PODCAST · technology
Master B2B Friday 15
by Master B2B
Each Friday Master B2B founders Andy Hoar and Brian Beck take a quick 15 minute spin around the world of B2B eCommerce, with their take on breaking news and lively conversations about the most pressing topics facing manufacturers, distributors and brands selling online.
Episodes
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Does B2B eCommerce success depend on middle management
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...
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Previewing the 2027 Master B2B Mindshare Summit
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…
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A recap of the B2B Exchange at Shoptalk Fall event
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...
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Turning Data into Dollars in Agentic Commerce
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...
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What new payment types are B2B companies using?
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…
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Where AI Agents Are Working in B2B eCommerce...and Why
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...
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See It, Order It, Deliver It: Earning Repeat Business in B2B
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...
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A GEO Deep Dive - Are LLMs Recommending Your Brand?
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…
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Has the Intent Box Replaced the Search Box?
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...
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What if you're not using one of the biggest B2B eCommerce growth levers?
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...
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Is the CMO Role Disappearing in B2B?
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...
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How to Use Analyst Research in eCommerce Tech Selection
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...
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Andy's New Paradigm B2B eCommerce Platform Combine
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…
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Get Big or Get Small...
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…
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AI is changing executive careers faster than most leaders realize
In this episode of The Master B2B Friday 15, hosts Jared Blank and Andy Hoar welcome former Grainger executive Meeta Kratz for a candid discussion about leadership in the AI era. Drawing on decades of experience leading commercial growth and digital transformation, Meeta shares how AI is…
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Are B2B and B2C eCommerce Becoming One in the Same?
This week, Andy and Brian talk about the convergence of B2B and B2C eCommerce. When they look at what customers of each type expect - and the way that B2B companies (and B2C) have responded to those needs, they wonder whether they're 2 different worlds anymore. And they announce that Master B2B…
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Getting Your Catalog Data Under Control
This week...TWO special guest stars on the pod (well, one special guest star and one other Master B2B person stepping in for Andy while he's out). Elastic Path CEO Bryan House joins Brian and Master B2B's Jared Blank to talk about getting a grip on your product data. We chat about where to start,...
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Who will your next hire be?
This week, Andy & Brian talk about the state of hiring in B2B. We seem to be in a "no hire, no fire" environment where we aren't seeing massive headcount reductions (outside of some tech companies) and we aren't seeing people leave their jobs on their own. So where does that leave companies that...
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Are AI Token Costs Getting Out of Control
Andy and Brian talk about the anonymous company that allegedly spent - wait for it - $500 million in one month on Claude tokens, and wonder whether we've hit an inflection point where CFOs will put the breaks on token spending. Then they discuss whether the expected drop in token costs in the...
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Maximizing the Tech Investments You've Already Made
Andy and Brian are joined by Dale Edman, Lipton Teas and Infusions' VP of eCommerce & Shopper Marketing for North America, to talk about why Gartner says that 53% of SaaS licenses held by large organizations go unused. Dale talks about how his deep partnership with procurement has helped him keep...
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Webcast: The End of Channel Dependence
We're off for the Memorial Day holiday, but we're sharing our recent Webcast on The End of Channel Dependence. For too long, manufacturers and distributors have handed the keys to their business over to Amazon, distributors, and retail partners and hoped for the best. The result? Margin erosion,...
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What Can B2B Learn from B2C Merchandising?
This week Andy and Brian speak with Denise Foley, ULE Group's EVP of eCommerce, about what B2B companies can learn about merchandising from their B2C counterparts. Brian and Denise both have extensive B2C experience and this conversation dives into what merchandising best practices they learned…
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A Report from 2 Fields: Chicago and Manchester
This week, Brian and Andy (and Jared) talk about the events they attended last week. Brian and Andy joined B2B Online in Chicago, where they heard so much (maybe too much?) about AI. Jared headed to IR B2B eComm Conference (mouthful) in Manchester England, where he noticed some cultural…
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Announcing Bot 2 Bot, Andy's New Book!
Brian and Andy share a preview of Andy's upcoming book, Bot 2 Bot: The New Future of B2B Commerce, a deep dive into how AI is transforming B2B buying and selling. Andy shares the book's central thesis: that AI adoption in B2B is already outpacing B2C by a rate of 3 to 1, and that AI agents are...
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Should B2B companies own their own marketplaces?
Andy and Brian dig into a topic we haven't tackled in a while (and frankly, we haven't heard much about in a while): should companies own their own marketplaces? And for the first time in a while, the guys disagree. (Hint: don't ask Brian to fund your marketplace). Plus, what can we learn from…
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The Most Overhyped (and Underhyped) Ideas in B2B eCommerce
This week we're joined by fellow Master B2B guy Jared Blank to talk about the most overhyped and underhyped ideas in B2B. And because everything is AI nowadays, AI somehow shows up on both lists. Because of course. But we also talk about alternative payment methods, product data and GEO, all of...
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Has AI Changed What You Need from Your System Integrator?
This week, Andy and Brian bring on Master B2B's Chris Germann to talk about how AI is impacting practitioners' relationships with their system integrators. What were those companies providing that no longer need to be done by an outside firm? Where should manufacturers and distributors lean on…
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Where will B2B eCommerce execs spend their next dollar (2026 edition)
Andy and Brian share some of their insights from a Master B2B Summit roundtable, where practitioners shared where they will spend the next dollar of their budget. Yes, execs talked about measuring the ROI of their investments and customer experience, but they also offered some surprising thoughts...
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Shoptalk 2026: A Report from the Field
Andy and Brian spent the week with their B2C peers in Las Vegas at the Shoptalk event, and they came back with some fascinating insights into how B2B and B2C differ in their approach to eCommerce and 5 ways that they're actually more similar than they thought.
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Is AI Making Us More Productive or Just Creating More Work?
This week, Andy & Brian discuss whether all of the AI tools we're using at work are actually making us more productive or whether they're just increasing the output of maybe-just-slightly-better-than-average deliverables. And how can we avoid getting into the AI rabbit hole where we go to start…
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A Recap of the 2026 Master B2B Mindshare Summit
This week, Andy and Brian share their key learnings from the 2026 Master B2B Mindshare Summit held this week in Chicago. Whether you were there - or just wish that you were - you'll get a taste of what participants learned at the event.
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Turning Your Data Into Dollars with Ntara's Andy Didyk
This week, Andy and Brian speak with Ntara's CEO, Andy Didyk about how organizations are working with their product data to ensure it's being discovered by LLMs. As Andy Didyk says in the interview, companies are finding that they have hidden data troves that are powering their AEO/GEO efforts....
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Is AI More about Making Money or Saving Money?
On the Friday 15, Andy & Brian talk to Optimizely's Trevor Pope about whether practitioners should think about AI initiatives in terms of their impact on costs or their impact on revenue. (You might be surprised to hear that it can be both...) Master B2B Summit Master B2B Forum
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Measuring the ROI of AI with guest Howard Blumenthal
Andy and Brian are joined by eCommerce expert Howard Blumenthal to talk about how companies should think about the value of their AI initiatives. Howard lays out a useful set of questions for preparing for new AI projects: Are we looking at the right workflows for AI? Are we measuring the right...
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IT vs eCommerce: Can't we all just get along?
Andy and Brian are joined by Andy Goodfellow, SVP and Chief Technology Officer at Zoro, to discuss why there has historically been friction between the IT departments and eCommerce teams at so many companies. Goodfellow shares how Zoro turned this dynamic on its head by aligning everyone on a...
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Moving from SEO to Master AEO
Andy and Brian talk with Rob Howl, the Vice President of Digital Products and Experience at HVAC parts distributor mSupply about how the company is approaching building out Answer Engine Optimization capabilities. Rob discussed the framework called EAT - Expertise, Authoritativeness and...
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How can companies build trust when AI has the ability to undermine it?
Building trust with your customers was difficult before AI began hallucinating information about your products. So how can companies overcome that challenge? It comes down to transparency, consistency and honesty. Andy and Brian discuss best practices for bringing those traits to your organization.
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Is AI Becoming an Oligopoly? The $3 Trillion Battle for B2B Commerce
Is AI becoming an oligopoly? Apple just paid Google $1 BILLION for AI technology, admitting Apple Intelligence failed. This changes everything for B2B commerce. In this episode of Master B2B Friday 15, Brian Beck and Andy Hoar break down the emerging AI oligopoly and what it means for B2B...
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Has AI Re-Written the Hiring Process in eCommerce?
We're joined by Kevin Stone, Senior Vice President of Technology & Procurement at Motion Industries, to talk about how AI has changed the hiring process. While it's gotten way easier to create the perfect resume when applying for a job, it's gotten equally more challenging for hiring managers to...
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What a digitally enabled sales team looks like
Andy and Brian are joined by Adrienne Hartman, EVP of Marketing at Safety & Regulatory Compliance company JJ Keller, to discuss how to align your sales and marketing teams, and what tools they need to ensure this alignment is a success.
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The Biggest B2B eCommerce Stories of 2025
Our final podcast of the year! This week Andy & Brian talk about the biggest stories of the year: Was everyone wrong about tariffs? Nobody getting hired, nobody getting fired? Disruption in the Search market because of AI... Thanks to everyone for listening! We hope to see you at the Master B2B...
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Is Google Winning or Losing the AI Race?
Andy and Brian debate whether Google's recent resurgence in the AI race can continue, and whether there are any historical parallels we can look at to make some guesses about how this all plays out. Plus, is OpenAI the new Netscape? Visit us at MasterB2B.com.
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Our 2026 B2B eCommerce Predictions
We're sharing a recording of our recent Webcast where we revealed our B2B eCommerce predictions for 2026. Learn what we think is going to happen with product search, Amazon Business, AI customer service and more. Plus, we bring in special guests to tell us where they think we're right - and wrong…
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The final answer to Amazon 1p vs 3p
For brands selling on Amazon, channel conflict and brand control are still a huge issue. That's why we recently had an onstage debate at B2B Online in Atlanta to figure out which method of selling on Amazon - 1p or 3p - is the best option for a manufacturer. As a reminder, 1p is a wholesale model...
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A Report from the Amazon Business Reshape Conference
Andy and Brian spent the week in Seattle at the Amazon Business Reshape conference getting a deep dive into Amazon Business. Today on the Friday 15, they chat with Natalia Montuori, a Director at Amazon Business, about AI buying assistants, direct delivery, business advertising and more.
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The One Reason Your Company Should NOT Sell Online
It's 2025, so shouldn't every company have an eCommerce website? Not so, says Schneider Electric's Anthony Locke. Anthony says that companies have to consider what they are uniquely good at, and what their distribution partners are uniquely good at, and then decide whether they should have an...
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Software Buying Tips and Tricks from an Insider
This week on the Friday 15, Andy & Brian talk with Gireesh Sahukar, a longtime software executive and eCommerce practitioner about what software buyers REALLY need to ask their potential vendors about their products. Here's a hint - you don't just want a list of product features that they say…
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Report from the Field: How are practitioners getting the budget they need to fund eCommerce initiatives?
This week, Andy and Brian return from hosting Master B2B executive roundtables across the country and share how practitioners are making the pitch to their CIO, CFO and CEO to fund their eCommerce initiatives. And the answer is simple - "say it's an AI initiative." Andy shared a story from one...
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The Newest Tool Making It Easier to Select the Right eCommerce Platform for Your Business
This week, Master B2B's Andy Hoar is joined by Master B2B contributor Jared Blank to talk through Andy's new Paradigm B2B eCombine tool that helps practitioners select the best eCommerce platforms to investigate for their business. Plus, why are so many businesses giving up being a public company...
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Getting Your Company's AI Strategy "Unstuck"
Author and executive Dr. Lisa Palmer shares learnings from her new book, "Show AI - Don't Tell It: Build Buy-In with Visual Storytelling." In her research she found that there are 3 key reasons why executives get "stuck" when considering their AI strategy, and she offers a framework for how to…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Each Friday Master B2B founders Andy Hoar and Brian Beck take a quick 15 minute spin around the world of B2B eCommerce, with their take on breaking news and lively conversations about the most pressing topics facing manufacturers, distributors and brands selling online.
HOSTED BY
Master B2B
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How many episodes does Master B2B Friday 15 have?
Master B2B Friday 15 currently has 100 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Master B2B Friday 15 about?
Each Friday Master B2B founders Andy Hoar and Brian Beck take a quick 15 minute spin around the world of B2B eCommerce, with their take on breaking news and lively conversations about the most pressing topics facing manufacturers, distributors and brands selling online.
How often does Master B2B Friday 15 release new episodes?
Master B2B Friday 15 has 100 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
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Who hosts Master B2B Friday 15?
Master B2B Friday 15 is created and hosted by Master B2B.
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