The backwards search from spec to SKU

Episode 17 - The backwards search from spec to SKU | Sam Schwartz, Founder, Sierra Summit Digital - Transcript

Matt: Welcome to Data Versus Commerce, where we explore the messy middle between database and doorstep. I’m Matt Johnson.

Floyd: And I’m Floyd Blaikie. Let’s dig in.

Matt: Hey guys, welcome back to Data Versus Commerce. We are joined by a very special guest — Sam Schwartz is here to talk all things B2B commerce for mid-market and enterprise distributors and manufacturers. That’s been her career, working in a variety of different roles across product data, digital transformation, and technology adoption. She’s like our people, and we’re really happy she’s joining us here today. Sam, welcome to the show — I’d love it if you could give our audience a bit of an introduction, tell us a little about you, what you’re up to these days, and I’m sure we’ll dig into your past experience along the way.

Sam Schwartz: Yeah, absolutely, I’m super glad to be here — it’s really great to be in the room with you guys talking about one of my favorite topics, which is product data and B2B commerce. Like Matt said, I’ve spent about 17 years working for distributors and manufacturers on all these different types of programs. Most recently I moved over to the other side of things — actually a couple different other sides. I have my own consultancy, Sierra Summit Digital, where I’ll deep-dive into almost any topic with a mid-market B2B company, but I also work for the B2B eCommerce Association — I’m their global director of practitioner experience. My role there is to help practitioners get the most out of what we have to offer, and also help them expand their own careers and networks — something I’m very passionate about, making sure our friends on the practitioner side are getting what they need and growing in the ways they want to grow.

Floyd: Amazing, well it’s awesome to have you here — and I’m throwing you into the middle of a fierce debate, because forever I’ve seen this working with manufacturing organizations on the marketing side: marketing blames sales for not selling more into their existing customer base, or into the prospect base, and vice versa, sales blames marketing. I’m here to throw you in the middle and say maybe neither is the problem — maybe the problem is actually data. With that in mind — and this is a bone I have to pick after years in manufacturing marketing — I want to talk about the idea of increasing share of wallet among your existing customer base, which I think is a huge priority for manufacturers and distributors, and what product data has to do with that. Why does this, in your experience, so rarely happen? Why is it always harder than it seems on paper to sell more to the customers you already have?

Sam Schwartz: Well, first of all, I think you’ve zoned in on a really big problem in the B2B space, and just in business in general — this really siloed thinking, like, “Boy, sales could get so much more done if marketing would just cooperate,” and, “Marketing could have all the features they want if IT would just prioritize our stuff.” That’s obviously a place where a lot of people get stuck, because they’re not acting as a full team, they’re not integrated with each other’s priorities, and there aren’t clear priorities coming from the top. I think that’s part of it. But when we start thinking about a more detailed view of why this rarely happens, apart from misalignment, I think product data has a much bigger impact than a lot of people realize. I’m thinking about a sales team I worked with that was very much aligned with marketing, but the problem was the tools the sales team had didn’t account for all the data that could be available — their data wasn’t centralized, so all they had access to was things like what the customer had purchased before. There wasn’t any way for them to get predictive data around what else they could offer this customer, or what kind of consumables would be appropriate for whatever they buy on a month-to-month basis. So a lot of this is about how accessible your data is. This particular company actually did have decent product data — was it 100% perfect or complete? No, but it was there, it just wasn’t accessible to the sales team in the tools they used. So being able to elevate those options to the customer while talking with them just wasn’t there for them. I think that’s a really big impact product data can have, for the sales team and for marketing too — if you’re putting together some sort of account-based campaign and you don’t have access to that product data, sales data, returns data, your campaign’s not going to be all that useful to the customer.

Floyd: Yeah, I think a lot of people feel that frustration — the data isn’t missing, it’s here, we’ve got it, it’s all around us, we just don’t know where to look to get the most recent data, we don’t know the scope of what’s available, and to your point, it’s not surfaced equally to everyone through the tools they’re already using. But it sounds like you’ve been on both sides of this — organizations where the product data was pretty good, nobody’s ever 100%, that’s a pipe dream, but pretty good, pretty complete — and ones where they really weren’t there. What’s so different about how those organizations operate day to day? What’s the symptom of being on the downswing?

Sam Schwartz: Well, I really do think the cause of this is leadership teams not really understanding how important it is to have this kind of unified data. Unfortunately, we’re still in a place where a lot of leadership teams have a more antiquated viewpoint of what’s important and what digital really means, and what drives digital. Data — whether it’s product data, sales data, analytics data — that’s the fuel for what makes digital work, and I think companies that don’t have the right data don’t really understand how digital works. It can be an educational opportunity, but I think these companies also have a hard time with change. So it’s a much bigger issue than “can we get this data” — the data is accessible, it can be accessible, it’s probably in your ERP somewhere, it’s probably in a catalog somewhere, you don’t have an analytics pixel on your site and it takes five minutes — it’s not that it’s hard to get, it’s really hard to prioritize.

Matt: You posted something a couple days ago, maybe yesterday, that I really liked — it was getting to the heart of what a good culture looks like, a culture that will drive the needle when it comes to digital adoption and digital commerce, and it had really nothing to do with technical skills or product data or software — it had to do with mindset. I’ve heard you talk about North Star, and the importance of having clarity about what you’re trying to create in terms of a customer experience — and creating that customer experience ultimately requires a lot of patience, humility, and willingness to fail and experiment and try new things. Distribution and manufacturing historically don’t have a ton of that, because so much is on the line. Can you talk about what you see in practice in leadership, where that disconnect is, and why there’s such a hesitancy to adopt new tools and processes?

Sam Schwartz: To put it bluntly, I think a lot of this has to do with fear and ego. I’ve been on the side of the coin where there’s a culture ready for change — they follow through on things like making it okay to fail, celebrating wins, and they’re not only saying the words, they’re making it happen, because their leaders aren’t afraid to fail themselves. On the flip side, when I’ve seen companies fail to change, I’ve seen a lot of ego trickling down from their leadership teams. If you want to get rid of fear in your organization, you have to start with yourself — when leadership teams aren’t willing to change, their people are going to be afraid of change too. That’s the long and short of it.

Floyd: I can just picture data practitioners listening in and slapping their steering wheels — yes, she speaks the truth, it can be scary to usher in that kind of organizational change. I’d love to hear more about what you’ve seen in actual organizations.

Matt: I was just going to say — not a question, just an observation — the difference between the best clients we work with and those who struggle is that at the very top, leadership has its sleeves rolled up in the digital experience and in all of this work. If they push that off to some department head, that’s where things stall, because it’s a culture of adoption, a culture of innovation, and it has to start right in the C-suite, in my opinion.

Sam Schwartz: Yes, and I think there needs to be a culture of accountability too. I’ve seen organizations where the C-suite knows this is what they have to do, and they’re generally on board with the concept, but they’re not willing to hold people accountable to it. So digital becomes a project, e-commerce becomes just an implementation, and once we have it, it should make money — but they’re failing to see that this is a group effort the entire organization has to embrace. Senior leadership should be accountable for the vision, and the rest of the company should be accountable for continuing to live out and execute that vision. When you have a disconnect there, it’s going to fail one way or another. It’s hard to say and hard to think about, but some of the most successful organizations I’ve been part of were also not afraid to hold people truly accountable for the culture they bring — their own values, whether they align with company values like being customer-first, failing fast, celebrating successes, being humble, building a community. If they don’t align, those organizations aren’t afraid to hold people accountable and potentially exit them from the business. On the flip side, I’ve seen the exact opposite — leadership teams saying these words, and then having employees say, “Well, I’m not doing that.” I saw it happen once, right to a CEO’s face — “I’m not doing that” — and the CEO didn’t hold that person accountable, not even with a simple verbal, “This was my vision, and if you want to be part of this company, this is what it takes.” In those instances, you’re going to continue to have that disconnect if everybody isn’t aligned, and that has to start at the leadership team level — it cannot be grassroots.

Floyd: A hundred percent. I think we’re getting a good picture of what happens when an organization wants to increase share of wallet — they know the data exists, they’re ready to fund it as a continuous motion and not just a one-off project, the leadership team is on board, they’re holding people accountable. Those are all the ways it goes right. So then what? When it starts going right this way, can you walk us through a cross-sell campaign or a customer expansion tactic that suddenly starts to work once all this is in place?

Sam Schwartz: Yeah, I think there’s a lot of opportunity with recommendation-type campaigns. I’ve seen a lot of success when companies start to look not only at what the customer is already buying, but also at cross-category campaigns — maybe you’re buying cleaning supplies, but not buying replacement electrical supplies or things like that. But I think they can also look at consumable campaigns — maybe you’re only buying the electrical components, but not office supplies. I come from a pretty broad distributor background, so it’s not always just pipe fittings, sometimes it’s across entire types of catalogs — but I think those can be successful. One of the most unique things I’ve seen companies do is really start to look at their product data in relation to how quickly they can get quotes out. In a lot of cases, orders coming in are project-based, not necessarily inventory-based. A very timely example: there are data centers popping up all over the place, and in the process of building something, these agencies — a government agency, or a tech company — put out bids for the project, and it’s up to the contractor to put certain things out to bid. That’s how a distributor or manufacturer gets those requests for quotes — but the way these bids come in, they’re not asking for specific part numbers, they’re saying, “I need 2,700 units of a three-inch steel pipe,” or whatever. So instead of, “Oh, I know what that is, it’s SKU number 1234,” they actually have to do a backwards search — where are my three-inch steel pipes, and what’s the best one to quote this customer? That seems easy enough with a couple of products, but the lists coming in are thousands and thousands of lines long, and a sales team creating that quote can take weeks. If we know anything, it’s that whoever gets that sales quote back to the customer soonest — unless their pricing or delivery times are way off — is probably going to be the frontrunner to win that quote. So being able to backwards-access your data is a winning strategy — “How can I match what this customer just gave me?” It even happens with people just handing you an ERP export — if you’ve ever seen one of those, they’re barely in English, or barely in any language. Being able to take “ERP speak” and turn it into an actual quote, with actual products and prices, and, if you’re a manufacturer, your fulfillment time — that’s the winning data right there. You’ll expand your share of wallet and likely get more customers if you can solve that problem. So I think that answers your question.

Floyd: And it’s fascinating too, because this conversation is super manufacturing- and distribution-centric, but we’ve had people from retail on the show, and they’re worried about the same thing — you need to be able to query your product database to say, “I need a three-inch steel pipe,” or, “I need a winter jacket that’s actually warm, doesn’t contain down, and has a reinforced zipper.” That’s also not a SKU, it’s not a link to a specific product — it’s attributes that are pretty specific, but not the most specific, and you need to be able to reverse-engineer your product data to meet those specifications. So everyone’s kind of got the same problem.

Sam Schwartz: Yeah, I think that’s true, and the deeper you get into B2B, the more specific those problems become, especially on the manufacturing side. There are definitely people asking for quotes on things that don’t exist, and the manufacturer has to go in and — even on the retail side, it’s like, they’re asking for a reinforced zipper, so how do you really get them what they want, which is a zipper that’s not going to fall apart through heavy use? That’s probably not a structured piece of data somewhere. So it’s also about being able to interpret structured and unstructured data to get to that answer.

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Matt: One thing you said, Sam, is really cool because it lines up perfectly with what we just found — we do this industry report, one for retail and one for B2B industrial. In the retail space, it was all about agentic search — that’s where everybody’s focused, hiring product data managers, getting the data structured for machines to read. What’s funny is that in B2B it’s the exact same thing, we just don’t call it that. What’s happening in B2B is the order desk is where AI and AI search are making the biggest impact, and adoption of order management systems is what’s driving most investment today in B2B — but I know some of the founders of these companies, and it’s entirely dependent on how well that product data is structured. Those systems are really smart, they can pull documents apart and read the scrappy stuff that comes across email, and it’s incredible, but it all relies on the product data. So — common denominator across two very different worlds in commerce, and hey, I guess we’re in the right career, Sam. What do you think?

Sam Schwartz: Yeah, I think so, I can’t seem to get out of this one. But no, I love it, and I think there are so many interesting things coming in the future, especially with agentic, learning how these new technologies use data and figuring out what you can do with them. I think this goes back to not being afraid to try things, even if they sound crazy or too futuristic. Look where we are — we’re talking about bots buying from bots, and reverse-engineering your requests to get to the right product. This stuff seemed like a pipe dream five years ago, and it’s truly real now.

Matt: Yep.

Floyd: What about the business case? I think people are generally on the same page — “Yeah, I want to sell more to my existing customers, and the rest of the market that’s not buying from me yet, I know I need good product data to keep up with the way people are buying in 2026 and beyond.” But it’s really hard to draw a direct line from money invested in a project like that to what appears on the bottom line. How do you make that case for investing in product data — for customers, prospects, anybody?

Sam Schwartz: Yeah, well, I think the best business cases start with how well you’re serving the customer. In the example I used before, having to reverse-engineer quote requests into actual products — you can put a number on quotes won, opportunities won, and the value those opportunities drive for the company, and how quickly you get them. So it’s a bit of a creative endeavor — it’s the same as with all digital, no one cares about your engagement on your website, right, it’s very important, especially to a digital leader and people in marketing who are in charge of these things — but when you’re talking about a business case, you have to think about it in terms of ROI, revenue, how much cost you can cut. So you have to make those creative choices about how you talk about this. But getting to a quote faster is really important to the organization, because they know that’s what brings in the most money — winning every time. So I think you just have to follow the thread to build those business cases for your product data. You can’t just walk into a room and say, “We need better product data, and I need a million dollars.” You really have to look at the data. Projects I’ve worked on where we invested in getting better product data — it was all about how that impacted our paid search campaigns. Can we make them more efficient? Can we bring in more traffic? Can we drive conversion? Now, those are things a board or exec team — unless they’re very savvy — that’s not what they’re thinking about. They’re thinking about revenue, bottom line, how efficient their revenue is. So if you can illustrate, “If we can bid more granularly” — that’s what we did, if we bid more on the long tail, we’re more likely to win it, which means we’re more likely to drive people, more likely to convert, and that turns into X amount of dollars, and cost to acquire — it used to be a dollar, and now it’s 75 cents, for example. So I do think it takes a bit of creativity, but those are the kinds of business cases I’ve seen work.

Matt: And I actually think the ROI case for product data is so easy, so clear, and really simple to make to an executive team. The problem is nobody measures the things they should be measuring. We immediately think revenue and bottom line, but one thing we don’t think about is how the website, or these order management tools, are impacting internal sales organizations — the amount of time they’re able to save, the customer experience they’re able to deliver. Those are the things to think about when building that business case. So if you’re listening, building that business case for a product data transformation, a PIM, an increase in your team, whatever it is — you need to think about it across the entire value chain of the organization. It’s not just bottom-line revenue, it’s not just your digital channel — it’s also what it’s going to do to the organization. There are other things too, Floyd — as a brand person, think about it, what does that do to your brand? That’s the hard part to measure, I wouldn’t put numbers on it, but it’s real. What do you think, Sam — have you seen really good cases made for this, and are they using any of those things, or am I just —

Sam Schwartz: No, no, you’re not — yeah, I’ve definitely seen cases around team efficiency. Using your sales folks’ time wisely also feeds into this — these are very valuable employees, some of them are getting commission, they’re experienced, so they’re getting a decent salary. Do you really want them answering how-to questions, and “where is my order,” and those sorts of things? That comes back to data too — if you can get the data to the right place at the right time, those folks can focus more on selling, expanding share of wallet, getting important quotes out and fulfilling opportunities at the right time and in the right manner, rather than trying to figure out whether something got out the door. So I think that has a really important impact on your business case as well — because otherwise you’re just hiring more and more sales folks the more business you do. So, use their time wisely.

Matt: Love it.

Floyd: Benefits everybody — I think that’s the takeaway.

Sam Schwartz: Mm-hmm.

Floyd: Well, Sam, where can people find you if they want to ask more about making the business case, or just get to know what you’re all about? What’s the best way to do that?

Sam Schwartz: Yeah, absolutely — you can find me on LinkedIn, I’m pretty active there, I respond to messages really quickly, and I’d be more than happy to continue conversations like this anytime.

Matt: We’ll make sure to include that in the notes. One last thing I want to plug — I have to plug it for you, Sam — the B2B eCommerce Association has the B2B eCommerce World event coming up in November.

Sam Schwartz: Yes.

Matt: Pivotree will be there, Sam will be there —

Floyd: Yep.

Matt: — this is a really fun event from what I hear from all my friends in the industry. Tell the audience a little bit about B2B eCommerce World — it’s probably too late for them to sign up this year, but they should at least know about it, right?

Sam Schwartz: It’s absolutely not too late to sign up. B2B eCommerce World is a conference we put on every year — we’ve actually run it in three countries this year. I just got back from the Australia event not long ago, in July. We had an event in the UK back in April, and we’ll have our Americas event in Indianapolis on November 2nd and 3rd. What makes this event so special, and so different from other similar events, is that it’s fully practitioner-led — all the speakers you’ll see, all the roundtables you’ll attend, there’s a breakfast workshop happening on Tuesday — all of that is created and presented by people like you, who are in the manufacturing or distribution space, sharing real stories about their successes, and things they’ve tried. There have even been folks who shared things they tried that didn’t work — it’s a really amazing learning experience for everyone. And of course there are vendors there, but we’ve done something special where, while they’re there, they’re not the ones spending 20 of the 30 minutes on stage pitching. The difference that makes is they’re having more meaningful conversations during the networking time and in those more public networking spaces. As a practitioner last year, I went and had more meaningful conversations with the vendors I met there than I ever did trying to walk through a hall with a booth, where everyone’s yelling at you. So I met so many people, vendors and practitioners alike — my network expanded, I don’t know, probably tenfold while I was there. It was a really great time to meet a lot of people and learn a lot of things — I have friends now that I made there, we’re on a WhatsApp chat group.

Floyd: I 

Sam Schwartz: Yeah, I have a couple of those going now. It’s just a fantastic place to get in touch with people and learn more — pretty different from anything else I’ve ever experienced, so pretty proud to be part of that organization now.

Floyd: We’ve got to do a live podcast, I think — live on the floor.

Sam Schwartz: On stage? I think they were talking about that, I’m not sure if it’s been sorted yet, but yeah, we’ve talked about it. I’m probably going to do a little webinar over the next month or so to talk more about it, and how to get the most out of it — I’ll be posting that on LinkedIn as well. But it’s a fantastic experience.

Floyd: Thank you so much, Sam — this was great, and I guess we’ll see you in November.

Sam Schwartz: Yeah, I’ll see you in November.

Floyd: Thank you.

Matt: Thanks for tuning in to this episode of Data Versus Commerce. New episodes drop weekly. So if you’re responsible for any part of how products get from a database to a doorstep, subscribe now on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen.