers. Yeah. And the vast majority of that is engineers. So, I mean, I just, I think we have to look at this as what's, what has history told us, right? Yeah. When Henry Ford figured out what an assembly line is, everybody was going to lose their job, right? The world was going to end. Then this thing happened called the internet. Oh, my God. You know, the world is going to change.

[00:47:50] What happened? It created jobs. And even when the ATM came out, they said that was the end of bank tellers. And now it actually increased the number of bank tellers that were needed because there were more people going to the bank more frequently. Yep. Yep.

[00:48:07] Yeah, I think there's a, the other thing we have to keep in mind about AI is AI is a very, very, very good average in terms of the outputs that it gives you. Because it represents kind of, you know, it is the mean of all of the work that's ever been done and that is stored in all of these LLMs.

[00:48:34] But the things that drive the most innovative companies is not the average. It's the, it's the, it's the, it's the ability to raise the bar to come up with something new, to come up with something innovative, to come up with something that is, that is an order of magnitude better than anything that's ever been done before. It's extraordinary, right?

[00:49:04] It's not ordinary. It's extraordinary. And you don't, you don't get that from an LLM. No, but you can leverage an LLM and you can leverage some of that to potentially create something. Right. Leverage might be the most important word with this. Right. It's, it's, and again, with the right people involved or having people involved. Some of the things I know we've been able to do would not have been, we've, I think we've been able to create some extraordinary.

[00:49:33] Things that would have been impossible, nor I would have even, I wouldn't even have, I wouldn't even thought about undertaking them because it would have just been too, too difficult. Right. And too expensive. Well, you know, again, I like the, the leverage comment, right? Because I was just talking to her marketing director the other day and we're starting up another new, well, we've done a little bit in the past, but it's something I really want to stick to within our organization.

[00:50:03] Of having our weekly kind of this week, next week meeting about, you know, highlights of the week and, you know, where we need help, what we accomplished, what's going on next week with our team. And one of the things that I was just talking, literally Tom, being in our retirement this earlier week is what I want to add into that discussion is what, what new did you achieve this week with AI? Right. What, what tools did you build? What thoughts did you have about agents that we should build internally to help the company be more efficient?

[00:50:32] And I think what's coming out of this, I just use myself as an example, but I'll, I'll use myself and compare myself to a, um, order entry clerk that works at the distributor. Right. I might've shown up as an order entry clerk as a distributor because that's where my skillset was.

[00:50:49] But if my company that I work for looks at this in the right way, they can use AI to leverage the talent that I do have to make me better while making the company better. And I'm not going to lose my job. I'm just going to do better things with the skills I have and I'm going to upskill myself. So there's a huge opportunity in that setting for organizations to look at that.

[00:51:15] And I just look at the stuff, you know, that Jason, I built recently, you know, using cloud code. I have cloud code send me four emails every day, right? What does a company pipeline look like from a sales standpoint? What's going on? What's going on in client success? How many tickets are open? Average hours to close or average hours to respond, average days to close. All kinds of different metrics.

[00:51:40] Those are things that it would have taken somebody hours and hours to do for me. I could have done, but would never go do because I don't have time to go log into Zendesk all the time. I do have time to look at a quick email that comes every morning that says, here's what's going on with our service levels in our company. So I think the leverage to Tom's point, I think, Tom, you win for the single phrase of the day that this is going to provide is going to far outpace job losses.

[00:52:09] Yeah, I think it's just unfortunately been turned into a little bit of a political, maybe not more than a lot of political things. And it's being used to drive agendas and things like that. It gets behind people that don't want to see data centers built, right? Right. So anyway, yes. Well, there'll be some jobs that are not the same, of course. There'll be people sorting packages in Amazon when there's robots that can do that. Maybe not. Right.

[00:52:39] But I don't know if those are jobs that people really want anyway or are super great jobs. Yeah. You know, the other article that we can move on, the other argument I was having at the other night at a 4th of July party or a debate, right, about self-driving cars. And if we had a lot of self-driving cars, at least where I live, I would seriously consider using them frequently for my day-to-day transportation. Right.

[00:53:08] I would literally just rather than driving my car, I would just go into my app and have the car come and grab me and come and go. Right. As long as I've lived in my house, other than going to the airport a couple of times, I've never asked or called for a taxi. Ever. Right. I've done an Uber maybe a handful of times. Right. But I could count them on the finger of one. Because it's just not how I operate, right, how we operate.

[00:53:35] You mean to go to dinner or something like that? Yeah, to go to dinner or to go to the grocery store or go to the gym or whatever it is. I'll tell you guys, I was in Phoenix last year for one of the B2B events. It was the B2B e-commerce World Americas in Scottsdale. And Phoenix is one of the areas that has Waymo, which is the self-driving taxi. Yeah. Yeah. And I got to tell you, I was kind of blown away.

[00:54:05] Like, it was, you know, they drove very safely. Now, granted, Phoenix has a bit of an advantage. The roads are generally pretty wide. Well, and everything's in a square, too. It's, you know, right? Well, I mean, less than you think. It's not downtown Chicago. But it was a good experience. You've got numbers on either side of Central. Right. Exactly. Exactly.

[00:54:29] And now it's interesting because every time there's one car accident with a Waymo, it's headline news. Yeah. Sure. But there are hundreds of thousands of car accidents. Other car accidents for that one, yes. So it's kind of like we got to just, you know, everything, it's all relative. But I'm with you, Tom. Like, if it, when Waymo comes to Seattle and they are training vehicles here, it's going to be very tempting to not just get rid of my car entirely.

[00:54:58] You would say, hey, let's jump in, let's just jump in a Waymo to go to dinner? Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. When I was in Phoenix, I did. It was great. Well, so that's where my disconnect is, right? And I wouldn't think twice about it when, if we were in Orlando next week and we're going to dinner, having a self-driving car come pick me up. The idea of, you know, unless we were going to a party and I was thinking I was going to have, you know, a handful of drinks or something, I wouldn't even think about Uber.

[00:55:27] Because in this, where I differ from Tom, is I like to drive. I like to drive. Oh, sure. I enjoy driving. I do too. But Tom doesn't. And so that's okay, even though Tom's getting a Tesla here soon. You know, but then you can decide, right? You can decide, do I want to drive or do I not? So, you know, I've got some driving enhanced features on the car I bought last week. I haven't even looked into them yet. Yeah.

[00:55:56] You know, go ahead, Tom. And I don't know who LinkedIn user is here, but they're talking about Waymo, you know, started in San Francisco, right? Yeah. Which is not an easy environment for driving. Right. Right. That are there. But, and this was going to be my point, and then we can move on. What he was saying here is, let's just say that Waymo has become more, or self-driving becomes more ubiquitous where it's more common, just like we were talking about. I think that'll actually drive the demand for more Uber drivers.

[00:56:26] And more, because there are going to be times where you're going to want to do something potentially with the driver, right? Given what your situation is or what you're trying to do or whatever. But if you start to become in the behavior, right? That's my point in the beginning. My behavior is not to use taxis or Uber or whatever. It's to go get in my own car and drive to where I'm going.

[00:56:48] But if that behavior changes to say, I'm going to go use somebody else's car or get another car to take me there, whether that's self-driving or not, that changes a behavior and a mindset, which inherently grows the market overall for what it is that we're doing. Agreed. So I believe the demand for more Uber drivers or even taxi drivers or whatever would tend to even go up, even though, and there's because there's a lot more of these options on the road. Agreed.

[00:57:18] Yeah. Yeah. So anyway, we shall see. But now Seattle must be getting them soon, I would think. They're training. I mean, Seattle has a lot of very, very narrow streets that I think it's learning how to, because that effectively, when you have parking on both sides, become a one lane street. So that's the algorithm. I think Waymos can navigate Lombard Street. I think I've seen YouTube videos where they go up and around. Oh, yeah, yeah. Lombard is. You're so exciting.

[00:57:47] I watch YouTube videos of Waymos on Lombard Street. No, I saw a YouTube video. Oh, you saw it. Okay. All right. So, all right. Should we move into anything else we want to hit here? Well, there's so much I want to talk about, about robots, but let's not this time. We're going to see. Hey, you know what? We're going to talk. I got the message this morning. We're going to get together next week in Orlando with our friend Pierre Barbeau from Moblico.

[00:58:17] And he has a humanoid robot on order. So, from one of the Chinese firms. So, we'll have to see where he's at on that. He's been researching this a lot. But this is, they're intriguing for me, Jason, as a side note. I've been talking about wanting to, you know, have that humanoid robot at my house that can be weeding the hillside behind my house while I'm sleeping. And my car is washed every day and those types of things. So, I'm all in on this.

[00:58:46] Just like, I think I'm bullish on this like Tom is on self-driving cars. Well, it's good that you have things where you can be aspirational for, right? Oh, yeah. It's nice to be optimistic. It'll be interesting to see, though, I mean, the proliferation of self-driving cars has been much slower than anybody thought. Sure.

[00:59:06] And it'll be interesting to see how long or if at all it happens where they become ubiquitous and, you know, a place where I live where it's not a city or a big city, but it's, you know, more suburban and they're still around and available. We'll have to see. Yeah. Good. So, let's roll into our sales and marketing e-commerce segment here. We've got a bunch of articles that kind of tie together. And this is right up to Jason's alley.

[00:59:34] I wanted to get there sooner today, but I've enjoyed the conversation so far that we've had. But, you know, we've got an article from Marketing Brew. Bots are taking over the Internet, what to brand to do, right? The second one is the distributor's newsletter, why younger buyers are switching distributors and how to keep them. Three is from Industrial Supply Trends. Can e-commerce help your silver tsunami? And so, and then the last article is from Sales and Marketing Management, why winning sales teams or letting buyers take control?

[01:00:03] All of these really tie together, in my mind, on, you know, who and what you're about with your work, Jason, and tying back to e-commerce. So, why don't we kind of dive into this section. Tom, let's have Jason drive this rest of the conversation that we have today on this. Oh, I do have a lot of questions. I want to make sure I get it. Yeah, I think. Inquiring minds?

[01:00:28] There is, so it's so funny how we have kind of, we've got the four chunks of topics that relate to e-commerce generally. One is the proliferation of algorithms, bots, scrapers, and, you know, non-human users. Yep. Taking over the Internet. Absolutely, they are taking over the Internet. This is the whole dead Internet theory where nothing online is real anymore.

[01:00:57] And I think the big takeaway, when I think about this problem, is how important it is for companies, whether you're a manufacturer or a distributor, to start to be thinking about when people talk about agentic AI in the world of B2B. It usually defaults to how we, as a distributor or a manufacturer, are going to use agents to do work within our company.

[01:01:22] But not enough companies are thinking about what are we going to do when our customers start sending agents to us and they want to interact with our website. Yeah. That is happening right now. And this is where, this is why not enough companies are paying attention to all of these sort of standards and, you know, directories to facilitate this, whether it's the MCP protocol, there's like the A2A protocol.

[01:01:51] Different organizations and groups have been designing these standards. And all that they are is think of it like if your store is like the mall, right? And you have a bunch of stores and you got to know where to go. And these agents are charging through your doors like a bunch of 12-year-olds who've got, you know, they've got their allowance for the week and they're amped up on caffeine. They don't know where anything is in your store.

[01:02:19] They don't know, but they're just going to run around and just try to do everything everywhere. So the whole point of these standards is it's the directory inside the door of your store that says, here's what we sell, here's the different stores, and here's the things that you can do in each store. Hey, maybe don't go to the bathroom in a Walden Books. That's not what it's for.

[01:02:44] And this ability to help your customers' agents understand how to use, how to browse, how to shop your digital experience more quickly can turn the tide because that's how the agents come, find what they need, buy it, and leave before they do it on your competitor site where they're trying to do the same thing. So, Jason, that brings me to my first question.

[01:03:15] And it's related to one of these articles here that, you know, that they're talking about that younger buyers in particular want self-service, right? They don't want to deal with a salesperson. They want self-service. But yet I look at the customers, especially a lot of the customers I work with, LeadSmart customers, they're selling complex products. Yeah. You know, these are products that are not just, they're not commodity-type products.

[01:03:39] A lot of them are custom, custom-type products, all of this kind of thing. Realistically, what percentage of self-service can really take place?

[01:03:55] And are a lot of the products that you can buy from a self-service, I'll just call it self-service, whether it's agents or somebody going to the site and, you know, looking, doing shopping on themselves, are those generally going to be your lower margin sort of commodity-type products? And how do you actually deal with stuff like this if you're selling more complex and custom and products that do require some specialty and some consultative advice on what to do with them? Yeah.

[01:04:23] I think that it boils down to the difference between, you know, because I hear this a lot. I hear the defense of, well, we sell complex products. And therefore, that – and I would suggest that complex products, the only difference between a complex product and a commodity product is the initial purchasing decision. Explain that a little bit further.

[01:04:54] Yeah. So, if I'm buying power transmission equipment, right? I'm trying to – I've got an industrial automation application. I'm trying to automate the diverter on a conveyor line within my facility, right? Where I need – I'm going to need sensors that can look at the box and find the barcode and little arms to nudge stuff or, like, little belts to move things. Right.

[01:05:18] That is an engineered sale where, if I'm a younger buyer, I know that I'm going to want to work with somebody who has expertise. Mm-hmm. Now, if I'm going out and trying to do this for the first time, because not everybody has an industrial automation supplier, right?

[01:05:40] I'm going to go out and look at the websites of companies that sell industrial automation equipment. And I'm going to look and see, like, what does their digital experience look like? If I search for something, do they – if I search for, you know, pillow block bearing, are the results that they serve up actual pillow block bearings? Or do they also have just regular plane bearings, taper bearings, thrust bearings? Like, is there noise in there?

[01:06:11] Because that ability – and then I, as that younger buyer, am going to judge you. I'm going to judge your – whether I want to pick up the phone and call you about scheduling that salesperson to come out and help me with my problem by looking at the digital experience you create. But, like, younger buyers, just because they like going online doesn't mean that they're, like, hell-bent on buying online. Sometimes they just want to research.

[01:06:40] They want to learn about things so that when they have the conversation with your salespeople, they don't look stupid. And they also use it as a – Would you then say that e-commerce is really a misnomer here and that it needs to be broader as the digital experience that you just are talking about? So, in other words, when I look at – if I'm a distributor, yeah, e-commerce is – I usually think of that as I put in my credit card and I buy something. Yeah.

[01:07:06] But what I'm hearing you say is that the entire digital experience is – and especially even top of the funnel, right? And maybe it's an agent that is top of the funnel or whatever, that needs to be looked at more holistically rather than do I have a website that I can put a credit card into. Exactly. E-commerce is not just fancy EDI.

[01:07:28] If you look at e-commerce as just a way for companies to make your customers do their own order entry, you're missing the point. So many people get stuck with that, right? So many people get stuck with that is, oh, I did ADI. Now we're going to put it on the internet, right? Or put it on our website, right? It's not – Yeah, fantastic. Oh, yeah.

[01:07:51] It is about the way you serve those younger customers who go online first. Now, those younger customers go online first. They evaluate your site. They use your site and its usability to decide whether they want to engage with you for the design, the engineered sale part. They might call you, have a salesperson come.

[01:08:17] They can have an intelligent conversation because they've read all the materials on, hey, what to think about when planning a converter or what differences between different kinds of sensors because you've got that on your website. So they call your salesperson. Your salesperson comes on, comes on site, designs the solution. They buy everything. It's a nice $10,000, $50,000 order. They buy it. And then a year later, they need a replacement part.

[01:08:43] So now what they can do is they can just come to your website, find that part, type in the part number. Boom, it comes up. There's all the information they need to know about how to install it. Great. They buy it. And they – so that's the difference, Tom, between the initial design sale where buyers still need expertise. Younger buyers still need expertise. They want options. They want options. They want choices.

[01:09:12] So do you think, though, as a young – or any buyer, right, younger or otherwise that does that digital research first, do you think that there's any sort of loyalty or relationship that's built with that? Or if they do the homework, let's say they go to your website. They do the homework or they find out what you do. But then they're like, okay, I understand now. Now am I going to go find the lowest price somewhere else regardless of the fact that I learned from Jason?

[01:09:39] I'm going to go buy from Tom because he's got a cheaper version of that over here. Or is there loyalty in a relationship built through that initial experience? Trust still matters.

[01:09:49] And I think that the unfortunate thing about the commoditization of digital is that it has made it super easy for these somewhat shady characters to start operating online in some of these marketplaces.

[01:10:12] There are companies out there who have built their entire multi-billion dollar businesses on trust and making it super easy for me to go from their homepage to a detail page for a product that looks like it's going to solve my problem. And I would offer that one of the best companies who has done this is the company that I started my career with, McMaster Car. McMaster-Carr does no marketing.

[01:10:42] They do no advertising. You will not find it. They moved from the two thick phone book thick book that they sent out with a just super generic cover that everybody got. Look at that. Did I get it? Is that a post-book? That's a product catalog. A product catalog, okay. Yeah. Seven pounds of fascinating knowledge. But the whole thing. But the whole world got one of those delivered to them. No, they didn't. Ten years ago.

[01:11:13] Those are actually very hard to come by. It's funny. There's a lot. But then if you were an industrial facility, there was one of those in your office, right? Absolutely. I mean, when I was a manufacturer's rep in the 90s and up to 2003, I sold my agency. You went to any end user facility because I was all, I mean, everything I did was an industrial segment.

[01:11:41] I mean, every buyer, every specifier in, let's just say an automotive plant or a dairy even, you know, agriculture facility. There was that McMaster car book on just about every desk. Just like there was a red and black one with a white stripe in it. Right. Yep, yep, yep. There was the blue book, the red book, and the yellow book. Yeah. Absolutely.

[01:12:05] And I think that that's the, so when I talk about trust, Tom, I'm talking about that one of the reasons McMaster is so trusted is that the information they present about the products they sell meets, you know, it meets the five, meets four out of the five Cs of product content. It is correct, first of all. It is complete. They have all of the attributes populated for the products they sell. It is consistent.

[01:12:31] They've normalized all the values into a standard set of language, and it is clear. It is, they use uncomplex, simple, easy to understand language to explain the features and benefits of each product. This is the kind of thing that we at the B2B e-commerce association are trying to help our members understand.

[01:12:52] It's the information that you present about your business, whether it's your products, the services that you offer, the, you know, the additional value add, your expertise about the products. Finding the right way, an effective way to translate that from the offline traditional sales into an online approach is different.

[01:13:20] And it is unfamiliar to a lot of companies in this space. So you need, you need a lot of companies just need somebody who's done it before. And that's, that's what we're doing is we're helping members engage. Not, yes, they can talk with us. We're happy to talk to them, but we're also about helping them find their peers within their industry who have had success.

[01:13:44] And that's what we put on stage at our events is it's a lot of, it's not necessarily, you know, vendors giving up and getting a sales pitch. I love, I love vendors, they have great products, but we are really trying to push to have more practitioners get up and say, hey, this is what we actually did. And this is what worked.

[01:14:05] A nice, a nice mix of, you know, Optimizely and Unilog or whoever with, with practitioners, right? Bringing all their messages together. Exactly. Exactly. If, if, if it's not coming from a practitioner, you know, it's, it's theory. So, I mean, what I, what I'm hearing you say, and we talk a lot about this related to AI, right?

[01:14:31] AI strategies in a business is before you go out and buy technology, make sure you understand what you're trying to accomplish. Right now. And I, I, when I'm listening to what you're saying, Jason, I agree that from the people that I've worked with, they don't necessarily know digitally what they're trying to accomplish. They know they want to sell more stuff. Right.

[01:14:56] And they believe that e-commerce may be a way to sell more stuff or to make more transactions. What I, what I'm hearing you say is it's probably not going to get the results or you're not going to, you know, the dream that you have of the number of transactions that are going to occur from e-commerce just through e-commerce probably isn't going to happen without understanding the bigger strategy of what you're trying to accomplish digitally. Yeah. The field of dreams philosophy doesn't work in B2B e-commerce.

[01:15:25] You can't just launch a website, throw it up there and expect your customers to start using it. You have to give them a reason why. But I, and I, there was a comment here about, you know, can e-commerce consistently and effectively drive demand generation? And I think that's what my head's been looking at. I don't know that e-commerce can drive demand gen, but the digital experience can drive demand gen of which they could lead to an e-commerce transaction.

[01:15:55] So your thing, Tom, if I understand you correctly, is my digital experience on a website has to be, has to capture me potentially before I even want to move to the transactional side. Right. I mean, but even go back farther than that. Look at, right, people, what are people doing today? Yes, they're going to Google, but they're also going to chat GPT or cloud or whatever and asking a question about something. Right.

[01:16:20] Are your, is your, is your expertise, I'll put that in quotes, showing up on that response or contributing to that response? Is it leading you towards vendor or, you know, distributor A, distributor B, so forth? Are you using that to build trust along the way? Then you end up at the, right, you have to look at the whole yellow brick road, right? What's the yellow brick road all the way along to the point of ultimately creating that transaction? Yeah. Go ahead, Jason. I'm sorry.

[01:16:50] I think that, so the way that I always talk about this is it's a two-step approach. The first thing that you have to do as a B2B company when you're trying to go digital is to figure out how to best serve the customers you already have. You need to talk to them about what do they want. You need to talk to them about what is working, what's not working, and you need to address as many of those things as possible with them. Why? Because, one, they already want to buy online from you.

[01:17:19] But, two, if the online purchasing doesn't work, they know how to buy it offline. They can pick up the phone and call their salespeople. You're not going to lose the sale. But as you go through that iterative process of talk to your customer, learn from your customer, implement a solution that your customer wants,

[01:17:40] you find your digital experience is going to be crawling up slowly and improving until it gets to the point where it is significantly better than average. And it is only at that point where you have an experience that is better than average, better than your competitors, that you're going to start to be able to use that experience to drive new customer acquisition, lead gen, and customer growth. That's awesome. That's a great point. Right?

[01:18:10] Great. And they all have so many customers to learn from. Exactly. There's no shortage of opportunity to learn. And happy customers that you already have buy more from you. Sure. So, our friend Ian Heller from Distribution Strategy Group made a comment, I believe, that it was made on our 100th anniversary show. And he said, you have to meet the buyer where they are. Yeah. Right?

[01:18:40] And the challenge, I think, that we are seeing day in and day out currently is what Tom had made a comment about even the agentic buying component or product recommendation component. And most companies, right, the people that haven't even heard of the B2B e-commerce association but are trying to do some very generic things, maybe a small Shopify store or something like that,

[01:19:07] where we're missing the boat is they're not even ready for that digital buyer pre-AI. Right. Right? They haven't even, most haven't even achieved that yet. And now we just went an exponential growth with AEO and things like that that are going to come out of this. I just, you know, sent you both a little note here within our simulcasting tool that, Tom, I want to do a, I want to do it around, J.C.

[01:19:37] So we have a second format called Around the Horn 2.0, which is more traditional podcast. And we've only done a few of them, but we set it up for the capability. I want to do a show where we just unpack this over 45 minutes or so. That's all we talked about. Maybe we'll get a few other of your peers to join us on that show, but absolutely want to do that. But what I'm seeing out there, and I really want, Jason, your thoughts on this is we're living in this world right now where we are at,

[01:20:07] depending on whose statistics you look at, somewhere between, I think, 65 and 72% of B2B buyers are millennials. Right? So that's the person that fit back into the conversation we were having 20 minutes ago about self-driving cars. They don't even have a car, some of them. Yeah. Right? Right. And so if we think about their habits are they ordered DoorDash for lunch today. Right? They bought their movie tickets on their phone.

[01:20:38] They're at their lunch break. They're watching YouTube videos. And to your point, Jason, earlier, they're doing a lot of research. And they're in this space now, which I think is just so powerful for our customers and your members, is we're in this place now where the buyer has the best scenario that they've ever had.

[01:21:01] Distributors are, my belief is distributors have to move to a place to meet, again, meet the buyers where they're at, which says I need a great digital experience. So now if you're a buyer and you're saying I can research anything I want with our company's key vendors, because maybe I work for a huge HVAC contractor that says, hey, our buyer number, our distributor number one is here. Distributor number two is here.

[01:21:30] We've got these priorities and these relationships. I can tap into the best one of those that has a great digital experience and learn. I'm going to go research all of these other people that might not even be in my market to get some feel for what's going on here. But if I have that engineer issue, I have a sales guy that I can text that says, can you come out and help us with this?

[01:21:55] So the distributors that I believe are doing this correctly have this amazing online experience. The data that comes out of that then works with companies like ours who take that buyer behavior, what they're doing online. They match it up with the interpersonal data that we have about a customer that's in a CRM. We match that up with what's going on in the ERP. And we look across. And then, by the way, what are they doing with the marketing efforts that we're doing? They're coming to their open houses or buying our specials.

[01:22:25] We bring all that to one place. And now that digital experience that we saw ties into all of those other behaviors. And now we can make better business decisions. And now, Kevin, what you're talking about is the concept of omni-channel, which has been a buzzword in B2B for like, I don't know, 15 years now. Right, but largely, it's been a topic of unfulfilled potential.

[01:22:52] There's been a lot of talk about omni-channel and B2B, but nobody's really executed it well.

[01:22:57] And so that's the thing is now that the technology is there to kind of actually implement that objective of having a digital-first customer come to the website, do the research, reach out to chat, to talk to an inside salesperson to confirm something,

[01:23:23] book the appointment for the sales consultant to come in and do the design work, and then come, buy it, have it show up, get it implemented, get it installed. Six months later, they come, they walk into Will Call because they need a replacement belt. And, oh, yeah, is this for that order? Oh, yeah, we got that.

[01:23:44] That knowledge of the customer that has historically just lived in the head of one salesperson is now institutionalized and available to every part of your organization. And this goes into that third article from the section on can e-commerce help your silver tsunami? Absolutely, right.

[01:24:07] I mean, this is a topic that I have honestly been – I was using this when I was first at Amazon and trying to sell Amazon supply to people. It's like you've got to figure out – because the days of the – I hired a sales rep at the age of 22, started inside sales, got trained up, worked his way up,

[01:24:32] got into the outside team, and spent 30 years solving problems for customers, building this repository of knowledge, and then he retires with my pension. Those days are numbered. Yep. We have – we're going to have more and more people coming in and being with you for – if you have them for three years, five years, you're doing really well.

[01:24:59] So if you don't find ways to institutionalize that knowledge, whether it's institutionalizing product knowledge in a PIM, institutionalizing customer knowledge in a CRM, customizing pricing knowledge in a pricing platform, you're going to have a hard time. Kevin, I think you're right. We need to do a whole different show on this. There's just so many – Well, I can talk about this, but –

[01:25:29] I think there's so many confusions possibly around all this. And I do think if we do a 2.0 show on this – and, Jason, maybe you can identify a customer or somebody out there who's doing this that can be – Yeah. Can provide some success stories on what they're actually doing. But I do – yeah, I assume you do. Right. I assume you do. That was my point.

[01:25:53] But I think we do need to look at this a bit more holistically and kind of talk about – because, again, I think the e-commerce tag is a little bit, I don't know, limiting along the way. Yeah, that's a great point. Yeah. Yep. That's a great point, Tom. I don't think we should say if. I think we should say when. So, let's – I'll work with Jason. Let's get that planned.

[01:26:17] And I think that would be a really good discussion because there is – this is such a meaningful component of ultimate – you know, there's no wholesale distributor out there that doesn't have at the top of their list growing their company. Right? And there's never been a better time to start. Like, if you haven't started, there are resources available. We're available. We know people who can help.

[01:26:44] We can – we are here and we're getting such traction with our membership because, you know, we have done it. We know who to talk to. We've got venues where people can come and attend and talk.

[01:27:02] We just did a day-long deep dive into the uses of AI in B2B in Portland, Maine last month. We're going to extend that to – we've already got that planned for next year. We're going back to Scottsdale to do that. But we're here for B2B companies.

[01:27:29] Like, we're here because there's a lot – because to your point, Kevin, there is an awful lot that falls under the e-commerce banner these days that didn't 10, 15 years ago. Right. So come join the community. We're here for you. Let's do it. Let's get some other folks together and we'll have a party.

[01:27:52] We should do it, like, you know, record it on, like, a Wednesday at 430 and we'll record it versus doing it live. And we can do happy hour. Will you bring tacos? I'll send tacos. Fabulous. Yeah. I was thinking about, like, a Negroni or something. Yeah. A little French 75, a little something summary. Vesper. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It all sounds good, but I think it's time we need to wrap up here. We do.

[01:28:22] We've talked enough today. We're right on track for our hour and a half. John, our editor here, John Taylor, checking in. We have – confirming we have an episode today, which might be his hint to – Wrap it up. Today, stop talking. So this is great. Jason, thank you for being with us. Appreciate you, Jason Hein, for this. Thank you for having me. You to be here. My appreciation. Always good to chat. We thank you for coming with us.

[01:28:51] We would like you to – I was reading your LinkedIn post yesterday. I'd like you to be more of a regular than an irregular listener. I'd love to be. But we'll appreciate that. We'll pull this together. He'll send you tacos if you listen. Send me tacos. I'm easily bought. Maybe that's what we need to do, Kevin, is just send out gift certificates for tacos to everybody. Yeah. Get more listeners. Tacos. That's right. Maybe we've got to stop talking about tacos and get tacos. Now I'm hungry.

[01:29:21] Yeah. I was just thinking the same thing. Thanks, Kevin. Yeah, exactly. So we appreciate you being with us. Appreciate everybody that's listened in. Again, Kevin Brown, Tom Burton, Brown the Horton Wholesale Distribution newsletter and podcast live show. We would love to get you the newsletter. If you don't get it, if you don't, please email us at hello at leadsmarttech.com. We'll get that out to you, and you can certainly pop by the website for the show, aroundthehornedpod.com.

[01:29:48] Twitter is A-T-H-Pod, and all the other social places that you're supposed to be, we're at. And we thank you for your time. We ask one thing from you, too. First is, if you like what you hear and you're enjoying the show, please subscribe. Leave a review. That gets us out in front of more people. That certainly helps do that, especially with Apple Podcasts and YouTube. Either of those is great.

[01:30:16] Second, we couldn't do this again without the sponsor of our show, which is the company Tom and I work for, LeadSmart. If your company is looking to digitally transform, if you're trying to understand what's going on with your e-commerce data as it relates to your marketing data, your ERP data, and other data within your organization, our enterprise growth platform, is the place to bring all of that dispersed and siloed data and scattered intelligence together in one place to understand how it can impact the growth of your business.

[01:30:42] So if you're doing that in your organization, like to understand that better, we'd love to share with you what we do and show you how we're helping many, many, many wholesale distributors and manufacturers accelerate growth, identify risks, and plan for the future. So reach out to us if you're in that case. Gentlemen, I will wish you a fantastic weekend. Everybody else out there, be kind, be safe, and do good things. We hope you enjoyed today's episode and our guests.

[01:31:12] Each week, we try our best to dig into the topics that are impacting your business. So please reach out to us and let us know how you think we can make the show better or topics you'd like for us to tackle or talk about more often and even guests you'd like to see join us. We're looking forward to bringing you next week's session and hope that until then, you stay safe, stay focused, and do great things. If you haven't already, please subscribe to the podcast and leave a review to help others in wholesale distribution

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