Advertise on podcast: Master B2B Friday 15

Andy Hoar and Master B2B's Jared Blank are joined by Christina Chatfield, Head of Growth at materials distributor Composites One, to talk about lessons learned from a digital transformation undertaking at the company. Christina talks about the importance of communicating with different departments BEFORE tech is fully built, how she got the sales team on board, and how a company knows when it's time to undertake a huge endeavor like this.

McKinsey reports that 88 percent of companies use AI in at least one function, and only 7 percent have scaled it. Andy and Brian dig into a Harvard Business Review article that names middle managers as the most common failure point in generative AI adoption, what the article recommends, and why Andy argues companies also need to rethink the work itself. Along the way: Amazon's flatter organization, Microsoft's internal AI lessons, and what the West Coast offense can teach B2B leaders.

Andy and Brian preview the 2027 Master B2B Mindshare Summit - our 5th annual! - taking place in Chicago on March 16-17, 2027. This year's event moves to a bigger venue (Convene Willis Tower), but features the small group conversations attendees rave about. In the podcast, the guys talk through some of the new sessions and improvements we're making for the event. Tickets available at summit.masterb2b.com

Andy and Brian are back from Nashville with a full recap of the B2B Exchange at Shoptalk Fall, where roughly 4,000 attendees watched B2C giants like Abercrombie & Fitch and Ralph Lauren share a room with B2B companies like Uline and Schneider Electric. They break down the sessions that packed the room, what two CIOs told a room full of vendors about cold outreach and pilots, and why nearly every question all week came back to one thing: data.

Andy Didyk, CEO of Ntara, joins Andy and Brian to preview an upcoming Shoptalk Fall session on turning data into dollars in the age of agentic commerce. Only 44% of B2B marketers have the data infrastructure to support AI, and new research from Ntara found that while 79% of manufacturers have a C-suite mandate to implement AI, only 7% say their systems are actually ready. Andy Didyk breaks down why the real gap is organizational, and what it takes to give AI engines the structured product data they need to actually recommend you.

Credit terms are the default way B2B companies buy, and 72% of buyers prefer them, but the process behind them is still stuck in manual invoicing. John Jakobe, VP of Commercial Strategy at TreviPay, joins Andy and Brian to preview an upcoming discovery stage session at Shoptalk Fall on new payment types in B2B.

Jon Feldman, Product Marketing Director at Salesforce Agentforce Commerce, joins Andy and Brian to discuss where are AI agents actually working in B2B commerce, and why? Andy makes the case, drawn from his book Bot to Bot, that the real B2B AI opportunity isn't the flashy front end everyone talks about, it's the "middle miles": pricing, quoting, availability, and order management happening behind the scenes. Jon breaks down how Salesforce's AgentForce is already being used for catalog merchandising and weather-aware order routing, and where agent-to-agent negotiation is headed next.

Andrej Maihorn, Head of B2B Product Marketing at Kibo Commerce, joins Andy and Brian to dig into a real gap in B2B: buyers say they want to stick with their existing suppliers, but a lot of them don't. Andrej breaks down what it actually takes to close that gap, from inventory visibility before checkout to order routing to holding your promised delivery date, and why unifying order management with your eCommerce platform matters more than most companies realize.

This week Andy and Brian bring on Michael Schenck the Senior Product Manager at luxury rug company Jaipur Living to talk about how to get found by LLMs.  This conversation goes deep - it's perfect if you want to learn concrete, practical ways to improve how your brand shows up in LLMs. Michael also wrote a paper about this topic that everyone should read - you can download it here.

Andrea Polonioli, product marketer at Coveo and a former cognitive science researcher, joins Andy Brian to dig into one of the most consequential parts of B2B ecommerce: search. Is the search box quietly becoming an intent box? Why does B2B search still break on a missing dash, even at digitally mature companies? And what happens to search when bots start buying from bots?   Before that, the breaking news: Home Depot's Q2 earnings show its Pro segment and SRS Distribution outperforming DIY yet again, more proof that B2C giants keep pushing deeper into B2B.

Andy and Brian are joined this week by Kevin Kazenmayer, the VP of Business Strategy at TradeCentric to talk about punchout.  Yes, punchout.  Whether you're asking "what is punchout?" (it's a way for enterprises to make purchases from 3rd parties directly from their own procurement system); or whether you're thinking, "I thought that was old tech?" (electricity is old tech but it's necessary!) or "Aren't AI agents going to replace all this?" (not any time soon), this is a great discussion of one of the last big growth opportunities.

On the podcast today, Andy and Brian chat with fellow Master B2B guy Jared Blank about why so many companies are eliminating (or have eliminated) the Chief Marketing Officer role, and whether B2B companies in particular have abandoned this position.  Plus, does this differ for manufacturers and distributors?  And finally, what can B2B companies learn from Big Ass Fans?

Brennen Volbeda, Senior Director of Digital Experience & Strategy at PCNA, joins Andy Hoar and Brian Beck to pick up last week's conversation on the Paradigm B2B Combine and dig into how research actually fits into a real platform selection process. Brennen has run two selections in the last nine months, a PIM/PLM and an AI website search platform, and walks through how analyst research, requirements, demos, proof of concepts, and peer networks all play a role, plus the moment a proof of concept saved PCNA from signing the wrong PIM contract.   Before that, the breaking news: Google employees are organizing around job security rather than pay, with an Alphabet Workers Union petition gathering more than 4,500 signatures calling for guaranteed severance and an end to layoffs without buyouts first. Andy and Brian debate whether tech workers negotiating security like professional athletes is really so different.   Learn more about PCNA at pcna.com.   Master B2B is the practitioner community for B2B eCommerce leaders at manufacturers, distributors, and brands. Join our free practitioner-only forum and learn about Nexus, our expert advisory program, at masterb2b.com.

Brian is back from Ireland and he's chatting with Andy about his Paradigm B2B Combine, his eighth annual independent evaluation of B2B eCommerce platforms. Andy breaks down what the Combine is, why it exists as one piece of a platform selection process rather than the whole process, and what's new for 2026, including bring your own LLM, compressed development cycles, and why data quality is still the biggest gating factor for any platform.   Before that, the breaking news: Amazon Business just disclosed its first new numbers in three years, a $60 billion annualized gross sales run rate, 11 million organizations served, and 97 of the Fortune 100 buying through the platform. Andy and Brian dig into what it means for distributors competing on service and domain expertise as AI narrows that gap.   Get the Paradigm B2B Combine free at ParadigmB2B.com

Meta just cut its AI developer pricing to a quarter of what Claude and OpenAI charge. Is that a smart land grab or a sign of weakness? Jared Blank and Andy Hoar (Brian's on vacation) break down the emerging market for cheap AI tokens, then dig into the trend reshaping B2B distribution: get big, get small, or get squeezed. Ferguson's $1.6B FloWorks deal and Affiliated Distributors' latest acquisition show the scale side. A small Akron, Ohio doorknob distributor shows the other. Plus: IBM's worst trading day in 115 years, and what it might mean for AI infrastructure spending. Topics covered: Why Meta cut AI token prices by 75%, and what happens next The emergence of token arbitrage (OpenRouter) and off-peak AI pricing Ferguson's $1.6B acquisition of FloWorks and what it means for distribution TAM Affiliated Distributors' acquisition of supplyFORCE Smart scale vs. dumb scale: when getting bigger stops working The case for specialization: a doorknob distributor's turnaround IBM's historic 25% stock drop and the AI infrastructure spending debate Subscribe to Friday 15 for a weekly conversation on B2B ecommerce, digital strategy, and where the industry is headed.