This week, Andy & Brian speak with former Grainger, Caterpillar, and Rexel executive John Pehler about how he has transitioned from being a full-time Chief Digital Officer in B2B companies to building a series of part-time gigs into a career.  

This week on the Friday 15, Andy & Brian talk about the changing structure of the workforce and how gig roles will become increasingly prominent in B2B eCommerce, and how people will change their approach to working and build careers where they’re doing multiple jobs on a gig basis.

Then they share how they’re embracing this change in their own careers.

Notes:

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The WSJ article about CEOs cutting jobs.

This week on the podcast, Andy & Brian speak with Ed Fenton, the Vice President of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Transformation at wholesale distributor Graybar, about what it’s like for senior executives to search for a job in the age of AI. 

Ed talks through six key lessons he learned from his own six month job search.

Andy and Brian walk through the results of Andy's Paradigm B2B Combine reports on eCommerce platforms, and they discuss strategies for preparing for a platform selection.

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Key takeaways from this week's episode:

One of the big questions of the moment in AI is whether we are experiencing a REvolution or an Evolution when it comes to whether new technologies will enhance the decisions eCommerce practitioners make in their day-to-day roles, or whether it will soon take over many of the decisions practitioners make.

When we surveyed B2B practitioners, we learned that they have chosen not to invest in mobile, even though their B2C counterparts have long ago made the shift to focus on mobile. 

We heard that 34% of B2B companies have less than 5% of their sales on mobile, while 18% don’t even track mobile sales.

In this podcast, Andy and Brian talk about some of the reasons why mobile is on the back burner, and why this is a huge missed opportunity for most companies.

Learn more about our upcoming events and the practitioner Forum at MasterB2B.com

In B2B eCommerce practitioners are all asking the same question: how do I get my products to show up in search results when people are searching on an AI tool like ChatGPT or Perplexity?

The answer, it seems, is to create authority around your listings, and in this podcast Andy Hoar and Brian Beck discuss exactly how to do that.

Andy and Brian dig into the new (and mysterious) world of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) and what that means for how B2B eCommerce companies that are looking to drive traffic to their websites (which is, of course, all of them).

For more Master B2B resources and events, visit http://www.masterb2b.com And for practitioners, we offer the Master B2B Forum, a free community exclusively for B2B eCommerce practitioners. Learn more at http://www.masterb2b.com/forum

Andy & Brian offer six criteria for how B2B eCommerce practitioners should select a system integrator when they are embarking on a commerce technology project.

The Friday 15 is presented by Master B2B Nexus, your personal B2B digital lifeline..  Visit us at http://www.masterb2b.com/nexus