S4E3: Sarah Falcon

Welcome to Commerce Famous, a podcast that celebrates the celebrities of our industry. Join us for a conversation with the taste makers in ecommerce. In their daily lives, these are just normal everyday people like you and me. But to us, they are commerce famous. Alright.

Welcome back once again to Commerce Famous. This is episode three of season four, and I have Sarah Falcon joining me today. Sarah is a marketing professional focused in b to b ecommerce, and we're gonna really spend a lot of time talking about her journey at what life mistakes she had to have made to end up here. So, Sarah, welcome. Thanks for being on the pod.

Yeah. Thanks for having me, Jason. It's gonna be really boring because it's just been, like, smooth sailing from day one. It's just been, you know, no learning along the way. It's Well, that doesn't match.

We had we had dinner in New York City at our Shoptoberfest event, and you told some really wonderful stories about your journey. So maybe maybe start at the beginning, introduce yourself, kind of what you've done in your career, and we'll use that as a way to kinda talk about some of your experiences. Yeah. No. It's it's true.

It's been it's been a winding road to get into this b to b ecommerce space. But I started my first sort of big real job was, marketing in, for a German startup called Spreadshirt. I think I was in the first 20 or so hires. They were a little startup similar to Custom Ink, and so you could do customizable t shirts and hats and things like that. Is Spreadshirt a European based company or are they US?

They're based in Germany. I was living in Germany. Yeah. So it was in Leipzig, which is a a little city, like, an hour outside of Berlin. And and they were creating sort of a little mini tech boom with a few startups, and that was one of them.

So it was a really it was a fun company to be in and a fun time and and a really different time both in ecommerce and, digital marketing. You know, for email marketing, we had to hard code the emails. We had to make sure they loaded properly in AOL and Hotmail and, you know, it was every it was a real ordeal just to get marketing off the ground, but we did cool, Myspace campaigns. We did cool, Friendster events. Like, it it was a it was a fun time because it was all quite new.

And at the start up, you could have a lot of, sort of leeway to experiment. It's funny that we start the story with your experience in digital marketing as AOL, Friendster, and Myspace. Yeah. So a lot of the listeners are gonna be like, I don't even know what those things are. But Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, there's some nostalgia for them, but I but marketing in a lot of ways has gotten so much smoother and faster and smarter in in those years intervening. But it is the same concepts, which is where where is your audience living? Where what are they doing? What is it what are the things that excite them, and how can you service them digitally in the places that they already are?

It just took a lot more effort from the marketing side to actually get that done. And the first ten years of working in marketing was pretty sort of straightforward digital marketing brand side. I worked in at Spreadshirt and then switched over, moved back to The US and worked for, a skin care company that was primarily a d to c company. And I joined as they were launching their website and launching their direct to consumer channel, and built that ecommerce channel from there. And while I was there, we did a really innovative, b to b website.

We had a, you know, a 100 or so wholesalers that we worked with, and they could log in. They could see an order form, and they could type in the quantity and place an order with a button. And that was my sir first sort of mini introduction to to b two b ecommerce. Sarah, what year were we talking here? This obviously, the the first experience was the early two thousands.

What is this foray into health and beauty with regards to to b to b? Yeah. That was, sort of, February. K. Yeah.

And I was I was there. I led the digital commerce channel, from a marketing side, but also, owned the p and l, which was a really fun gig in ecommerce. It was really exciting to be to own that whole sort of, the whole channel, the whole life cycle. And then I switched over, into b to b marketing, which is a a really different beast than b to c marketing. A, because you are really you don't own that whole life cycle of marketing through to revenue.

You're really reliant on a bunch of other people and processes to turn marketing effort into pipeline and revenue. And, I moved into b to b marketing for b to b ecommerce, which, like I I mentioned before, I I had a pretty basic knowledge of what b to b ecommerce looked like. And it was a it was a huge learning curve to understand, the the complexity, the opportunity, the just the the I didn't know what I didn't know. That that was like a big, black box. And and I learned it through, a lot of falling on my face in front of clients and listening to a lot of people who are smarter than me explain, how this actually worked.

What I really like about your experience when I look through your LinkedIn profile is you've you've actually had to wear a lot of different hats. So the first hat you wore at Spreadshirt was actually, you were a technology provider, in the ecosystem. You were a a small part of a lot. Yeah. I'm sure you had to plug into Shopware, which you do.

I know that company does, or Shopify or others, so you had that role. Then you switched to being the brand, then you switched from b to c to b to b. And so just trying to understand the different dimensions of each aspect is really, really critical, which has probably set you up nicely for what you're doing today. You wanna do you wanna take us forward? I know you have a a consulting business.

You're a senior member of of an association. Kinda talk take us through a little bit of that, how you landed there. Commerce famous is proudly presented by Shopware, the leading open source e commerce platform for mid market and lower enterprise merchants. More than 50,000 clients already processed over $25,000,000,000 in annual GMV through Shopware. Find out more about Shopware and the best value in ecommerce at shopware.com.

Yeah. So when I switched over sort of into the the b to b side of things, I I worked at a consultancy that was focused on, b to b ecommerce for mostly distributors, and then I worked at an SI. And having that SI experience, I think, is really, really informative to understanding all of the sort of players and pieces that go into ecommerce and the relationships between the product companies, the agencies, the consultants, the SIs, and how that, whole economic system works. So today, as you mentioned, I I sit at the b two b ecommerce. I'm a partner there and and run and head of marketing and work a lot with vendor partners like like Shopware and also SIs and other platforms and technologies that are in our ecosystem.

And I have a lot of, sympathy and understanding for how hard it is in this marketplace to kind of break through a very, very noisy world to an audience of manufacturers and distributors who can be, quite hard to break into. Like, it can be they're they're a tough crowd. So but but a huge opportunity too. I you know, you recently published, you know, about innovation and b two b and and rethinking what, what b two b ecommerce looks like, the the Compass report that you guys put out recently. And I thought that was really, really smart.

And and, you know, and I know there's just a huge opportunity, for manufacturers and distributors to rethink how they're using digital to drive business results. Because we've been talking about b to b e commerce for a long time and talking about digital transformation in a very sort of vague market y kind of way for a long time, but there's still a huge business use case for improving operations and efficiencies with digital tools. So that's the part that's cool. Like, that's the part that's exciting is that there's just such a big opportunity even though it's it's quite hard to break through. Very much so.

We we actually had you, as a guest speaker at our partner day in Chicago. I think it was last year. And you gave a really good presentation talking about oh, actually, you kinda hinted to it earlier around the reliance of sales and marketing working together, and it's just so much different in b two b than b two c. You wanna kinda if you remember that presentation at all, can you share some of the highlights of of what you shared on that? Yeah.

And and I was thinking about this recently. We just we just had the Olympics and the, you know, there's this visual that the way that marketing and sales are gonna work together to create pipeline is this idea of, like, a ice skater handing the baton to the ice skater behind them. And if you watch it in the Olympics, right, you see you you can't even see them catch the baton because they're so closely aligned with each other, right, they're skiing they're skating in parallel and just handing it off seamlessly. But in my experience, it's rare that it happens that sales and marketing are so in sync. Often, sales is off pursuing what is hot or easy or most profitable to them, and marketing is off doing what is going to provide whatever they're compensated against.

Maybe it's number of MQLs. Maybe it's, like, a brand initiative that the CEO has. And so oftentimes, you have these two, organizations working in silos. And so there's a huge opportunity to, build marketing and sales orchestration that's really aligned through compensation leadership. For me, it was it it was really, relationship building and the right people who were ready to work with marketing, which was the big unlock for having marketing drive pipeline.

Because, frankly, I've worked with sales leaders who wouldn't pick up marketing leads and not because of you know? It wasn't personal. They've just been burned before by, you know, poor definitions of a marketing lead. You know? Someone visits your website, it that doesn't really count for a marketing lead.

Someone registers for a webinar. It's also a question if that counts for a marketing lead. So so there's a lot of repair to be done, I think, within sales and marketing to kind of reset of how how do we drive pipeline and revenue together. It is an age old problem. I mean, I I was a a CMO back in the day.

And and I tell you, one of the number one ways to look for, high performing organizations is if sales and marketing have similar related goals that if one misses, the other misses, and if one hits, the other one hits. I've seen many, many companies who have marketing numbers are hitting and sales numbers are missing, and that is a symptom of a bigger problem. Do you also see similar, Sarah? Yes. And it can be it can be political.

Right? There are lots of reasons that it happens. I think the biggest I think the biggest two risky moves is overreliance on MQLs, over like, overfocus for marketing on MQLs because it leads to bad practices, either bad definitions of MQLs or things like content syndication, which I will bad mouth publicly. Do it. Tell us why content syndication sucks.

It sucks. It's it's was sold to marketers to solve the quota problem. Like, it it's it's no good. So so on the one side, I think an overfocus of marketing on NQLs is a problem, and the other problem in on sales is is just no accountability towards, marketing generated pipe. And it's and it's hard.

You know, there are a lot of deals that come in from partners, from referrals that are much easier to close, much faster to close, and much higher likelihood to close than marketing leads that require just more time and resourcing to actually convert to pipeline. So I think those are I think those are the two big things. When when businesses are stressed out and kind of wanting to lock things down, I think that's when those things happen is that they say, we just need more lead to marketing, and they tell sales, like, you just gotta close. Like, you just gotta you've gotta close. A 100%.

Well, do you talk about so this may be the perfect segue about your involvement with the b two b ecommerce association. So Mhmm. When people come to you and they talk about the role of ecommerce for distributors, for wholesalers, for manufacturers, and the role of marketing, how do they talk about digital and what they can embrace? Because ultimately, you and I both know it has a little to do with tech, but a lot to do with change management. So how do you how do you what does an engagement look like, and how do you help companies?

Well, I mean, we we don't directly work sort of as advisers to companies. We sort of build the community where the conversations happen. So we have, we have conferences, we have industry awards, and we have resources, and, training and certification programs. And and one thing the training and certification program does is to help sort of upskill and give a shared language to everyone working on it. So we work with a a global manufacturer that, uses our training program for its big network of distributors, some of which have high digital maturity, but many of which have low digital maturity.

So in that way, it's it's giving their ecosystem a shared language, like a leveling up of an understanding of what b to b ecommerce means. Yeah. Do do how do you find people's so you you do engage a lot with merchants at events. You do you you are you have lived through their shoes as you shared before. How do you talk to them about embracing digital and and and trying to because I'll tell you the thesis of the question or the the origin.

Mhmm. In the early two thousands when you were at Spreadshirt in the b to b world, digital meant channel conflict. Digital meant my sales that I used to make are now gonna go through the web, and I'm not gonna get commission. And so if you're a b to b seller, you see digital and have been conditioned that it is a bad thing. Obviously, the path forward has to be embracing improving the lives of salespeople through digital to get more efficient.

But I I don't know. Is that conversation come up or or or not really? Yeah. So, a couple of things. Spreadshirt was a was a funding company because it was a direct to consumer and a tech platform.

They actually built their own ecommerce platform and sort of plug in that you could plug in a customizable tool on their website. So they were kind of funny hybrid. The you know, I think and, again, I I really liked the Compass report, and and we've recently put out a couple of pieces as well, and I know Justin King is working on an ebook on this. You know, in 2000 in the February, there was this concept that that b to b salespeople were gonna be out of jobs in the next five or ten years, that digital was just gonna replace their jobs. Right?

And that did not did not. It just didn't you know? Right? And and so but that being said, I think the combination of COVID the reality of COVID and the shutdowns and just the an the demand of moving online getting very acute quite quickly and the emergence of AI and the promise slash reality of agentic commerce or, like, the future of agentic commerce means that it's very obvious that the future is not gonna look like the past in terms of buying. And I think that that is probably clearer.

That's I think that's clear to everyone in the ecosystem, manufacturers, distributors, and the vendors, that it's that it's changing for real this time. So I I guess I I guess that's that's what I hear because the big a big, big change did not happen in many businesses in 2010, and and there's still pretty slow adoption. But but I think it's quite clear that it's but that it's it's that that rate of change is gonna hit I think that's right. Faster. I I do think, you know, in our in our lives, we we get to have two hats.

We get to live the b to c use case with some of our clients, but the majority of our our our more in b to b. And it's really interesting in the, in the board meetings and and and the like when they're making platform choices, how B2B merchants are kind of realizing this is their moment to do a paradigm shift. And B2C has always been there. There. They have adopted technology.

Mhmm. They've changed it out. But in B2B, they're looking at things like AI and and, how do we get more out of our sales reps and that kind of thing. So I I do think this is a moment where they recognize the future cannot look like the past. And they've sat out a lot of innovation cycles.

I'm not so sure they're gonna sit this one up. Yeah. And and I do think a lot of tools today, they can you can actually leapfrog. You you may have to you may not have to muddle through like you would have had to muddle through if you had started doing ecommerce in '20 in 2005. Because of the AI tooling available and because of the platform's sophistication, you can actually jump pretty pretty quickly to having a robust and transformative ecommerce experience or, you know, digital experience that's solving for business use cases.

Yes. Pretty quickly now. Well, take us back. Okay. So you still have, I think if I'm not mistaken, two connections.

So you've got your own consulting business Mhmm. As well as the leadership role with the b two b e commerce association. Talk us through your consulting, world and what kind of projects you're working on. Yeah. Oh, thanks for asking.

So I've focused on primarily b two b marketing for professional services. So the understanding of of how b to b marketing can and should work, and helping businesses streamline what they're doing. I do a lot of consulting around what I call, removing random acts of marketing, which is a lot of business, which, you know, I think we've all experienced. And and, honestly, with AI, it's even it's even faster and easier to do really random acts of marketing. Right?

I'm sure you get you get outbound emails that have just nothing to do with anything that you're doing professionally or personally. Yep. I'm also a big a big problem creator with random acts of marketing inside of our company. So I hear you. I'm not gonna change.

Keep going. Great. Yes. You know, you you know yourself, so that's but there is I think a a lot of businesses and I I like working with businesses that are are growing and profitable. They just haven't figured out this marketing piece and how it actually grows their business.

And there's so much marketing that we could all be doing all the time. We could all be creating short form TikTok videos that have the potential to go viral. We could all be sending mass emails. Like, the the list of marketing activities you could do as a business is is humongous and daunting. And so I help narrow it down to a marketing strategy that's focused on their business results and and and get the business results through through executing on on what we've agreed to.

And, you know, I I've worked with businesses that change directionally change pretty frequently, and, I've worked with a business that, you know, when I met them two years ago, they were like, these are our core values. This is our ICP. This is what we're doing, and they've never wavered. And anytime I even tried to, like, move them a little, they're like, no. That's not what we do, which is which is kind of an amazing and the first time I've ever experienced that.

So, but, yeah, it's it's simplifying and making marketing strategic and a lever you know? I I like finding where the revenue is and figuring out how marketing helps the revenue. Love it. And do you consider that to be a fractional kind of thing, or or is it a how do you engage with with with partners, with clients? Yeah.

Usually, it's like a fractional leader, either with their team or with, people I bring in. Alright. I like asking marketers this. Who is your ICP? My ICP?

Yes. Yeah. Small, profitable businesses in unsexy markets with a huge opportunity to gain more through marketing. Alright. So big tam, unsexy, big tam.

Yeah. And they can afford it. And they can afford me. And and they're not doing marketing out of desperation. They're doing marketing because they see a path to growth.

They that they know that they could get bigger and they're ready to get bigger, and they want help figuring that out. Very cool. So if anybody on listening to the pod, Sarah has just described you, how should they reach out to you? Find you on LinkedIn? You're not hard to find, by the way.

Oh, that's good. Yeah. Find me on LinkedIn. It's your ad out there, like the bird. So how well, just like the bird.

So how okay. So I'm a big fan of, Brett Sinclair and Justin King, and and I've I've kinda known those guys on the on the outside level for a while. Then they came together and formed this b two b ecommerce association. How did they find you, or how did you find them? Oh, I worked with Justin King in the the '20 I don't know.

Mid twenty, I guess, 2015, 2016. He had a consultancy called BDX Partners, and I was working there with marketing. And we did a bunch of content. I'm the thing that's interesting is I worked with Justin, you know, eight years ago, and we were talking about customer adoption. We were talking about that you have to understand your customers and the pain points, and it's not just about an add to cart button.

It's really about understanding the customer journey and solving for the friction within it. It's about change management. And, it was we talked about very similar themes, but the reception was very different. In terms of readiness from manufacturers and distributors, it just feels really different in 2026 in terms of openness, understanding, just readiness to have conversations about, about digital and ecommerce. It's really it's really quite different.

So, yeah, I worked with Justin eight or so years ago, then worked in an SI for about five years, and then, Justin called and was like, hey. We're doing this thing. What do you think? Obviously, you thought it was a good idea. It's been shocking.

And I said, tell me more. And yeah. And then this past year has been a whirlwind. We did three global events in 2025. It was it was a big, fast, and crazy year.

So it's been I I think it was the right choice to join, and it's been fun. Well, talk about those events. So, I think you played a big role in planning last year's events from everything I've heard. I was not personally there, but I think we had some folks that at least one of them, they said it was awesome and it was different and it felt very community driven. So I think this year you've got three, one in Europe, one in Asia, and one in The US.

Can you unpack where those are? And if people are interested, how do they learn more? Yeah. So, the global events are b to b ecommerce world. This year, we're doing London in April, Melbourne in July, and Indianapolis in November.

Are those terrible times weather wise? I mean, you picked foggy London, super hot Australia, and cold Indy. I mean, you you're really trying to get people to focus and work. I like that. Yeah.

Exactly. It's winter in in in Australia in July. It's winter. Oh, yeah. I'm in Australia.

Right? The grass is in the dark. It's rainy everywhere. Yeah. Yeah.

We wanna keep people indoors, make sure no one gets a sunburn. That's nice of you. Thanks. So the events are really, I don't know. We we hold them very tightly.

We're very protective of them, and and Brett really has built an amazing vision of what those events are. And and the important things are an agenda that's really strong. It's practitioner led content, which vendors don't like to hear until they realize what it means, which is that the people that they want to show up at the events and listen to what the speakers are saying are in the room. So practitioners really love that it's practitioner led content. And, in spaces that are designed for conversation, for people to meet and connect lots of breathing room and activities around it.

In Scottsdale, we had afternoon golf or hiking, or round tables for people who just wanna sit around and chat. So building spaces for people to connect and and have fun. And I think, it's a sort of, interesting thing, I think, specific to to b two b ecommerce, which is just a really nice, really great people that you wanna talk to. On the practitioner side, a lot of them are working at these very challenging jobs in organizations that may or may not understand what they're doing. And so just to be in a space where there are other people who are solving the same problems, I think, does a lot.

I do a women in b two b event. We did a dinner with Shopware as a as a presenting partner. And one woman said leaving, like, I didn't know there were this many women working in b two b, like, in The US. So it's it's just a really nice, it's a warm crowd. It's a it's a nice environment.

They're nice spaces and, like, high a high focus on really quality content and making sure it's it there's the time and place for people to connect. We also, we didn't show companies on the name badges this year. So it just had your name, and you could pick yeah. It's it's interesting. You could pick the topics you were interested in so that you could pick different color stickers to indicate the topics that you were interested in.

At first, the vendors weren't nervous because they didn't know who to talk to. But because you weren't you weren't designated as a vendor, people would just have conversations. And then one guy from a a big global manufacturing company was like, nobody's talking to me here. It's like, what's up? I'm used to everybody trying to buy me drinks and taking this point event.

But now that it doesn't say company x y z, I'm not the belle of the ball anymore. Yeah. It's interesting. Because you just see this, like, as a conduit to budget. But you are just the person who may have budget, whether or not that's true.

So those are the few things that we did. And and this year, it's it's gonna be similar. High education focused, women in b two b events, and, and I don't know about the name tags. Well, probably I like the idea. Oh, good.

Or So I had I had an army of people at that event. I didn't go. I wasn't invited, but the, I'm just kidding. I don't know what to expect. But the I really love there's two things that kinda came away is there was a completely different vibe to every other trade show and event that we go to.

Most of them all start and look and feel the same. And the dirty secret is most of those keynote speeches by technology partners are bought and paid for. Okay? They just are. And whether they have the best idea or the biggest budget, it's hard to know the difference.

And the fact that you wanna be kind of practitioner led with the content is incredibly interesting. It should be to the b two b merchants who wanna kinda get ground truth. Mhmm. As you know, you co you kinda co host a little bit of the Shoptoberfest event we had in New York. Well, same thing.

There's zero about Shopware. It's all about the merchants and their stories. I think that's a much more kinda honest story for the for the audience to hear. And the name badge thing, I didn't realize you did that. I love it because, you're actually forcing the real community, not this kind of pathway to a budget.

We're only friends because you work at a company I wanna make money from kind of behavior. So I love it. I think that's a really healthy way to think about a reset on industry events. Oh, I appreciate that. Thank you.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, it was it was a feat to pull off, but it was really it was really rewarding. You know, I was sitting I arrived in Scottsdale where we had it last year and just thinking, like, I really want this event to feel warm. I wanted to feel comfortable and warm.

I want people to be able to feel like they can show up and kind of relax and talk to people. And and I think we achieved that. Yeah. I know my team rented out a mansion across the street and had a huge party. So I, I know they had a good time both at the event and the following.

But anyway so if people want to learn more about the b to b ecommerce association, who's it who's it really targeted to? Is it is it anyone in b to b can can belong? Yeah. I say it's for manufacturers, distributors, and all of the platforms and services companies that support b to b ecommerce. We're just b to b.

We're b to b ecommerce slash digital transformation. Are there any other associations that kinda cover the entire industry like you guys do? I I can't name one. Not globally. So we are global.

We do we we're founded in Australia. We've moved you know, we have we're pretty decently big in The US and UK and have a chapter as well in Latin America. Fantastic. Well, so we're a member. I think we sponsor some things from time to time.

We love what you guys do, and we're thrilled to be a part of it. If you are listening to this podcast and you do business in B 2 B, take a hard look at b2bea.org. Did I get it right? Yes. Perfect.

Alright. B2bea.org. Wonderful. Well, Sarah, thank you for spending about a half hour with me kinda unpacking your journey. It's been excellent as always.

Yeah. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. And, I do recommend folks reach out and, connect either with Sarah directly or connect with the B2B EA. Thanks again.

And, have a wonderful rest of your day.