B2B Reimagined

"I'm a strong believer that pricing should be first before CPQ," says Accenture Managing Director Mo Beshir. "Everyone knows if I am doing a CPQ solution, I am looking at selling faster, selling better and selling more. What if I'm selling faster, better and more with the wrong price?"

Mo joined Zilliant General Manager of Commercial Excellence Barrett Thompson for a deep dive into the maturation of price optimization software and how it adds value to any CPQ investment. They explore the downsides of using CPQ without an integrated pricing solution, how Excel-based pricing puts companies behind the volatile economic times, and much more.

Read the explainer mentioned in the episode: A Guide to Smarter, Faster Pricing in CPQ

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Senior Vice President of Products & Science Pete Eppele is back to go in depth on the chronic undermanagement of customer price agreements. Although often more than 50% of a B2B company's revenue is transacted via customer price agreements, this important price type tends to lack the attention it deserves.

When using manual tools to manage agreement prices and legacy ERPs to house agreement records, companies fall prey to "set-and-forget" pricing and, usually, preventable margin loss. Zilliant's newest Quick Start package – Quick Start for Agreement Management – empowers sales reps to proactively manage agreements in as few as four weeks.

Quick Start for Agreement Management Datasheet

Product Video

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Get to know recently-appointed Zilliant Chief Executive Officer Pascal Yammine, who marks 60 days leading the company with his first appearance on the podcast. The former senior vice president and general manager of Salesforce Revenue Cloud brings a customer-focused background and 20 years of enterprise software leadership to Zilliant.

In this episode, Pascal joins Chief Marketing Officer Lindsay Duran for a wide-ranging interview on what attracted him to Zilliant, what he's learned in his first two months, his perspective on the pricing and revenue optimization and management market, and much more.

Check out our upcoming events around the world!

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The newest addition to Zilliant's Quick Start Program, Quick Start for Revenue Operations & Intelligence, is now available. The purpose-built solution is designed to intelligently derive and deliver revenue-driving, account-specific actions to sales reps, eCommerce and marketing automation tools in as few as three weeks.

Returning guest Brian Hirt joins Barrett Thompson to answer questions on how the solution works, why a better approach to revenue operations and intelligence is critical today, who is an ideal candidate for the Quick Start, and much more.

Links:

Press Release | Video | Blog Post

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"There is no magic wand to digest all of the information that you have. The only way to actually have true control is by having data-driven platforms."

So says Gonzalo Benitez, pricing and data analytics manager at Rush Enterprises, on our latest episode. The heavy-duty truck parts industry has not been spared from the economic upheaval of the last two-plus years. Supply chain issues have caused Gonzalo's team to work creatively to source alternative products, while inflation has led to sometimes more than triple the number of supplier cost increases per year.

Gonzalo spoke with us about how data-driven tools have been critical to executing cost pass-through and enabling transparent communication with Rush Enterprises' customers.

Read the article mentioned in the episode: Navigating the Broken Supply Chain

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Gene Metheny, partner at Carlisle and Company, stops by the show to talk about the myriad macroeconomic problems facing B2B companies and what must be done to get ready for the next shift in supply and demand.

He and Barrett Thompson then drill into some examples of how pricing data and analytical measurement are being used to improve visibility throughout the value chain in the trucking industry. They also explore the potential for executing value-based pricing in trucking and beyond – by interpolating between the market data that you have and the data you don't have to derive a value hypothesis.

Read the auto parts roundtable mentioned in the episode.

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Kevin Mitchell has been a champion of pricing for most of his life. As the president of the Professional Pricing Society (PPS) tells it, "I remember as a child carrying boxes of canary yellow pricing newsletters uphill, both ways, through the snow in Phoenix, Arizona."

This walk down memory lane set the tone for a lively and enlightening conversation between Kevin and Zilliant CMO Lindsay Duran. Kevin shared the three biggest hot button issues that are keeping PPS members up at night and his insights into today's macroeconomic landscape. After acknowledging the present challenges – inflation and otherwise – Kevin and Lindsay spent the bulk of the episode on why it's an exciting time to be in pricing: pricing professionals are more essential than ever to their organizations and, with the right tools and training, they can drive business strategy at the highest levels.

Read our recap of PPS Spring 2022 here.

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Many wholesale distributors have been running SAP for decades. While most of them started simple, over time they've introduced new requirements (read: complexities) into their order system. At the same time, many are behind the curve on modern approaches to price optimization and management. In an industry with such thin margins, this is a troubling combination, especially in our new age of inflation and supply constraints.

Three-time guest Pete Eppele makes his hosting debut, interviewing DataXstream CEO Tim Yates about how the company's transformative OMS+ platform streamlines order management for wholesale distributors in today's consumer-driven economy, and why the industry leaders are pairing OMS+ with AI-driven price optimization and a real-time pricing engine.

Watch the Zilliant-DataXstream integration demo discussed in the episode here.

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In December of 2021, Madison Dearborn Partners acquired Zilliant as a strategic growth investment. John Lewis, an executive partner at Madison Dearborn, became Zilliant's executive chairman following the closure of the deal.

We were excited to welcome John for his first appearance on B2B Reimagined to discuss everything from his prolific professional background to his enthusiasm for Zilliant's value proposition ("You will not find any CEO in the world for whom this is not a top three issue…how to price effectively, how to optimize revenue, profitability, margin and volume") to his thoughts on what will define the winners of this unprecedented era.

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Chris Shutts has spent the 21st century at the forefront of the evolution of sales in the manufacturing space. He co-founded Big Machines in 2000 and sold the business to Oracle in 2013.

Now he leads Logik.io, a strategic Zilliant partner that delivers next-generation technology to manufacturers of complex products. Logik.io helps these companies consumerize the way they sell by enabling faster, self-service product configuration for their customers. He joined Barrett Thompson for an in-depth conversation about how Logik.io and Zilliant work together to lead the next evolution of sales and customer experience for manufacturers.

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