The Martalks Podcast | Martech & Sales Thought Leadership: Recent Episodes
Darrell Rosenstein
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. www.rosensteingroup.com https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-rosenstein-group
Data orchestration is a growing priority for enterprise brands, as they seek to gain greater visibility and control of data across connected systems.
Leading the charge in this space is Sana Remekie, co-founder of Conscia, a composable data orchestration solution which works for enterprise brands. Sana joined us on this podcast episode alongside Conscia’s implementation partner Orium, with CEO Jason Cottrell returning for his second episode of Martalks.
Read the full article based on this conversation, here. 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.
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.
Product information management (PIM) has been one of the most dynamic martech categories in recent years. This is thanks to the sheer range of things that can be optimized by getting a better handle on product data: from merchandising, to search, personalization, analytics, order management, seasonal campaigning and more.
Unpacking PIM for us on the latest episode of Martalks was Pimberly founder and CEO, Martin Balaam. Like many founders, Martin’s lived experience of the problems that that his solution solves led to the founding of a highly successful business.
Described modestly as “the little bit in the middle” between various inputs and outputs, Pimberly is now a MACH Alliance-certified solution with a valid claim to being the best-of-breed in its category. The company continues to scale with B2Bs and B2Cs on both sides of the Atlantic.
Read an article based on this conversation at Rosenstein Group.com.
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.
One of the striking trends of the composable era has actually played out on the customer side.
As deployments to full-stack composable commerce have become faster, brands have invested more heavily in the talent needed to lead digital efforts from inside, and command greater control of the data.
In this special episode of Martalks, we put three of those brand-side tech pioneers on the podium to discuss the roadmaps of their journeys to composable adoption.
Speaking to…
- Fred Argir - formerly CIO of Toys “R” Us and Barnes & Noble, and now CEO of The Argir Group
- Diane Randolph, a seasoned CIO on the board of Shoe Carnival, Former CIO Ulta Beauty, and who now advises technology companies such as Orium
- Stuart McKeachie, CTO at Serena & Lily, and formerly of Williams-Sonoma and Restoration Hardware.
…we investigated the marketing requirements and difficulties that provided the motivation for replatforming to composable platforms and the agility that the business gained as a result.
We also delved into the agents of change, and how that responsibility falls variously to vendors, integrators, and in-house personnel, and the cultural implications of transformation for the wider business.
Read a full summary of this podcast at Rosenstein Group.com.
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.
Forward-thinking brands have long known that customer consent is a crucial component in effective marketing. This has come into greater focus recently with stricter regulation around the proper use of customer data, and the long expected death of third-party cookies finally coming to pass.
But how do you actually secure that consent, at scale, without becoming intrusive? Zohar Hod, a serial entrepreneur with experience in fintech, has crossed over to the martech world to answer that question.
His latest venture, One Creation, is a low-code customer preference solution. By seamlessly integrating into any part of the digital consumer journey, their solution can confirm or acquire new data, enrich existing customer profiles, and allow for personalisation that doesn’t veer from the attentive into ‘the creepy’ (in Zohar’s words).
In the latest edition of Martalks, I talk to Zohar about the importance of zero-party data, about how One Creation integrates with other solutions in the modern composable marketing stack, and his key learnings from founding five startups over the course of his fascinating career.
You can listen to the podcast in full, or read a transcript of the key moments here: https://bit.ly/4aZWNIy.
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 all the analytics tools in the modern ecommerce stack, retailers often still experience discrepancies between the analytics data, and actual revenue figures in the ecommerce platform.
Ultimately, this restricts marketing, since a lack of confidence in the data translates into greater caution when allocating budgets.
Solving this problem is Edward Upton, whose company, Littledata, helps retailers harness the first-party data at their disposal, and to ensure greater accuracy across the whole marketing arsenal. Intergrating with marketing channels such as Klaviyo, Google Analytics and Meta, as well as with commerce platforms including Shopify.
Edward joined us on the latest episode of Martalks, where we discussed how Littledata’s Klaviyo integration can help brands not only with abandoned carts, but even abandoned browsing sessions.
We also touched on how lost confidence in the data trickles down to the agencies that brands collaborate with, and dipped into Edward’s prior experience as a startup founder, including the importance of starting a new business with the right team.You can also listen to the podcast, or read a summary article, on our website: https://bit.ly/3J2NkEG
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.
With the dramatic rise in the popularity and adoption of MACH technologies across ecommerce and Martech, the question of how to innovate, or follow the trodden path, is of tremendous importance to vendors and merchants alike these days.
On the one hand, an increasingly competitive market for martech solutions has seen the rise of a lot of groundbreaking solutions. On the other, retailers and ISVs (and, indeed, their investors) need to achieve certainty wherever possible by relying on tried and tested approaches. Add to this that the composable space is best viewed as “compostable” where best of breed solutions will be able to be ever more quickly and easily integrated into tech stacks replacing legacy solutions. Therefore it is imperative that solutions creators pursue dual development path first of product innovation and second of product integration are pursued with equal vigour to insure long term success and relevance for customers.
Leading composable agencies like Orium play a key role here in developing the accelerators to drive those integrations and adoptions to success reliably and quickly.
Few have a keener perspective on such questions than Jason Cottrell, Orium's founder, one of the leading ecommerce integrators, and one of the most trusted and leading voices of the composable solutions movement.
In our first Martalks episode of season 2, Jason shared his experience that dates back to Orium’s first incarnation as Myplanet. Covering 15 years of ecommerce history, this conversation tracks:
- the evolution of composability, through the earliest experiments with headless systems,
- the explosion in modern, API-first solutions
- the changing relevance and role of legacy vendors in the market.
You can listen to the podcast in full, and read a summary article, on our website: https://bit.ly/3OTSupS
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 area of API-first ecommerce has seen relentless optimization of the customer experience. Decreasing page load speeds, personalized shopping, and the ability to adopt other new features more quickly can all contribute to happier shoppers, and more revenue for brands.
But what happens when the conversion of experience into dollars falls at the last hurdle? At checkout, an unintuitive or outdated experience could be the difference between closed sale, and a wasted customer journey.
Jordan Gal has been on a mission to improve online checkouts. He’s now started two businesses to address the problem. His current venture, Rally Commerce, offers a streamlined payment process that allows retailers to quickly adopt payment methods without protracted integration processes.
On the latest episode of Martalks, Jordan joined me to discuss:
- the limitations of legacy ecommerce checkouts
- prioritizing customer choice as part of an effective product strategy
- the importance of following your nose as an entrepreneur, and trusting in the market as adjudicator of your success
You can also read a summary article of this podcast on the Rosenstein Group website: https://bit.ly/3uZDVKf.
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.
Businesses’ inability to use their marketing data effectively is a widely-understood problem – but understood no better, perhaps, than by Brian Kotlyar.
A career marketer, Brian first rose to the rank of VP at Dachis Group in 2010. Since then, he’s made a career of driving growth for startups which solve customer data challenges – most recently at composable CDP vendor Hightouch.
Hightouch is one of a wave of data startups now helping brands extract the value from more complex martech stacks. With more systems and touchpoints, come more possibilities for data-led marketing – but with a greater challenge in turning those possibilities into profitable business initiatives.
In this podcast, Brian and I discuss:
- the data challenge facing modern marketers, where time and resources are wasted on technology briefs, often simply in order to assemble and maintain usable audiences for campaigning
- the role of the composable CDP in addressing this problem, specifically in enabling brands to optimise use of their existing data resources
- the value of human capital for startups, based on Brian’s extensive experience of recruiting teams as a leader in martech.
You can read a summary article on the Rosenstein Group website, here: https://bit.ly/3tUsmDz
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.
Evan Liang is the founder and CEO of LeanData, an industry leader in account-to-lead data matching.
He describes the company as “revops’ best friend,” and explains how it allows sales and marketing teams to optimize sales processes by turning the data management ‘burden’ into a valuable asset.
You can also listen to the podcast, and read a summary article here: https://bit.ly/3Q8qdwB
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.
Reading the mainstream business press, you might think that tech companies are going begging in their pursuit of investment capital. But when you work in martech, there’s another story.
There has undoubtedly been a slowdown in startup investments over the past 18 months.
There is far less appetite for larger, cash-hungry businesses without the metrics to show near-term profitability. Instead, investors are looking to make smaller investments, far earlier in a business’s life cycle, in order to achieve strong ROI at lower risk.
In this special episode of Martalks we assemble insights for martech leaders who are planning their pathway through the present economy, with some practical suggestions for how to secure their businesses’ ongoing success.
We’ll look at:
- The types of companies most affected by the investment slowdown. While the investment ‘slowdown’ plays out amongst more mature scaleups in certain solution categories, early-stage firms, particularly those which propose to have a direct impact on companies’ profitability - are continuing to experience significant momentum.
- Then, we’ll look at some examples of businesses which have scaled successfully – including during previous downturns - and see what lessons can be applied to todays’ scaleups. Those lessons include pivoting/positioning your product and business model, to leaning off partnerships in order to affordably grow your marketing footprint.
- Finally, I’ll share some thoughts on the role of effective leadership in winning investment – and new business - that I’ve picked up through over two decades of collaborating with, and investing in, early-stage martech firms. There are certain leadership profiles that are always better set up for long-term success, but the current market will more quickly shake out those leaders who are cut from a different cloth.
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.
In the exciting world of startups and scaleups, it’s important to remember that some of the biggest implementers of MACH solutions are actually long-established, enterprise system integrators.
With expertise and client relationships pre-dating composable commerce, these companies are well placed to understand the client’s history with technology, business practices and digital maturity. This allows those organisations to recommend technologies and resulting implementations suited to their client's ambitions and scale as well as offering highly sophisticated digital strategy, change management and customer experience development, competitive intelligence, and brand positioning.
Chris Harrison leads CapGemini's ecommerce practice. One of the most respected thought leaders and ecommerce experts in the industry, after decades of experience as a technology leader and consultant, at Accenture, Aquity, DTE and Ford, Chris is ideally placed to lead the CapGemini's new MACH business practices, critique and refine technology implementation processes and develop industry leading best-practices.
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.
A composable inventory optimization tool, Invent Analytics is designed to eliminate the guesswork and introduce greater profitability to brands’ demand chains.
Founder Gurhan Kok joined us on The Martalks Podcast to discuss how his technology works, and to describe his successes with likes of Camper, and Academy Sports + Outdoors.
You can also listen to the podcast, and read a summary article here: https://bit.ly/3OutDc7.
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.
Often, tech startups are founded by individuals with a background in software engineering. That’s great for creating a standout product, but soon enough, specialist expertise is required to flesh out other leadership functions.
Nowhere is this more important than HR, people and talent acquisition. The martech industry’s relatively high churn rates, international client bases, and occasional rapid growth stories, are all factors requiring an expert hand to steer the company’s team and culture towards ongoing success.
One such leader is Alex Pusenjak, VP for People & Culture at Fluent Commerce, an API-first order management system based in Sydney, Australia. During Alex’s time at the company, the team has increased from 70 to 170 people, with hires made across the US, Europe, Asia, and his home country.
Alex joined us on the Martalks podcast to share his experience as people leader of a rapidly scaling supply chain technology company. He explained the difficulties startups have in hiring across international borders, how to improve the effectiveness of hiring managers, and how the c-suite can facilitate their HR teams in attracting and retaining candidates.
You can listen to the podcast in full below, or read some key takeaways from the dicsussion here: https://bit.ly/3NNcZ6j.
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.
Most brand-side professionals know what they want to achieve from digital transformation – but are not necessarily clear on which technologies will get them there, or the implications of individual choices they make along the way.
This has created a valuable role for consultants in guiding brands through this change: aligning the strategic needs of the businesses with specific choices and solutions that they’ll need to achieve desired outcomes.
One of the leaders in this space is Rick Watson, the CEO and founder of RMW Commerce Consulting, bringing 20-plus years of experience to the table as a consultant, and also as a solution founder.
In this episode of Martalks, we discussed topics such as helping businesses understand the technical implications of adoption, and the importance for vendors of building trust with your network through your marketing efforts.
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.
As API-first commerce solutions continue to proliferate, vendors will increasingly need to look for product strategies that differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Gordon Cooke, the co-founder and CTO of the platform UpStart Commerce joined us on the latest episode of Martalks to explain how his product’s management tool is helping retailers manage the complexity of MACH, and how they work closely with agency partners to simplify adoption for their clients.
You can read a summary article of this conversation on our website: https://bit.ly/40FY2Hv
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.
As chief digital officers look to invest in their customer journey, there is significant debate over the optimal technical architecture for content management and delivery.
Deane Barker, Global Head of Content Management at data experience platform (DXP) Optimizely, joined us on the latest episode of Martalks, to share his view on the importance of selecting the right content management infrastructure for a given business model.
You can read listen to a summary article on our website: https://bit.ly/3ZFyVE5
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.
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.
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. This means more competition amongst vendors - but it also puts more money on the table.
How do suppliers collaborate to understand and server customers’ evolving needs?
In this podcast, Joshua Hudson, practice director at Pivotree, shares his insights from 20+years in the data ecommerce space, to answer this pressing question.
We cover:
- how retailers’ pioneering new business models depend more heavily on third-party support
- 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/3K7E0Rt
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
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/3SnNqZZ
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.
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 GroupThe 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