MarTalks- The #1 Ecommerce and MarTech application podcast

After years of commentary on the possibilities of AI-powered automation, we are finally starting to see applications that are genuinely useful and applicable to businesses.

This is particularly thanks to the rise of composable commerce architectures, in which data is readily exposed, and where the accelerating adoption of third-party solutions is increasing the number of touchpoints for AI-powered enhancements.

Automation vendors looking to capitalize on these trends might take inspiration from HuLoop, whose CEO, Todd Michaud, joined us for the latest episode of the Martalks podcast.

Described as a no-code, ‘over the top’ platform, HuLoop is available both to end-users, and as a white-label product which other solution vendors can use to build automation functionality into their own products.

In the podcast, we discuss HuLoop’s commercial strategy and market positioning, in the hope that we can shed useful insights for other vendors in the automation & AI realm.

You can also listen to the podcast, and read a summary article here: https://bit.ly/3LrAJNs

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

Retailers’ visibility and control of their customer data – from customer experience to supply chain to back office – is now a crucial component of their commercial success. It’s enabled the direct-to-consumer (DTC) trend, increased brands’ ability to operate independently of marketplaces, and well-organized data is the foundational element in marketing personalization.

As retailers’ ambitions became more complex over the last 10 years, many new vendors and agencies have sprung up in order to help brands navigate unchartered territory and take advantage of new solutions.

In this podcast, Joshua Hudson of Pivotree, shares his insights from 20+years in the data ecommerce space, and explains the crucial role of mater data management and third-party data solutions in helping to unlock brands' true ecommerce potential.

In this discussion, we covered:

• how retailers’ increasingly sophisticated data requirements mean they are more likely to depend on third-party consultants and solutions
• the differing roles of the vendor and agency in this regard, and how vendors can help agencies do their best work
• the importance of openness – both of culture and of technical architecture – in enabling vendors and agencies to collaborate around data, and achieve the desired customer outcomes.

Listen to the podcast, or read an article based on it here: https://bit.ly/3LCyaI7. 

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

Customer experience innovations can have a relatively short time to value  - and with extended reality (VR and AR) now becoming affordable, brand marketers are making increasingly complicated decisions about CX developments.

So, how can technology companies help customers understand the opportunities, select the right systems, and ultimately win buy-in for change?

In this podcast, Andrew Elia of Arishi, a digital agency, shares insights from over 20 years of experience at the cutting-edge of CX innovation.

We cover:

•  the evolving customer trends in CX development: from tactical, problem-solving deployments, to more ambitious strategic projects, enabled by composable solutions
• the buyer persona of customer CX solutions: often brand marketer, with an appetite for new opportunities, yet an awareness of risk
• the importance of two-way development, between agencies and CX solution vendors, in order to ensure that solutions are sold and deployed effectively.

Listen to the podcast, or read an article based on it here: https://bit.ly/3WldGWq

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

40,000 ecommerce stores generating $10-15m annual revenue are running on WooCommerce. Off the back of an envelope, that’s a market worth half a trillion dollars. 

Some of these retailers want to take advantage of headless architecture, but in most cases, replatforming is not an option. Costs are either too high, or the scale of the undertaking too daunting.

But where there’s adversity, there’s opportunity.

We welcomed Chris Lemmer, co-founder and product manager at SwiftCom, a digital agency based in South Africa, to talk about how SIs and vendors can collaborate to access this market. 

Chris talked us through SwiftCom's Vue Storefront/WooCommerce integration, the value of marketing to technical leadership, and what agencies and vendors can learn from each other. 

You can listen here, or read our summary article on the Rosenstein Group website: 

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

Enterprise retailers are embarking on increasingly ambitious ecommerce offerings.  This has  created a lot of work for systems integrators (SIs), but it's also added nuance and complexity to how they sell.

Rajib Das, CEO of Ignitiv - a digital agency and CX consultancy - recommends "consultative selling": going beyond the tech, to become deeply entrenched in the key performance drivers of their companies' businesses.

Read an article based on this podcast on the Rosenstein Group blog: https://bit.ly/3GzZzs8

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

The remit of systems integrators (SIs) has expanded in recent years. Previously, they were primarily only called on to stand up solutions and integrate systems. Today, software customers depend on them more heavily to assemble and maintain complex microservice architectures, to enable the exposure of data, and to work as a commercial partner by continuing to optimise their tech stack.

Solutions providers, therefore, must prioritise SIs & agencies in their own commercial strategies, and work to optimise these relationships.

To help software vendors better harness SI partnerships, The Martalks Podcast invited Joel Farquhar to share his advice collected from years of experience in technical architecture, and his last 7 years at Pivotree, a highly successful SI in enterprise ecommerce.

You can listen to the podcast here, or read an article based on it here: https://bit.ly/3SpWsFT

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

For most of the history of software, partnerships were mostly about driving incremental revenue from resales.

Today, partnerships are likely to be crucial to staying relevant in the market, and winning and retaining business. This is because the very traits that make API-first software attractive to buyers – being relatively low-commitment and easy to integrate, enabling faster development times – also make it a lot easier to replace.

The question of how to approach partnerships depends on the life-stage of your business. How can new startups carve out the resources for a partner strategy, whilst perfecting their MVP and those early direct sales? What steps can they take to cover partnerships with resources, and how can they anticipate a fully-fledged partner operation as their business scales?

For this episode of the Martalks Podcast, I spoke to Jay McBain of Canalys. Jay has worked in the channel community for over 20 years now, including founding two companies which helped businesses drive partner sales.

Through this discussion it became clear that the partnerships you maintain, and your depth of integration with complementary systems, are now likely to be as critical to your company’s survival as the product itself. This means that partnerships must be in scope from day one of your startup. Even if the business isn’t quite yet mature enough for channel sales, anticipating that phase of growth is now a fundamental part of your go-to-market strategy (GTM).

You can listen to the 30-minute podcast here – or, if you prefer to read, there’s an article based on it here: https://bit.ly/3dPMy1o.

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

What makes a great leader in martech sales? The yardstick I have always used is the ability to scale a successful team by attracting, and getting the best out of, the most talented professionals in the market.

For that reason, I hold Tod Klubnik in the very highest regard. His success as a head of sales, and latterly a CRO, at SaaS businesses made him a natural fit for the first episode of The Martalks Podcast.

You can listen to the full podcast here, or visit the Rosenstein Group blog to read an article based on this conversation.

We speak to Tod Klubnik, about how martech and ecommerce businesses can scale their sales teams at pace. Some of the key questions covered, included: 

• What are the mistakes to avoid when hiring a large number of sales professionals early in your business’s journey? (2:00)
• Who should own go to market - sales or marketing? (6:00)
• And how do martech providers progress from serving SMBs to the enterprise market? (15:00) 

About our guest

Tod Klubnik has 25 years of software and SaaS sales & marketing experience, and has led the sales team in businesses such as BigCommerce and MessageOne. 

He now provides board, advisory and part-time consulting services to early and mid-stage companies. 

About The Martalks Podcast

The Martalks Podcast features insight and comment from thought leaders in Martech and ecommerce sales. It is hosted by Darrell Rosenstein, the founder and managing partner of The Rosenstein Group. 

About The Rosenstein Group

The Rosenstein Group is your recruiting agency and executive search firm for matching critical revenue talent with innovative technology vendors in the e-commerce, martech and supply chain space.

www.rosensteingroup.com 

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosenstein-group 

Rosenstein Group: martech & ecommerce executive search

Rosenstein Group is the only martech-specialist exectutive search firm. For over 20 years, we've been matching leadership talent in sales, marketing and customer success to pioneering startups in ecommerce, supply chain and sales enablement, and for digital agencies.

Our experience with recruiting e-commerce technology leaders for companies like SAP Hybris and Demandware has established us as an authoritative and trusted liaison for startups seeking their first sales leader, and scale-ups on their way to IPO.

Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.