Empowering Teams 101 (Conversation with Michelle Bacharach, Founder/CEO of FindMine)

11/30/21 • 39 min

Infinite Shelf - An Omnichannel Podcast by Future Commerce

At some point, we all find ourselves stuck in our mission to accomplish a goal. We're unable to move forward, solve the problem, or convince people to see things in a new way. We just get frustrated. These are moments where the connections that we make with the humans around us make a huge difference. Michelle Bacharach, Founder/CEO of FindMine joins Ingrid today to chat about empowering our teams in this mission. Listen now!

Building Successful Innovation Teams

{00:02:41} “So most brands and retailers have more products than they can produce high quality content for.” - Michelle
{00:07:36} “Because a lot of innovation teams don't have budget, and then they either expect a free pilot, which sometimes that works for the startups business model. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you just can't give away a free pilot.” - Michelle
{00:16:55} “Oh, the second one is really about kind of organizational structure in terms of like breaking down silos because we're a small company, we don't have this problem, and so it's very easy to stand on my pedestal and say ‘You shouldn't have silos in your organization,’...” - Michelle
{00:20:03} “And so you have to set up your organization in order to be where the customer is. And the customer frankly, is just everywhere, especially in this post-COVID world.” - Ingrid
{00:28:03} “Yeah, I think that the difference is organizations that view tech as a means to an end and then organizations who treat them like they're the end in of itself.” - Michelle
{00:32:33} “So you're going to still have to go to marketing, you're still going to have to go to retail, you're still going to have to go to the email teams and the eCom teams and the merchants all kind of separate. And the innovation team members know those people really well. They understand the organization. They know who the power players are.” - Michelle
{00:35:39} “So it's really important to just keep them in mind that how someone's relationship with their boss can make or break whether they want to use your software in their day to day. And I think so often software sales teams forget about that that it all comes back to human behavior at the end of the day.” - Michelle

Associated Links:

Check out Michelle on LinkedIn
Visit the FindMine website
Love your new host? Check her out on LinkedIn
Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Building Successful Innovation Teams

{00:02:41} “So most brands and retailers have more products than they can produce high quality content for.” - Michelle
{00:07:36} “Because a lot of innovation teams don't have budget, and then they either expect a free pilot, which sometimes that works for the startups business model. Sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes you just can't give away a free pilot.” - Michelle
{00:16:55} “Oh, the second one is really about kind of organizational structure in terms of like breaking down silos because we're a small company, we don't have this problem, and so it's very easy to stand on my pedestal and say ‘You shouldn't have silos in your organization,’...” - Michelle
{00:20:03} “And so you have to set up your organization in order to be where the customer is. And the customer frankly, is just everywhere, especially in this post-COVID world.” - Ingrid
{00:28:03} “Yeah, I think that the difference is organizations that view tech as a means to an end and then organizations who treat them like they're the end in of itself.” - Michelle
{00:32:33} “So you're going to still have to go to marketing, you're still going to have to go to retail, you're still going to have to go to the email teams and the eCom teams and the merchants all kind of separate. And the innovation team members know those people really well. They understand the organization. They know who the power players are.” - Michelle
{00:35:39} “So it's really important to just keep them in mind that how someone's relationship with their boss can make or break whether they want to use your software in their day to day. And I think so often software sales teams forget about that that it all comes back to human behavior at the end of the day.” - Michelle

Associated Links:

Check out Michelle on LinkedIn
Visit the FindMine website
Love your new host? Check her out on LinkedIn
Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Previous Episode

The Discount Drug (Interview with Givz Founder/CEO, Andrew Forman)

We keep it real here on Infinite Shelf. We don't paint a shiny varnish on a messy topic and gloss over the details. We put on our reality hats, face facts, and try to solve the problem as best we can. Today on the pod we'll do exactly that in Ingrid’s interview with Givz Founder and CEO, Andrew Forman. Listen now!

Discount Double Check?

{00:04:09} “First, brands are trying to get away from discounts as much as humanly possible. They recognize it brings in the lowest lifetime value customers the first time... So how do we get away from this, but still drive sales is question one/trend one. And then trend two, totally separately, is that consumers are demanding some sort of purpose driven activity from brands.” - Andrew
{00:09:30} “I will take a discount, right? But it's not necessarily that I need that three dollars off or something like that. Like, it's going to make the difference between like pulling the trigger or not. And it's become, I would say, like a game for internet savvy people of just not being fooled.” - Ingrid
{00:12:59} “I mean, once you buy something at 70 percent off, your perception of that brand in terms of value that is created, there's just no chance that you pay even 20 percent off ever again on something like that.” - Andrew
{00:16:25} “But at the end of the day, what we see in the data is that people want to feel good about their purchasing and they want to shout about it, and this is something that can get them over the hump in terms of buying something.” - Andrew
{00:24:52} “If you're saying one percent of revenue or 10 percent of profits goes to this one specific charity, and maybe you've been doing that for a long time, I guarantee you 80 percent of your customers don't know that or don't know the cause or don't really, truly resonate with that cause.” - Andrew

Associated Links:

Follow Andrew on Twitter
Follow Givz on Instagram
Visit the Givz website
Love your new host? Check her out on LinkedIn
Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!

Next Episode

Make It Once, Sell It 2,3,4 Times (A Conversation with Wilson Griffin, Co-Founder/COO of Recurate)

Today Ingrid has a conversation with Wilson Griffin of Recurate to talk about why and how brands can take charge of their secondhand market capitalization while doing the most impactful thing a fashion brand can do where it's sustainability.

Can I gain value in this purchase?

{00:06:00} “But I love the concept that you're sort of taking the brands away from this pattern of create something, sell something, create something, sell something. Where it's like, create something and then sell it. And then sell it again.” - Ingrid
{00:11:15} “So clearly, there is so much benefit to creating something once and selling it more than once. Dear CFOs, if you're listening, that's where your ears perk up. But now to the brand marketers and the people who are trying really, really hard to develop this unique brand connection with their consumers, here's another really rich place to mine for those moments.” - Ingrid
{00:16:38} “I mean, I just shared that anecdote, but also if a brand is going to encourage and promote resale on their site, that is such a vote of confidence from that brand that their products are going to last and are going to hold up. So it's just a subtle but really strong way for brand to stand behind their products and their quality. We also talk about this idea of sort of de-risking that initial purchase.” - Wilson
{00:18:22} “I am probably going to buy something new, but I'm going to pull the trigger even faster because I know that when I'm done with it, I'll be able to resell it.” - Ingrid
{00:26:41} “And so this one to one relationship and the authentication component, is also, I think, really important. Because me, if I'm buying something second hand, I want to make sure that it's real. And so the fact that you can only sell something from this history of buying it from the brand is a really big stop gap.” - Ingrid

Associated Links:

Check out Recurate
Learn more about Wilson Griffin
Love your new host? Check her out on LinkedIn
Check out other Future Commerce podcasts

Have any questions or comments about the show? Let us know on Futurecommerce.fm, or reach out to us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. We love hearing from our listeners!