Data vs. Commerce

Distributors think their customers want reps who know the catalog. Their customers mostly want to know where their stuff is.ㅤFloyd Blaikie brings Matt Johnson a report she got lost in the morning they recorded. It's the State of Sales in Distribution 2026 from Phocas, built on a survey of 100 distributors. Floyd reads the numbers. Matt, who leads go-to-market for distribution at Pivotree, explains why they look the way they do.ㅤThis is a hosts-only episode, so nobody takes a side. The friction comes from the data itself. Then Matt admits that his own sales agent hallucinated on unmaintained data, and his step one for distributors has nothing to do with buying AI.ㅤ📌 What We CoverWhy 34% of distributors don't measure new business win rate, and 39% don't track or don't know their forecast accuracyWhy the data used by the most people inside a distributor gets dirty the fastest75% of distributors prize rep product knowledge, while about 5% say their customers want technical expertiseWhat happens when product knowledge lives in reps' heads instead of the product databaseWhy electrical buyers care about fast quotes and "where's my order?" more than discovery55% of distributors call field sales their top channel and 5% say e-commerce, which Matt reads as being in the retention business more than the growth businessEvery distributor with no plans to adopt AI has a sales team under 20 repsMatt's step one: get the people who maintain the data into the strategic meetingsㅤ🔗 Resources MentionedState of Sales in Distribution 2026, from PhocasData vs. Commerce Episode 6 with TrommlAmazon BusinessPivotree

Sell sheets, spec sheets and price books are the collateral B2B salespeople say they can't work without, and they go out of date the moment the catalog changes. Some manufacturers can only refresh a price book every 12 to 18 months.ㅤMatt Johnson and Floyd Blaikie of Pivotree sat down with David Feinleib, founder and CEO of It'sRapid, which generates marketing collateral straight from PIM data. David took the data side. His argument: when you produce thousands of documents from product data, every missing spec or diagram turns into a gap on the page. One customer told him it felt like an audit for their data.ㅤMatt pushed on governance and why stale data gets shipped anyway. Floyd asked whether the gaps turn into finger pointing. David recast the fight as data versus design, the left brain and right brain of every sell sheet.ㅤ👤 Guest BioDavid Feinleib is founder and CEO of It'sRapid, a Palo Alto company that turns product data from PIM and DAM systems into sell sheets, price books, product images and retail media ads. Before It'sRapid he founded Content Analytics, an ecommerce analytics and product content platform that Syndigo acquired in 2019. He's a former general partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures, led product management teams at Microsoft, and wrote Why Startups Fail. He took the data side on this episode.ㅤ📌 What We CoverWhy a customer told David, "I didn't realize I bought an audit tool," and what the gaps on the page revealed about their product dataPrice books that can only be updated every 12 to 18 months because the data keeps changing on the teamThe legacy workflow: custom scripts pushing data into templates, then sign off from marketing and legalRegenerating 10,000 pieces of collateral after a logo change, and what happens when one field flows through to 10,000 sheetsMatt's case that the problem often happens in governance: letting stale data in and shipping it anywayWebhooks as the ideal state, where a data change triggers regenerated sheets automaticallyData and design as David's version of data vs. commerce, and the client who went from one region to seven or eightWhether print is dead, tested against a printed birthday card versus an e-cardㅤ🔗 Resources MentionedIt'sRapid (David's email: [email protected])Pivotree Intelligent Managed Services for Stibo STEP customers, including the free Intelligent Health CheckStibo Systems STEPData vs. Commerce Episode 6 (field sales and AI)

Increasing share of wallet among existing customers is a huge priority for manufacturers and distributors. On paper it looks easy. In practice, marketing blames sales for not selling more into the base, sales blames marketing, and both blame IT for not prioritizing their stuff.ㅤFloyd Blaikie put a third suspect on the table: maybe neither is the problem, and the problem is actually data. She and Matt Johnson of Pivotree took that to Sam Schwartz, who took the data side and stayed there. Her position: the data is accessible. It's probably in your ERP somewhere, probably in a catalog somewhere. What's hard is prioritizing it, and that comes down to fear and ego at the leadership level.ㅤThe conversation gets into project-based quoting, the backwards search from a spec to a SKU, the order desk as the place where AI is landing hardest in B2B, and how to build a product data business case an exec team will fund.ㅤ👤 Guest BioSam Schwartz has spent about 17 years working for distributors and manufacturers on product data, digital transformation, and technology adoption programs, including senior digital roles at Jensen Precast and Midland Industries. She now runs her own consultancy, Sierra Summit Digital, working with mid-market B2B companies, and she is Global Director of Practitioner Experience at the B2B eCommerce Association. She took the data side.ㅤ📌 What We CoverWhy siloed thinking between sales, marketing, and IT stalls customer expansion before data ever enters the conversationThe sales team that had decent product data and still couldn't cross-sell, because the only thing in their tools was what the customer bought last timeWhy the real blocker is prioritization, not access: the data is probably already in the ERP or a catalogFear and ego trickling down from leadership teams, and what accountability looks like when a CEO's vision gets ignored to his faceCross-category and consumables campaigns, and where they work in a broad-line catalogThe backwards search: bids that arrive as "2,700 units of a three-inch steel pipe" instead of part numbers, on lists thousands of lines long, and quotes that take weeksWhy the order desk is where AI is making the biggest impact in B2B, and why it depends entirely on structured product dataHow to build the business case without asking for a million dollars: quotes won, speed to quote, cost to acquire, and sales team timeㅤ🔗 Resources MentionedSam Schwartz on LinkedIn (she responds to messages quickly)Sierra Summit Digital, Sam's consultancy for mid-market B2B companiesB2B eCommerce AssociationB2B eCommerce World, Americas event in Indianapolis, November second and thirdㅤPivotree integration services: integrations in half the time and half the cost, monitored in production for a fixed monthly fee, starting with a free integration sprint

A packaging change is a data change, and most brands don't treat it as one. An item profile gets built months in advance, pitched to a retailer as a 12-pack, and then a new channel wants six or eight to a box. Nobody updates the profile. The POs arrive at the warehouse and the unit measures don't marry.ㅤMatt Johnson and Floyd Blaikie sit down with Leo Rodriguez, VP at River Plate, Inc., a 3PL in Southern California. Leo took the data side, which is a more interesting position than it sounds coming from the person whose team physically touches the box.ㅤFloyd opens by reading a line from his LinkedIn back to Matt: the operation is only as clean as the data behind it. What follows is what that looks like at the end of the chain. Bad mapping that shows a green check mark. ASNs going out wrong for two weeks. Chargebacks that surface six months later, when corrective action is no longer an option.ㅤ👤 Guest BioLeo Rodriguez is Vice President at River Plate, Inc., a family-owned third-party logistics provider in Simi Valley, California. The business started as local trucking and freight in Los Angeles and now runs a 138,000 square foot facility covering e-commerce fulfillment, wholesale and retail distribution, value-added services, cross-docking, and freight logistics. Leo has been there 17 years, going into his eighteenth. He joined without a supply chain background, took courses online, and learned the operation on the floor.ㅤ📌 What We CoverWhy the item profile and the purchase order stop matching, and why the 3PL is the last to knowWhat happens when a brand sets up a 12-pack, then sells the same SKU as a six-pack on a different channelWhy a green check mark on an integration doesn't mean the data arrived correctly downstreamThe mapping change on a tech provider's back end that nobody communicated until Target sent an emailChargebacks that don't surface until six months after the mistake, and what that does to corrective actionThe onboarding red flag: five bullet points sent to a brand, two of them answeredPre-mapped connections to Walmart Marketplace and Shopify versus a REST API and what each one lets you controlThe reverse logistics client who built his own returns dashboard with Claude and connected it in 15 minutesLeo's advice: test the reality, not the PowerPoint, and go past go live before you believe it worksㅤ🔗 Resources MentionedㅤRiver Plate, Inc. (RFQ page and discovery call)Walmart MarketplaceShopifyClaudeTargetKohl'sAmazonSalesforce

Everyone agrees the legacy PIM has hit its ceiling. Almost nobody wants to own the move off it.ㅤIn the third and final part of the PIM series, Matt Johnson and Floyd Blaikie get into the part the first two episodes set up. How do you actually move? Jay Roxe of inriver and Willem Van Dijk of Pivotree both argue the move has gotten faster and cheaper in the space of a year, because AI now sits at every stage of the delivery cycle rather than one.ㅤThat creates a different problem. If standing up a platform that looks like your old one is now easy, the temptation to lift and shift gets stronger exactly when it's least appropriate. Jay's position is that B2B buyers are already researching and selecting with AI, so a migration that preserves the old model preserves the old invisibility. Floyd pushes on the credibility question from the buyer's chair, and Matt names the valley of pain in the middle of every implementation where the schedule quietly goes.ㅤ👤 GuestsJay Roxe is Chief Marketing Officer at inriver, the product data platform. He came up through software engineering and product before marketing leadership roles at Microsoft, GE, athenahealth, Rapid7, and BitSight, and most recently HYPR. He lives near the Boston Marathon course and has run it.ㅤWillem Van Dijk is Director of Data Platforms & Services at Pivotree. He has spent close to twenty years in master data management and PIM, including multiple leadership roles at Stibo Systems where he opened the retail vertical and later the Australia and New Zealand business.ㅤ📌 What We CoverWhere AI now sits in a PIM delivery cycle: needs gathering, user stories and the grooming of them, build instructions, test scripts written as the build happens, and post-delivery support triage.Why Pivotree can quote fixed bid now, and what has to be true about delivery for that to work.Why writing user stories with AI surfaces the workflow that actually exists, including the Tuesday afternoon email from Bob to Mary that no system has ever recorded.Jay on lift and shift as the wrong goal, and what happens to discoverability if you carry the old model across.The line between free content and governed, on-brand, compliant, regulatory approved content, and why only one of them needs infrastructure.Floyd on the person who has been burned before, and what has actually changed since their last migration went sideways.Jay's customer survey: about 65 customers, more than two-thirds cutting product data maintenance time by more than 30%, and 75% launching faster.The valley of pain in the middle of every implementation, requirements bloat when the light bulbs go off, and what a good SI does about both.ㅤ🔗 Resources Mentionedinriver product data maturity research, covering more than 400 manufacturers and distributorsPivotreeLinkedIn Live event with Jay and Willem, Wednesday September 2nd, linked from the Data vs. Commerce, Pivotree, and inriver LinkedIn pagesMCPs, referenced by Jay on moving prototypes into productionContact: [email protected] and [email protected]