Building Customer Loyalty with eCommerce

Curt Anderson  00:00

Hey Damon dude, happy Monday, man. How are you?

Damon Pistulka  00:05

I’m doing great Curt ready to go.

Curt Anderson  00:07

Oh my god. How was your weekend? Man?

Damon Pistulka  00:09

It was awesome. Awesome. Awesome.

Curt Anderson  00:12

Did you do please tell me rested up for this one did you?

Damon Pistulka  00:15

Did you Did I was your I was to bed extra early last night. It’s

Curt Anderson  00:20

your eight hours in?

Damon Pistulka  00:21

Yep. Yeah. Okay.

Curt Anderson  00:22

Because we you know, I just I won’t speak for you I desperately need my beauty sleep. But man, when we’ve got our dear friend, the one the only multiple repeat offender Kristina Harrington CEO from Gen Alpha. Kris, how are you?

Kristina Harrington  00:37

Oh, I’m wonderful. I’m always better when I know that I am on the show with the both of you. So I made sure to get my sleep to so long ago as well.

Curt Anderson  00:47

Okay, well, that we have a ton of packed ton to cover. Now. Kris, you’ve been on many times. You know, we kick off that opening question about who was your hero and I just You gave one of the best answers of all time and I if I let me see if I saw this crack. We had grandma Milwaukee. And we had grandma up north. So I have that correct.

Kristina Harrington  01:07

That’s right. Milwaukee, grandma and up north grandma. You got it. They were

Curt Anderson  01:12

heroes. Yeah, big shout outs there. And I think I think Damon if I recall correctly, even don’t we dove into like Coach K was in your life, right? And Duke and like, all sorts of things. So you know, fierce athlete that you are and you know, so I have a couple of things I’m going to dive into let’s talk athletics for one second. Okay. How has athletics I know like you and I were talking about Caitlin Clark the other day just you know, blown up the whole NBA world? You know, I know I think I think the Olympics might be on the horizon. I think Damon, aren’t they coming up this summer? Chris, are

Kristina Harrington  01:44

they the summer, they are coming up this summer. And I’ll be there. Chris

Curt Anderson  01:48

is gonna be there. Davis and Chris is going to be at the Olympics for a little birthday celebration. But Kris shared a little bit, you know, athlete in throughout your career. And I want to dive into like your leadership, being a CEO of a tech company, how has athletics, that inspiration, competitiveness, camaraderie, how has that helped you through your career?

Kristina Harrington  02:11

Gosh, you know, I definitely think it has built the character that I have today. You know, there were so many great coaches, that I experienced in my life that, you know, really built me not just built a player, but built an individual that I, you know, I take so many of the things that I learned, and I’m talking about the fundamental things because I played basketball, I played soccer, I ran cross country, I played a little bit of softball, I never played fast pitch, but I appreciate the game so much. And I think, you know, just the repetitive practice, what I’ve learned in life is that practice is so vital, you know, and for those of those that don’t practice, they, they often aren’t winning and are setting themselves up to be in the best position to win both in life and professionally, and in their personal life as well. So the practice the ability to fail, and have to run down the court, and, you know, keep fighting for that next opportunity to take your shot again, and get yourself in position. And, you know, I think that athletics teach you quickly, and often that it’s okay, to make mistakes, you’re gonna have to try, you’re gonna have to work hard to be stronger, faster, smarter than your opponent. And so you keep trying and you know, there’s strategy that goes with that there and, and you have to keep working hard and putting yourself in position. So practice failure. The sportsmanship act of having a team and working alongside people and truly believing that you’re better than a, you know, a better together than saying singularly as an individual. You know, so much of that comes out of the team sports that I was a part of, and I carry all of that into my work with me, and I turned 50 This year, that’s why I’m going to the Olympics. It’s my 50 my gift to my self, my spouse, and I will be attending and it’s going to be so much fun. But I you know, I really did. I took that all those concepts that I learned in my early athletics and had these coaches around me who were instructing me and being able to take instruction and take feedback. Think about all of that. You know how important that is. As we get out into the world and we have experiences. I don’t know I read a book once that taught you to fail early and fail often and fail forward. Maybe you guys have read that one as well. And I’ll tell you what, I think it’s true and sports are a great way to instill that in you early and then take the practice of it into life.

Curt Anderson  05:19

All right, first shot, the mic moment right there, came out on that she came out swinging. So a couple things I want to unpack, you know, putting in the reps, right, having the ability to get knocked down, you know, get knocked down on your tail and just in pick back up. Sports is a great way you know, nothing, David nothing better than being you know, bad in the sixth inning, two outs and you walk up to the plate, and you strike out, you know, you go down screen and you you know, you’re slumping back to the bench, or you miss a free throw or whatever it might be, you know, if you’ve been in sports, man, we’ve all been there. And it’s just such a character builder, Chris, and I love what you’re talking about the teamwork. And all the above. That’s exactly man that was just that’s exactly what I wanted to hit that with you today. So let’s let’s slide here with this athletic career that you’ve had. You know, you’re CEO of a booming, wonderful, incredible tech company that admiration respect that Jim and I have for what you guys have, what you’re what you’ve accomplished, and what you continue to accomplish with helping manufacturers just off the charts. Share a little bit for you know, Damon are both girl dads proud girl dads, for young women out there, just share it. Listen, I know you’re super modest, super, super humble, but just share a little bit about you know, leadership for women in technology. And like what’s really, what do you feel is like really helped advance your career?

Kristina Harrington  06:40

Yeah, well, I think that I probably wouldn’t have known how to say this even 20 years ago, but you have to continue to work on yourself. No matter what you do, whether you’re a women in tech, or you’re going to be you want to be a CEO, or you just want to be the best you can be at your work. It starts with understanding who you are and working on yourself first. And then you if you can truly commit to being the best you and really understanding even your own your your your strengths, I went through a program in the past called strengths finders. And so I think there’s a StrengthsFinder 2.0 today. And you know, those types of programs that help you start to uncover who you are, and lean in more to who you are, and begin to leverage your strengths, maybe not so much focus on your weaknesses, we all have weaknesses, but what do you what are you good at and what do you enjoy doing, because if you can start to understand that, first, you’re always going to have to work hard, whether you want to be in technology, you want to be a CEO, again, you want to be a leader work is there, you’re gonna have to work hard. But I would say, work in a smart way where you’re volunteering for work, where your strengths are in the things that you enjoy, because then likely, you’re going to have to work hard for it. But you’re going to be successful. Because if you’ve chosen to volunteer for the things that are your strengths, and what happens is people will start to see you excelling in that area. And naturally, you’re going to be given more opportunities for that area. So you you have to do the work, understand who you are, understand what your strengths are, and volunteer, keep volunteering, which means you’re probably going to have to get uncomfortable, and I would coach you that you’ve got to get uncomfortable because we never get stretched, or even uncover our full potential until we are, you know, doing the things that are uncomfortable for us. And they might even be that they’re part of our strengths. But maybe we’re not comfortable speaking in a group or we’re not comfortable taking the lead or we’re not comfortable because we haven’t tried this aspect of of what somebody’s looking for. Go try it, go do it. The best opportunities came for me when I didn’t even think of myself necessarily for that. Or I thought that might be interesting for me. And I just raised my hand without thinking too much about the consequences and said, I do want this, I’m just gonna raise my hand and put my name in that hat and see if I get selected. And those were the biggest really the biggest growth opportunities took me to three countries, right? I joined the Navy when I was young. So I was a machinist mate. I didn’t know what the hell I was selecting when I did that. But now look at me selling parts and equipment and helping others do the same. That’s those things they just built on the built on my life over time, and you just start taking all these experiences and recognize that they, they become your strengths too over time. And you got to lean into that. So I don’t know if I answered your question really clearly, because I’m still a work in progress. And I’m still learning, you know, these things as well. But those are the things that have worked for me. And there are a lot of what I coach, others as well.

Damon Pistulka  10:30

Wow. Guess what I’ve said? You know, it’s funny, you say that about 1020 years ago, you wouldn’t been talking about personal development, myself as well. You know, we were not taught that 20 years ago, how important that continual personal development is to keep moving through the leadership chain to be able to do what we’re doing. And then you said something else too, about strengths. We used to talk about strengths and weaknesses. And we’ve talked about, oh, you got to work on your weaknesses, right? And, and over time, I’ve just begun to really go, Okay, I’m going to mitigate my weaknesses. But that’s about all the time I’m getting and just make sure it’s not like a huge anchor, right, dragging behind, like you said, volunteer towards your strengths, lean into those strengths and keep moving forward. And and that’s awesome. You just went right through that masterclass. And in about a minute.

Curt Anderson  11:30

Yeah, Kris. Yeah. I mean, you definitely answer this. I’m like speechless myself. Daymond does, like I’m ready to run through a wall. And this is why I am just such an amazing leader. So Chris, couple of things on pack. First off, I tried to do it every show, thank you for your service to our country. You know, we applaud you salute you just you know, you’re a warrior, and just, you know, carry that level of integrity. Just honestly, the dedication and persistence. You know, like you said, you know, with sports or whatever it is in like, putting in the reps. Damon, I’m gonna say one thing I you know, I will speak for you guys, I probably was told over and over to work on myself. But you know, what, when you’re in your 20s, and 30s, I wasn’t, I wasn’t there to listen, you know, so. But that was a whole nother that’s a whole nother topic. Chris, let’s go here. Alright, so you’ve, I’m Doc, we’re going to dive into Gen alpha, the solutions that you offer, how you’re making the world a better place, I want to go there. And one second, before we go there. Again, this is just such a gift for Daymond. Myself, folks listening, we’ve got a CEO of a tech company. And you’re the co founder, when you know, you had a wonderful, illustrious, you know, military and corporate career. Please share it. I know you’ve done it before. But I’ve just I love hearing the story. Just take when you took that entrepreneurial leap. Whoa, was what like, Was it scary, exciting when you get when you guys decided collectively like yes, we’re going all in on John Alpha? Can you take us back to that time? Yeah,

Kristina Harrington  12:53

you know, I would say when you’re doing it with a group of people, certainly it’s easier, especially if it’s a group of people that you’ve come through the trenches with, you’ve worked hard with, you fully trust them. I had the privilege of being a part of that experience, right? We all worked in manufacturing together. And, you know, we sold parts and equipment in the mining industry. And it’s not every day that you can say that you’re fine. It’s there’s a unique new way to do business, right? For so many years, it was the same way you show up to trade shows. You, you you have the right, you hire the right people to pick up the phone and answer customers questions. And you, you have good email skills. And you try to be proactive, right? But I mean, we used to document every quotation we gave to customers over the phone so that we could at least know our hit rate. So we would see if those quotes that we gave over the phone would turn into orders. But, you know, e commerce was just coming into the scene. And when we saw the opportunity that ecommerce had for manufacturers like ourselves to ease the process of doing business with us, that was we were hard to do business with, in the 15 years that I worked with this mining organization, manufacturer of mining equipment, we had three major acquisitions, so folding those companies into our business, having a seamless strategy to our customers from multiple locations out of multiple ERP systems, people speaking multiple languages, and trying to sell sell and service globally was not easy, right? And we saw the first opportunity to really understand that we could help our customers have an easier process of doing business with us is when somebody came in and showed us that they could take a 3d bill of material and explode it so that people could identify the right parts for their specific serial number. And we thought, well, you know, this is awesome. And then our company happened to get acquired very large acquisition. So, you know, the company we were working for, and we weren’t no longer allowed the opportunity inside that organization to go down that ecommerce path, because they had that set for a different part of the company to take the lead on that. So, you know, we all rolled into this new company, we were learning our jobs and understanding how we could best fold our organization into this new large company. So there was a lot to learn and a lot to do. But as partners and friends in this industry, we kept going back to the vision that we had for manufacturers and easy, you know, easy in the process of doing business with them. And we thought, hey, if we develop this e commerce site, to make it easier, do we think we could help other manufacturers and we all agreed that we could, so we went off, and we built it, and we continued working while we were building it on the side. And we actually never came into the organization, we didn’t hire one person to work full time, until we had our first customer. And we got our first customer and the plastic injection molding. Business, they made molding equipment. And we essentially, I left, I was the first full time Plitt paid employee for Gen alpha, I left. And at that point, now we had a solution, we had a customer. So it became less scary. In the beginning, it was just exciting. Let’s take this vision. Let’s see what we can do with it, we all agreed. But when it came time for me to say, I’m going to leave this job with its benefits and all of the opportunities. And I’m you know, I’m at that time in my career where I’m just going to keep going up to be the first paid employee over here. That was a little scary, but I also really believed in what we were doing. And it became easier when you had the first customer. So you know, you have a lot of those companies that will teach you to bootstrap, right, bootstrap until you’re ready to leave, we kind of were we were doing that. So you know, that’s about the very beginning of Gen alpha. And really, from there that, you know, now we’re owned by private equity, we have great partners that we work with. And the story is so much further today. But right in the beginning, you know, we were just believing in a dream, we believed we could do something different and better. And it would serve the customers we were going after other manufacturers. We’ve lived in their shoes before. So we understood it very well. And we wanted to bring that dream to life.

Curt Anderson  17:57

Wow. Damon, I don’t know if this reminds you. So Kris, we had a phenomenal, fascinating conversation with a guest a year and a half ago and really kind of changed was it was a game changer for me and the gentleman talked about he studied different businesses in different societies. And why so you know, a little bit of like, The Good to Great, but he studied societies. And it was like, you know, hundreds he’s a researcher and he talked about you know, the one thing that separated why somebody would leave their country go to another country and not knowing what there was the cause that they believe that he called it the saga. And what you just shared what I just absolutely love, like you guys believed in yourself you believed in the cause. And you know, look at you took an idea and converted it into this wonderful tech company that’s part of private equity. And you’re sharing the saga and again, you’re leading the charge. So inspiring. Just so wonderful. Let’s go Daymond Did you dance Mickey right you know exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Damon Pistulka  18:53

Did that resonate with you? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Curt Anderson  18:57

So Kris, let’s go here Jen for folks join us we’re here with Kristina Harrington from Gen Alpha technologies. Kris You got a great podcast by the way, the broadcast if you guys you got to connect with Kris You know, there are partners that have you seen the new pictures with these guys are like they like you and Erin and Lori. Yes. Oh my God bless ya. Just warms my heart. So check out Kris on LinkedIn. You want to connect with her. You want to follow John alpha, follow what they have going on. Check out her podcast. It’s called the broadcast. Kris, let’s go here. For folks that are not familiar with Gen Alpha technologies. How do you and your amazing team how do you guys make the world a better place?

Kristina Harrington  19:36

Well, we are making it really easy for equipment manufacturers and parts sellers and distributors to sell and service their products online. In this age of technology, where we’re all walking around with our phones at our fingertips, right? Really, commerce is done 20 473 65 And that’s what customers are expecting today. So we’re enabling manufacturers and distributors to give their customers really what they’re looking for.

Curt Anderson  20:11

Nice. Okay, so let’s dive in you and I love we’re kindred spirits on whether you like it or not. We’re kindred spirits on multiple things, but there’s a little term. You know, we’re ecommerce evangelist, ecommerce junkies. But we also love this term digital self serve. In earlier you’re describing like that friction, those challenges, you even said it yourself like we weren’t easy to do business with. So for our manufacturing friends out there, if this hopefully this is resonating with them, or like, you know what, we’re not so easy to do business with either. Yep. Describe a little bit like that frictionless or that digital self serve experience. What are we trying to accomplish for folks here?

Kristina Harrington  20:47

Yeah, and you know, I think we’re all three kind of in that b2b space. So a lot of what we’re talking about is the friction in a b2b setting when somebody is trying to do business with you. And often I like to make the distinction of b2b because it’s much more complex, right? It’s a complex selling process when you’re selling to businesses. And when people that are buying from you are buying in a business role, right, so they’re not there to browse, they have a job to do, and buying your products or services is part of that job that they’re doing. And they really, you said the word friction, right, they are expecting a frictionless process, something that’s easy and convenient, but also accurate, and without delay. So we have a responsibility in the b2b space where we’re serving customers, to not just allow them to browse and find things, but really to find the exact thing that they need exactly when they need it. And a big part of what we do is, is help companies do that. So you know, for example, what we do for equipment manufacturers is we allow them to convert their bills of materials and really repurpose their engineering 2d 3d drawings. And that complete bill of materials to allow customers or dealers or partners, whoever might be servicing that equipment to quickly search by a serial number, a model number VIN number, what is Evers the unique identifier, to get to that exact piece of equipment that they’re working on, and go into that bill of material, maybe access those exploded diagrams so that there doesn’t, the manufacturer doesn’t necessarily need to have, you know, an image of every SKU. But what they do have is that image that comes from their parts manual, right, that exploded diagram where maybe 50 products for an assembly or on that exploded diagram, and it still gives the customer a visual of Yep, this is the thing that’s broke, broken, maybe it’s my pump or my gear case. And here’s all the parts, the bearings, the seals, the other items that are needed, and very quickly identify what they need, get all of the their price, right. So most in a b2b setting. Your b2b customer wants to make sure that when they’re looking at price, they’re not looking at a list price. So if there’s a doubt about the price, they want the price that they’ve negotiated with you that contract pricing, or that earned level of pricing discount, so they want to be able to access their price. They want to see product availability, this is how we’re making it easy, right? They don’t have to pick up the phone, they can see if it’s in stock, or if it’s 10 days away, or whatever it might be. And I often say product availability sells more than price. So it’s really important for you to have product availability there. And then when they go to check out, they also want to check out and purchase on their terms, right. So again, if they’ve negotiated 30 day, 40 day, net terms are 60 day terms with you. That’s what they want to be able to purchase on. So in a b2b space, these are the opportunities that we’re giving that end customer so that they never had to pick up the phone to search for that product, or to get their price or their availability or confirm the product availability and get their terms so they can quickly checkouts. And then post purchase what we’re really talking about is the ability for them to come back in check the status, get any tracking information. If down the line, they actually have to get some warranty, you know, a file a warranty claim or some other aspect of owning that. You know that that product, they can file their warranty claim there, they can initiate a return request. So, you know, these things can all happen digitally without lots of phone calls, and conversations. So that’s what I’m talking about when I talk about self service. You know, for so many years, as manufacturers and distributors, we worked with clients. So they’ve been buying from us over and over and over again. And the data of those sales are all in our ERP systems or dealer management systems, that information resides there, in oftentimes, what your customer wants, is just the ability to reorder or request something they’ve purchased from you in the past that just sits in your system. So if you can make that available through a secure login, where they can access that information, and they can reorder or re quote without having to contact you, that’s part of the self service. That’s what they’re looking for the convenience, the buyer wants to do it at their level of convenience, quickly and easily. Most buyers in the b2b set setting, they have requisitions, all day long that they have to fill. And they might have sheets of it, I used to sit next to buyers when I was a product manager, and you’d go into their office and they had stacks of paper, and they’d have a ruler and they’d go down, and they’d have to place their orders for all the things that they had to buy, right. And the companies that were the easiest to do business, if they could not have to send an email and write the requisition or make the phone call, they would prefer to just take care of it, and then be done. Check that one off. And then when they want to check the availability, when it comes back up, has the shipped yet book, they just go on to your website, check has it shipped? When is it coming so they can alert other people in the business? That’s what we’re talking about when we’re talking about self service?

Curt Anderson  26:56

Right, which is, you know, just all of the transparency in Kris, I’d love to dispel a myth here. And I think we’ve talked about this before in the show. Is it true? People don’t want to talk about the price of the O ring? Is that that I’ve heard a rumor demon? If you heard that rumor before, I’ve heard that rumor

Kristina Harrington  27:11

before. True. It is true. They, you know, yes, we use the and still occasionally we will get the complaint on my customers, they want to have a relationship with me. They want to they want to talk to me, they they want me to bring them the doughnuts. And I and that’s why I say they don’t want to have a relationship view with you when they just need to know the price of that O ring? Or is that O ring available? Right? They want relationship with you? Yes. But they want you to be available and easy in a digital way in a convenient way. as well. Hands

Curt Anderson  27:49

down Damon out of every show we’ve done that may be my all time favorite line and stuff. It’s It’s It’s definitely the top three is Kris, when we were closing out the show, and I said Chris, any last parting shots, virtual wisdom, and you just dropped the mic on a wonderful line of like, they don’t want to have a relationship with you on the price of the old ring or shipping information. You know, when there’s a high level engineering? What do you recommend? You know, it’s like go into the restaurant, you know, you’re the restaurant like, hey, what do I why I’ve never met you before you have no idea what I like, but do I want this or this? You know, like, when you go to that expert, that’s what you’re kind of, you know, I want you know, should I do this or this, but it’s just that those basic everyday things. We don’t need to have that relationship over those. Right? That’s right. And you

Damon Pistulka  28:36

said it to Kris, it’s like, if I’m a buyer in a large organization, I want to go down that list and get those things on the way. And I want to be able to know the status of them quickly. Now on the other hand, if I’m an end user, or one of these pieces of a very expensive piece of equipment, I might be, you know, it might be who knows what time who knows what time I work, because we’re around the world doing what we’re doing. If I can get online, and my account is all set up on my corporation, I’m authorized to purchase I can go in there, I can go yep, I need to have those three have that, that and that. And it’s on its way how I want it. They’re on to the next thing. It’s because otherwise, I’m a high level technician that has to write that down. Remember that could be I gotta give it to somebody else because I don’t even work the same hours at the office is open to where I where I’m actually ordering this stuff from, or I have to remember that they’re not open now. But they’re open at the end of my when I start working or you know, just there’s so much logistical junk that you got to deal with, and how Gen Alpha eliminates that, or a vast majority of that. Yeah.

Kristina Harrington  29:47

Yeah, you’re, you’re covering all the points.

Damon Pistulka  29:52

The other thing is is what I love about your solution is that I can put my serial number in And if you know what that piece of equipment, isn’t it because I cannot tell you how many times in history run in places where CNC machining, injection molding, sheet metal fabrication, all kinds of things where you got this 250,000 to a million dollar piece of equipment sitting there, and you’re trying to get service on it, and you get the wrong stuff. Because these aren’t all the same. There’s little options that are all over here. And being able to go down to your piece of equipment is so critical, because, you know, a million dollar or $2 million or $5 million pieces of equipment, you know what, they’re sitting down very long. Yeah.

30:39

And so I mean, just so much stuff that you guys cover. It’s cool. Yeah, cool.

Kristina Harrington  30:44

Well, thank you. And you bring up a good point, right? They do not want that piece of machinery sitting, the reason they bought that machinery from you was to get to keep it productive, to keep it operational. And that’s why we, as leaders in our organizations, we have the really the requirement to make sure that our customers can easily access the information for the products that they purchased from us. And that’s what we’re trying to do. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  31:17

yeah, Kris, I don’t I hate to put you on the spot. And are you comfortable? Do you want to pull anything up? Do we have a little show and tell opportunity? Could you give us a little Do you have a little demo quick demo handy that you could pop in if you go to a little present button, and what sometimes works best if you grab a tab? And yeah, totally love to take a look at what we’re talking about here. All right. Well,

Kristina Harrington  31:39

let’s share the screen. And then

Curt Anderson  31:47

Damon, we just love we’ve gone through multiple Gen Alpha. Kids on Saturday morning cartoons backwards.

Damon Pistulka  31:56

Like I said, you know, I’m a horrible technician. And you stick me in front of a schematic or hydraulic diagram, and someone tells me what’s wrong? And then you go, wait, this doesn’t look like what’s on that machine.

Kristina Harrington  32:13

Oh, my goodness. All right. Can you see my screen? Yes. Yep. All right. Yeah. So what we’re showing here is really the landing page. And so often, this search bar is the most important, you know, area of every digital storefront, because this is often where people will just start searching for the things that are top of mind, especially in b2b, right. So this is where we were talking about how they could actually start typing a serial number. And you’ll see as I start typing a serial number, it’s searching across the database to pull up an exact piece of equipment. And you’re seeing right from this search area that I can. Now that I’ve found the piece of equipment. Now I’m inside this bill of materials. And what’s great here is we like to think about it as the safest place to find all information related to the piece of equipment you’re working on. So not only can you get into each assembly, and this is the as built Bill Bill of Materials as it left the factory. So you’ve got the complete bill, but you can also load any type of so any videos that would be associated with the equipment could be here. So that could be disassembly reassembly instructions, which are important on the how to front. And then also documentation. So let’s say that they’re looking for some wiring schematics, they’re looking for the operator’s manual or some warranty documents, you can access again, right from your smartphone, all of the information pertaining to this particular unit. And you will see that this garbage truck actually has a complete Vin, but I just searched by the search serial number and that was the unique identifier. So if I go back here, and let’s just go into this debris pickup area, and I’ll go down into let’s find one here. We’ll do the handholds extension rack. So you can just kind of see these call outs. And as I click on these call outs, and we just call them hotspots here you’re you’re seeing that we’re pulling up different products, if there happens to be an image and in this case, we use some of the 3d images as the image for this specific component. But already I have a lot of information that securely helps me feel good that I’m in the right spot. So if I was looking for components for this hand hose extension rack, I’d have the list of components here, I’ve got a good visual, I can zoom in, I can zoom out, I can move this around and look for the different components. But as I click on those different components, I can also click on the shopping cart. And this is where I’m going to access is there any in stock, what’s my price, and I can add it to my cart. So all very simple. And then I can continue shopping. And this is great for, you know, often, many websites have the ability to search and you can search by individual part numbers. But then you have to associate other parts to that part, if you want to help them, find all of the products or you have to create a kid and then you have to make sure that that kid comes up. In this case, the user can see all of the different components that they may need in this job. So right here, visually, they could add the additional components that they might need. Any questions from you guys while I’m in here? No.

Curt Anderson  36:03

Because it’s fantastic, Kris? And I have one question. And if we want to park it, the one question I want to, I’d love to ask is, so for a manufacturer out there, that this is really resonating, or like, Man, I like, you know, but how do I get from you know, I’m so I have a website from 2010. And you know, where you’re at, you know, you’re kind of at a Ferrari. Like, any advice for the folks of like, walk, run, walk, crawl? I’m sorry, crawl, walk run are like phases of like, how do you? How do you get from, you know, Daymond? I do LinkedIn webinars, you know, Damon has an enormous amount of connection. So if somebody’s just starting out, it’s hard to see like, Why can’t I’m not going to catch up to Daymond. So then they get overwhelmed. And then they you know, any suggestions on like, how to get that crawl, walk, run? How does that does that question come up for you? Yeah,

Kristina Harrington  36:54

absolutely. And, you know, certainly what I just demonstrated on the tech pub side of things is, is more advanced than some people even need, you know, depending on the organization. But really, what it comes down to in the crawl Walk Run is, I would say, integrating your back end system to a front end system that makes it easy for customers. So our ERP systems, our dealer management systems weren’t meant to be customer facing right. But most often, they do hold all the information for our business, it’s where we run our inventory, it’s where we store our pricing, it’s where we have our shipping information, it’s where we would collect credit card, if we were going to allow somebody to order by a credit card, it holds all of that information. So I do think in an initial crawl, integrating to your back end system just to provide the data that exists, there can be a very easy first step, because all of that data exists. And you work on that data all of the time. And most ecommerce providers that you’re going to work with can integrate easily to your system. And then they are simply exposing the data that you have in your system. And again, in the b2b world. The reason that this becomes convenient to your customers who are already doing business with you, they just might be doing it through phone, email, fax, or messages right. Now, when they come to your website, they can come with a login, they can access information related to the parts, or the products that they’ve purchased from you in the past. So they get all of that information right there. So they can easily see what they’ve purchased before. In a good e commerce site. You can push lists to them. So let’s say they own specific products. So you know, these are the consumables that they’re going to need over time, you can actually push that information to them so that they would go right there and be able to order and and most often if they already have a relationship with you, and I’m not saying that content isn’t important, but in that b2b relationship, they might not have an image today when they’re buying from you. So having an image when when you’re crawling, it might not be necessary, as long as they know they’ve purchased that one from you in the past, and it belongs to the equipment that they own. So by making some of that fitment and other things, which typically again, already exist in your ERP system, just exposing that to your customer to self service, the ones who want to do it, they’re going to take advantage and it will take work off of your customer Have our support teams and start to free up people so that you can start, you know that crawl, walk, run, now you can take some of the insights of what your customers are doing, you can apply it, you can use the 8020 rule, the, you know, the 20% of products that are making 80%, up to 80% of your business. Now you can start building out better product descriptions, you can start adding images, you can start adding your SEO, if you if you’re deciding to make your site open to the public, right? So you can start doing some of those things, after you’ve already gone live in a crawl phase. Really enabling your existing customers to do business with you through self service is the easiest crawl at that point. You’re not even trying to build necessarily. You’re just trying to make it easy for your existing customers. And then iteratively build from there. Yeah,

Curt Anderson  40:59

and that’s the name of this episode was, you know, just describing how customers how ecommerce can just really fast forward that customer loyalty. And you really just kind of summarize that in a wonderful masterclass. I don’t want to cut you short on the demo. Is there anything else that you want to show any any other ball factors that you wanted to show for folks? Yeah,

Kristina Harrington  41:18

well, let’s go back here. Because I think personalization is a big one, especially with existing customers, right. So if I share my screen again, let’s do this.

Damon Pistulka  41:32

Yeah, I mean, if you’re, if you’re a technician, and it’s a complex piece of equipment, just I just haven’t, that your piece of equipment or pieces of equipment are so huge, you know, if you’ve got a you’ve got 3040 50 100, are these things running around? You want to know, I’m working on getting the right stuff for the right one? Yeah,

Kristina Harrington  41:55

and you know, that’s such a good, great point, Damon, because I, when we talk about crawl two, I really love the idea of in a crawl phase, just open it up to your existing either partners, if you have dealers or distributors, or open it up to your existing customers, let’s please them first, they’re already doing business with you. So if you link them to their account through an E commerce shop, now, when they log in, that’s where they’ll get access to their price and all of their previous information. So if we really start to look at the personalization that you can provide, this is what you were just talking about Damon. So I’m logged in, if I own all of this equipment, I easily have access, I don’t have to go search, I don’t even have to remember the VIN or the serial number, I can just quickly see, these are the products that I own and go into the bills of materials so they can be mapped to the specific equipment owners or operators or technicians that would be working on equipment. Same with that order history. So we talked about, again, integrating to the ERP system so that customers can access previous quotes, previous orders, invoices, right. And these are some of the most common areas your customer support team is getting questions, when when are my products going to ship? Can you re quote me or reorder? Can I reorder things that I’ve purchased in the past? Can I get a copy of my invoice right here in this order history, you can go back, you might turn your ecommerce site on today. But you can load three five years of data in here so that customers have access to it right here on the status that on the screen, I can see that these orders have all been completed. So I could go into that particular order. Inside this order. You can see it was for one line item and shipped on 511. So may 11. Since it was just one item, it has a single invoice. So there weren’t multiple shipments or invoices, I can download a copy of an invoice and the shipment, I get all of my tracking information. I can download the packing list. I can download the order if it’s valuable. And I want to send it through an email to somebody else on my team. I can also reorder it. And what’s really nice about reorder is that when you reorder what it does is it moves product to the shopping cart and it refreshes with today’s price and today’s availability. It makes it really easy for your customers to see if it’s available. And they can order and then here’s all the information that was originally on that order. So again, any question they had, it’s all here. Things like favorites, right? So customers can come in here they can favorite things. So if they’ve been on your site, and they’ve looked at different products, and they’re they’re looking for their favorite That’s right now what it’s doing is it’s calling the ERP system. And it’s pulling up pricing availability. So my price and the product availability for all the favorites on my list. So it’s always continually, it’s an easy way to find things that I’ve searched for, and favorited. In the past. Often this is used for consumables or things you might want to buy in the future. But it refreshes with that current price and availability every time they do it, things like auto reorders, how often would your customers reorder from you, especially on those consumable parts, if you made it easy for them to manage their reorders? Again, they never have to call you, they don’t have to email you, they can just log in, they can skip or cancel their orders at any time. But this is where they would manage all of that. And then I talked about lists earlier, and how you know, organizations can push lists to their customers. Well, this is a great place for your logged in user to create some of their own lists. So if they let’s say they’re planning a maintenance shutdown in the future, and they’re starting to gather the parts and components, they’re going to need for that shutdown, they can start to build a list and then convert that list into an order later. But also, let’s say that you come up, or you have a customer actually, who buys a new piece of equipment from you, you map them to that piece of equipment, you can push them a parts list for that equipment, one year, the parts they needed one years, the parts, the parts they needed, in three years, the parts they need, and five years so that they can start thinking about their future requirements, but easily access that information. So there’s so many ways to make a site personalized for your customers that it’s a really great way to just crawl, crawl into E commerce, start giving your customers that ability to self service, and they’ll be happier for it.

Damon Pistulka  47:06

So much.

Curt Anderson  47:10

You’re just speaking out, you’re to speak in our love language here, Kris, just you know, so many things unpack right there. And I know we’re running out of time, right ran out of time, but you’ve got see, we’ve got the CEO of a big company here, Dima, we can’t be keeping her all day. You know, the loyalty that you create for your customer. Just think of the time savings that you have, I don’t know, we’ve all been there, like, hey, customer, ABC, they’re a big customer, they want some records or information from 15 months ago, and now I’ll be back in half an hour because I have to go find it or I’ve got a big dig in through my you know, here it is a click of a button. And not only do you not have to do it, your customer can do it on their own. It’s just I mean the wealth of time savings efficiency, you know that frictionless experience you know, and then you know what, I don’t quite get this now I can pick up the phone now I can send an email go to chat, you know, whatever it might look like you’re just you’re saving the company such an enormous amount of money Damon, what are your thoughts?

Damon Pistulka  48:12

I just I’ve I’ve always enjoyed the solution just because of the frustrations I know I’ve seen in industry over so many years and how it can all the way like you said it doesn’t matter if I’m selling direct to my end user I’m selling through a distribution channel or both. Just it simplifies the process you’ve talked before about it makes it better for your customer service people too because you can have all that documentation when a call comes in. You can make your customer service people really smart to on the other side of it by saying what are you working on your while you’re working on this piece of equipment and they can bring up internal technical stuff that really helps him to answer more questions as well there’s just there’s just so much good about this it’s just awesome what you guys are doing

Curt Anderson  49:01

yeah and Kris I so I will say this if you know you can crawl with E commerce but man if if your manufacturer out there if you’re not doing this, I wouldn’t be sprinting to asleep. And again, reach out to Kris Harrington here CEO of Gen Alpha. She is just a fierce advocate for US manufacturing and just you know, her mission her cause her saga is to help manufacturers and I just you know and I’m sorry to say this and I just I feel Damon I you and I feel so strongly about this. If you are not offering this in some in some way or form you are seriously at it you’re putting your your you’re almost intentionally putting yourself at a deficit and I’m like I’m so sorry to say like I’m trying to be as polite as possible. Kris, you have a more polite way to put it.

Kristina Harrington  49:52

No, I think if you want to thrive in the future, you have to take the steps in this direction. And you know that will We would never open a storefront and not, you know, look at our storefront and make sure that that was easy for our customers welcoming, and giving our customers all the options when they came into the store. In today’s world where people are walking into storefronts, less, and they want to have these digital options, you have to think about all of the places you can sell your products, and online, and your own environment is just one of the many options available today. And, you know, I think, if I were to answer today, why I think more people aren’t doing it, because I do think that they’re coming to realize that they need to, they do need to be doing it. They’re not doing it yet, because they don’t know how they don’t know. It’s just not the way you know, we did business. And I appreciate that, right? It’s just not the way we’ve done business in the past. So they don’t know how they don’t have the expertise on their team. So, you know, it takes either hiring the expertise, or finding good advisors and partners who can help you bring these tools to life. And that’s why all of us are here, right? It’s we’ve created these tools in our own companies to help people be successful in this area. And, you know, there are a lot of vendors out there who do genuinely care and are going to help you be successful. We’re just one of them. But it’s time to learn. Because if you’re not doing this, you’re going to fall behind quickly, it’s a lot harder to catch up. You know, once you if you don’t take the move into technology, it’s going to be a lot harder to catch up and compete with those who are already doing it. And starting to leverage as things change and and their ability to respond is so much faster than the traditional ways we did business in the past.

Curt Anderson  52:02

Yeah, that’s a great point, Chris, and just you know, for a longtime ecommerce guy, you know, late 90s, you know, when business a consumer was just the wave, right? And you know, I what’s going on in the b2b world right now, I like to say like party like it’s 1999 Man, because what’s going on in the b2b space is exactly what was happening in the consumer space from my experience in 1989 is just starting right now you are not too late. Don’t feel overwhelmed. Don’t feel behind. We have this wonderful, fun demo. If you miss it, hit the replay button, go back and watch it step by step with Chris Cole, Chris and the team get on a demo with her. But I’m telling you right now, like it is the party just starting right now in the b2b space. It is it’s right here in what a great incredible gift and opportunity to get leaps ahead of your competition. And in the name of this program, building customer loyalty with E commerce and Christus demonstrated exactly how that’s going to happen. Chris, you know, we’ll wind down on this, you know, all three of us are fierce advocates for education, education, education, we talked about let’s out teach the competition. Chris, you and I have a wonderful program coming up with our friend just Jessica and Nicole Donnelly, Jessica from Bigcommerce. And Nicole Donnelly from dmg, digital, and manufacturing.net. So if you’re catching us before, June 5, you can catch us on manufacturing dotnet, we’re going to do a deep dive on the future of b2b commerce. And then Chris down in the fall, we’re going to do a little gig together at Purdue University. We’re going to geek out on more b2b strategies. But on your website, you and Kevin and a team do a great job with blogs, information content, just share a little bit of just some of the education pieces that you guys offer in general for

Kristina Harrington  53:46

Yeah, absolutely. What I would say the the fastest way to catch what we’re doing is to sign up for our newsletter, and it’s designed to all be educational. So when we have shows like this, what we’ll do is we’ll put it into our newsletter. So if you happen to miss it, you’ll catch it in our newsletter and be able to go back and watch it. But yes, we create blogs. We write industry articles. So if we’re writing for an industry, whether it be b2b, digital commerce, or if it’s for the distribution market or for manufacturing, we put a lot of that content out there. And then also if if we have some speaking engagements where we we get an opportunity to speak in front of a group, we’ll put some of that those speaking materials out there for for people to access to so we want you to be educated. We think it’s really important that you have access to this information and can keep learning. So awesome.

Curt Anderson  54:45

I Chris, I have one last question for you. And again, I’m Damon Knight, we could chat with you for hours and but we know you’ve got you’ve got businesses to save out there. My question for you is best business advice that you you’ve ever received whether pre entrepreneurial journey post, what do you feel like really helped you that you that carries with you, you’re smiling, what do you got?

Kristina Harrington  55:10

I’m gonna go with because I’ve had some good zingers that I have remembered over the years. But I’ll go with this one today, because I’m just feeling it, but don’t take less than three noes. I think that was really important. Really early in my career when, you know, this is so true today, right? So when I was I’m a Gen X, or when I was coming up in the industry. I was one of the young guys on the team. I’m not so young anymore, right compared to everybody else. But you always want to be trying different things and you want to you have different ideas, and you come up against the usual, we’ve tried that before. That doesn’t work or you know, don’t take less than three noes. If you believe it’s the right thing to do. Keep trying it, try a different angle. Keep working it don’t take the first No, the first note is too easy. I would agree with all of this in sales to the first note is is probably just an easy, no. The second No, you have to work harder for but often you will get two yeses before you get to your third No, because your conviction alone will start to allow people to look at it in a different way and say, Hey, she really wants this or he really wants this and believes in it. You know? And finally, you might just be able to get a chance to go do it. And that’s when things really change. So don’t take fewer than three noes. That was a good good lesson for me. That

Curt Anderson  56:47

is awesome. Damon, where was that? 130 years ago? Right? Yeah, really? All right. Well, we will wrap up demon takeaways thoughts what stuck out for you today?

Damon Pistulka  56:58

Yeah, I just really I just love to see the evolution and what you guys are doing a Gen alpha and how you’re helping these OEMs get the information in the hands of the people that needed to get the the pieces, the components, the knowledge, they need to keep their equipment running day in and day out, because they spend so much money on it. It’s it’s cost them a lot when it’s not running. And it’s awesome how you guys make it easy, and frictionless as you said.

Kristina Harrington  57:23

Thank you.

Curt Anderson  57:25

Thank you. So Kris, thank you. God bless you. We appreciate you happy, happy birthday this year. Big, big birthday. We wish you a wonderful trip to the Olympics. And so just we appreciate you your friendship. Dave, and everybody out there have been a big round of applause for Kris Harrington, CEO of Gen Alpha technologies, LinkedIn, follow the broadcast. And just boy, you’ll thank us later. So Kris, hang out with us for one second. Thank you for taking the time to join us. It’s always a gift. It’s a pleasure. And guys, just you know, Damon, what do we love to say? Just go out and be someone’s inspiration just like Kris was man and you’ll just you’ll make the world a better place. So guys have a great rest of your week. We have another incredible guests on Friday. We’ll be back coming atcha and so eight and Alan drops a comment here. Taking three noes advice and storing it in the memory bank. So Happy Monday so I guess we’ll see you soon. Thank

Kristina Harrington  58:22

you, Curt. Thank you Damon.