Handshakr hot#takes - Jan 2022

Welcome

Welcome to the very first edition of the Handshakr hot#takes, our new monthly newsletter highlighting the very best (and worst) of the tech, telco and B2B world.

We know 2021 was a grind for you all – and we certainly had to work incredibly hard here at Handshakr HQ. But our software MVP was launched, a budding community of telco/technology buyers and sellers emerged and our team of remote employees, contractors, advisors, volunteers and partners grew to more than 25 – which is crazy but incredibly rewarding.

2022 should be another big year for us. This week (Jan 24TH) I'm in Dubai, speaking at the Wireless Global Congress with the Wireless Broadband Alliance. Then we're off to Barcelona in February for Mobile World Congress – my first time back there since 2019. We will, of course, keep you up to date on all the latest information in this newsletter and via our social channels. For now, though, sit back, relax and have a gander at some of our predictions for 2022 in our very first newsletter.

Leon - Chief Handshakr ??

What's Up With Telco Enterprise Innovation?

It’s interesting to see the very different approaches being adopted by two UK telco giants in their battle to capture and harness innovation. BT is taking an outward-facing approach, with potential tech partners and start-ups firmly in its sights. Vodafone, meanwhile, has decided on an internal process and is on the hunt for in-house ‘unicorns’.

The telecoms industry has proved to be a classic example of why continuous innovation is vital. This month, BlackBerry became the latest casualty – pulling the plug on its iconic device, having become literally out of touch by ignoring the trend towards touchscreen interfaces.

But there’s no denying that continuous innovation can be tough to execute. For example, Telecoms companies can be held back by a shortage of technological know-how to innovate or skills to drive the process of change. Operational priorities can also get in the way when it comes to innovation. And legacy technology systems can be inflexible and costly to change.

BT set up a new BT Digital division last year to drive the company’s ‘innovation agenda’, and it’s now said to be setting up a dedicated start-up growth team to scout, vet and manage relationships with fledgling tech partners. It is expected to focus on US and US start-ups that offer strategic possibilities and have the potential to expand BT’s business in areas such as healthcare and security. BT is thought to be open to eventual full takeovers of the start-ups it links up with.

In contrast, Vodafone has created a new start-up innovation unit called New Platforms Business Development, which will seek to identify in-house potential unicorns to spin out.

Only time will tell whether the pot of innovation gold lies inside or outside these two telcos. But what we’ve already seen in the US is wildly different stock stories over the last year for telcos Verizon Communications, AT&T and T-Mobile US (down by an average of 13%) compared with tech giants such as Alphabet and Microsoft (both up more than 50%).

I can’t help but wonder whether the share prices reflect the telco struggles to harness innovation.

Prediction: We'll see more and more initiatives like the ones above across the telcos in 2022.

Tech, stack, toe – a zero-sum game for enterprises in 2022

A year ago, it felt like 2021 could be a bumper year for enterprise?and cloud tech as home working became the new normal during the continuing pandemic. But various security snafus threw a spanner in the works.

US IT firm SolarWinds, for example, suffered a cyberattack that spread to its clients and went undetected for months. Foreign hackers – suspected to be from Russia – were able to use the hack to spy on private companies like the elite cybersecurity firm FireEye and the upper echelons of the US Government, including the Department of Homeland Security and the Treasury Department.

Meanwhile, a critical vulnerability was found in Log4j – an open-source logging library commonly used by apps and services across the internet. Fixes were issued but, if not implemented, attackers would be able to break into systems, steal passwords and logins, extract data and infect networks with malicious software.

Ransomware attacks also increased alarmingly last year. Organisations affected included Accenture, Kia Motors, Acer and even the Washington DC police department. The most high-profile ransomware attack involved Colonial Pipeline – the company responsible for carrying nearly half the fuel supply for the US East Coast. It was believed to be the most significant ransomware attack to target an oil company in the history of the US. Although the episode didn’t affect the company’s operating system, it did affect its billing system – which forced it to temporarily pause its operations.

There was also considerable share price trauma for some tech companies – most notably Adobe, which experienced its second-largest stock drop in a decade after issuing an underwhelming outlook for 2022. As a result, the software company plummeted by more than 10% – leaving it 16% down for December.

Digital and cloud transformations seem to have accelerated in 2021, though, with some enterprise tech players having huge wins due to home working being mandated and changing the way we work for good. Communication and collaboration giants such as Zoom, Slack, and Hopin were among the winners and database giants like Snowflake and Databricks. And the ‘alpha’ platform consolidators such as Salesforce also had hugely successful years.

Now, 2022 is even better, with Gartner predicting global enterprise software will increase nearly 12% over 2021 – but with enterprises increasingly building new technologies and software rather than buying and implementing them.

And there you have it – a tech, stack, toe zero-sum game appears again. When will we all learn?

Prediction: It will be another big year for enterprise tech?but buyers are becoming savvier, more demanding and looking inward.?Operating models and costs will be under intense scrutiny,?and purchases made last year will be under pressure to deliver returns while new purchases go through the internal scoping and development loop to be built in-house.

To be or not to be, that may be the question

A typical sales rep spends a staggering two-thirds of their time on tasks other than selling. Time is not necessarily money, it seems. A large chunk of a sales rep’s day is consumed by administrative tasks such as updating spreadsheets and databases or carrying out fundamental research – activities that lend themselves to automation.

So it’s no surprise that Gartner is predicting 75% of B2B sales organisations will augment traditional sales playbooks with artificial intelligence (AI) guided selling solutions by 2025. With massive amounts of data now available to sales organisations, Gartner says there is increasing pressure to invest in AI technology to analyse data and recommend actions.

B2B has been having a moment, as the pandemic forced us to have time for reflection. It’s led to us asking profound questions about how we operate and engage in the new world of changing buyer behaviours and digital.

Sales leaders have to rethink the seller skills they need to teach and enable. Sellers can no longer exclusively rely on intuition-based selling to push a deal over the finishing line. Instead, tomorrow’s sellers must learn to use data today to effectively manage their sales cycles – as the use of the information will become more critical to their success over time.

Gartner research suggests sales training will become more than just teaching seller skills – evolving to include more critical thinking skills, specifically in data literacy. This will require the development of new sales playbooks that clearly define how to use AI sales tools in daily sales activities.

Progressive sales organisations are already using AI to determine what content resonates with buyers and then recommend tools and content to share with the buyer in real-time – filtering out the noise to provide a better customer experience.

Sales tech stacks are unique to each company based on their goals, challenges and the customers they target. A typical stack includes tools for customer relationship management, prospecting and lead generation, sales automation, learning management, project management, sales demos, and sales reporting and management.

Gartner recommends auditing current tech for AI capabilities and preparing playbooks for eventual AI migration. Sales leaders then need to work with their teams to boost data literacy skills and demonstrate how selling with data leads to more wins in a shorter amount of time.

Sales will always be about people – and maybe complex deals always need humans to sign the dotted lines after relationships have been built. But anything that can help the humans on either side of B2B works smarter and quicker has got our vote here at Handshakr.

Prediction: The salestech landscape will explode, with more and more products coming to market to help B2B sales shift to a more digital-assisted approach.?AI-assisted sales will become a reality.

Now a word from a Handshakr subscriber:

SMARTY Mobile stepped into the UK market with a customer-centric strategy enabled by Lifecycle Software. This MVNO, launched in less than 6 months, is disrupting the market with phenomenal achievements:

• 154% growth in H1 2021;
• Happy Customers - One the highest NPS in the industry, with 4.2 customer rating on Trustpilot
• 99.95% of the transactions handled by the BSS are fully automated;
• Over half a million subscribers
• Subscriber to employee ratio of 13,750:1

And finally, don't forget the Handshakr Huddle Podcast...

The Handshakr?Huddle?- B2B war stories and anecdotes from tech and telco execs.

We conduct candid weekly interviews with telecoms and technology execs from around the globe. We’ll hear about what makes them tick, anecdotes from their business dealings throughout their career and hear about their view of the future of B2B. The podcast kicks off again in February 2022 with another superb guest in the form of an ex-CTIO staffer from a telco giant in the UK, BT. Previous interviews are available here or just search for The Handsahkr Huddle wherever you listen to your pods.

Until next month. Bye for now.