B2B Reimagined

Rebates – every B2B company offers them or other off-invoice credits in some form or fashion. This is because they are a great way to incentivize customer behavior and drive loyalty in your brand. But they also tend to create massive headaches for accounting, sales, pricing and product management teams due to a status quo of manual rebate management.   Today, Zilliant Director of Product Managemen...

Back for the second time, Zilliant Business Solutions Consultant Vishal Asatkar joins us to share his eye-opening insights in the world of food service distribution. When we last had Vishal on, he focused on the challenges facing food manufacturers in the middle of a pandemic. Now he sheds light on the turbulent distribution side of the equation as the pandemic recedes and demand spikes back to pr...

Just over a year ago, we had Capital Pricing Consultants CEO & Founder Lydia DiLiello on the show to trade ideas for pricing in an unprecedented pandemic. Whereas back then the concern was avoiding a race to the bottom, the opposite challenge is now raging through B2B pricing departments. With the pandemic receding, how can companies keep up with surging demand, wildly rising costs and, concurrent...

We are joined by the "Godfather of Zilliant" Pete Eppele, senior vice president of products and science, to explore the concept of next-generation price optimization. Pete explains how the pandemic shined a light on the need for more advanced science and faster, more specific pricing capabilities as more B2B companies adopt eCommerce.   Learn about the history of Zilliant's innovation in the optim...

We are joined by author and pricing evangelist Stephan Liozu on the eve of the release of his new book, Pricing: The New CEO Imperative . Liozu has spent the better part of two years interviewing C-Suite executives, pricing consultants and software vendors around the globe to curate this first-of-its-kind tome. The book represents a collective effort by the key players in the pricing profession to...

Zilliant General Manager of Commercial Excellence Barrett Thompson welcomes distribution guru Ian Heller of Distribution Strategy Group and The Wholesale Change Show on for his first B2B Reimagined appearance. The topic du jour is distribution sales: how the game has changed, how sales teams must evolve to win digitally and why good old-fashioned relationship selling will never be fully replaced....

Zilliant General Manager of Commercial Excellence Barrett Thompson welcomes Steve Stessman, vice president of business development at KBMax, to the program. On the agenda today? Digital transformation and innovation in B2B eCommerce for manufacturing companies. Steve's long-time focus has been helping manufacturers leverage technology to deliver a real-time, consistent experience from the shopping...

Today we are joined by Accelalpha's Devang Bhavsar. In his role as Partner, CX & ERP Practice, Devang is focused on helping companies make it easy for their customers to do business with them. As digital commerce becomes dominant, "customer experience will overtake price and product as the key brand differentiator," he predicts.   Listen to hear how B2B companies can develop a better and smarter C...

Today we are joined by PwC Consumer Markets Pricing and Profitability Practice Leader David Moss, for a timely conversation on pricing strategy amidst an impending inflationary period. David brings decades of consulting experience to our discussion, sharing strategies forged in the crucible of the 2008-2012 joint environment of inflation and recession.    Listen to hear the latest concerns and app...

Today we are joined by PwC Consumer Markets Pricing and Profitability Practice Leader David Moss, for a timely conversation on pricing strategy amidst an impending inflationary period. David brings decades of consulting experience to our discussion, sharing strategies forged in the crucible of the 2008-2012 joint environment of inflation and recession.    Listen to hear the latest concerns and app...

Today we are joined by Salesforce Sr. Director of Product Management, Quote-to-Cash Solutions Erwan Kerebel for a breakdown of challenges, opportunities and reimagined solutions within the Configure, Price, Quote (CPQ) space.   Kerebel outlined three focus areas for manufacturers: faster quote turnaround times, accurate pricing, and precise payment terms and product selection at the time of quote....

We welcome two guests from our strategic partner Acumen Solutions, Manufacturing Industry SME Gary Brown and Engagement Director Kyle Dreyer, to take the pulse of the modern manufacturer during a time of intensifying change.   Host Lindsay Duran leads the conversation, which covers the need for customer-centricity for B2B and B2C channels, workforce transformation, supply chain disruption, raw mat...

Former client and longtime friend of Zilliant Pat Curtin joins host Rick Chappell, senior vice president of services and customer success, to share exciting news about his new pricing consultancy as part of a wide-ranging conversation about the steps needed to pave the way for a successful pricing initiative.   From executive alignment, data issues, competing projects and the jumble of business sy...

In this episode, we are pleased to host SAP Principal Solution Manager, IBU Wholesale Distribution Susanne Adam to take the pulse of trends, challenges and opportunities in global distribution businesses. The threats of the past year and change have been well-documented, and Susanne offers us a front-row seat to a wide range she's seeing out in the field, including increased eCommerce competition,...

Paul Demery, editor at Digital Commerce 360, joins host Barrett Thompson for a candid chat about the urgency thrust onto B2B companies to sell online in a pandemic-induced paradigm shift. Listen to learn why eCommerce pricing must be dynamic and how to accomplish a consistent, real-time pricing strategy across owned eCommerce platforms as well as third party marketplaces. We wrap up the show with...

Mike Hockett, managing editor at Industrial Distribution, joins our first episode of the new year to share findings from the publisher's recent 2020 survey and talk about what lies ahead for industrial distributors in 2021. Listen to hear about the surprising cost-cutting measure distributors have undertaken during the pandemic and why many had a digital wake-up call in 2020. Mike and host Lindsay...

Business Solutions Consultant Tim Mohnke returns for a follow-up episode on auto parts/aftermarket manufacturing. How has the electric car trend changed the game for auto parts suppliers? How can they navigate tariffs, which are expected to continue for the foreseeable future? How can suppliers avoid "winner's remorse" when it comes to negotiating long-term contracts with customers? Listen in to g...

Zilliant Chief Marketing Officer Lindsay Duran and Senior Director, Solutions Consulting Vishal Asatkar have logged many hundreds of miles visiting customers and prospects together over the years. The pair teams up again for an intensive look into the factors that drive total margin in the food production industry – the volatility of cash crops, the delicate balance between price and cost, and the...

SAP's Jonathan Burdette joins host Barrett Thompson to dissect THE compelling event of 2020 for B2B manufacturers: a forced transition to digital commerce due to COVID-19. Whereas traditionally sales reps walked the factory floor to build relationships, understand what equipment is working and what isn't, and how best to position new deals, selling has now fundamentally shifted to the digital real...

This week marked the official launch of Zilliant's newest product, Zilliant Campaign Manager™. An exciting evolution, this 100% cloud-native SaaS solution takes the insights generated by Sales IQ™ to the next level by unlocking self-service capability and providing the flexibility to scope, refine and execute campaigns with closed-loop reporting. Director, Product Management Brian Hirt joins the s...

Even before COVID-19 changed everything, distributors in the electronic components industry were dealing with seismic shifts. The dawn of 5G, the explosion of IoT and the ever-shortening product lifecycle combined to create complex business challenges and new opportunities to capture. The pandemic put many plans on halt, as supply chains in Asia and then Europe were drastically disrupted. With a s...

This episode features a lively preview of Zilliant MindShare 2020, the premier B2B pricing and sales conference, which is going virtual for the first time on Oct. 27-29. Event MCs Barrett Thompson and Rick Chappell joined the show to explain how though the format may be new, the customer stories, thought leadership and product innovation deep dives remain as valuable as always.  MindShare lands at...

You've probably heard the old adage: "We can get it done right, we can get it done fast or we can do it for cheap." For high-tech manufacturers and technology providers, the same concept applies to their quoting and offer creation processes. Most can consistently do a good job of delivering quotes with 1) speed, 2) accuracy or 3) completeness… sometimes two of the three. But it seems at least one...

Dr. Steve Laborda, chief executive officer of ValueBizBooster, joins our show to discuss the importance of commercial excellence in the specialty chemicals distribution industry. Laborda and host Barrett Thompson diagnose the biggest challenges facing these businesses, including increased complexity, changing relationships along the value chain, and the eCommerce revolution. Traditionally these di...

When it comes to the ability to set prices that are market-driven, rather than cost-driven, specialty chemicals manufacturers consistently rank among the lowest in B2B. Because of the unique amount of transparency and raw material cost-driven pricing structure, manufacturers in this sector are usually contractually obligated to take prices up and down in line with publicly available commodities in...