What NBN Co Needs

 What NBN Co Needs to increase the uptake of high-speed internet - Follow the Kiwi Model

• Comparing the typical RSP price point between NBN Co and Chorus NZD (Fibre Wholesaler), NBN Co lacks not only price parity and affordability but also the avg speed and higher speed tier simplicity.
• The new SAU proposal by NBN Co is a good start. Reducing the price by $5 to $10/month on 100 Mbps to 1Gpbs lacks the imagination and will to spur digital growth & intake of high-speed internet. It appears to be shackled by the serviceability of $27 Bn debt for any aggressive pricing & cost relief. 

Open Reach is following a Simpler High-Speed Tiering model with Economical Pricing like Chorus NZD. In terms of Fibre Access type, it is leveraging FTTC, FTTP (Gfast) & EE (10Gbps) for Enterprise. More than 360 Retail Service Providers in play

Future of Telecom Network - Smart and Intelligent

 

Why SD WAN is a Growth Area for Telecom Operators, RSPs and OTT Players

 Why SD-WAN is becoming a battleground for Wholesalers, Telecom Operators, RSPs and OTT Players

Source: Gartner

Australian Economy Update - FY 2022

 Australian Economy Update - FY 2022

Cash Rate at 1.85% in Aug and Inflation 6.1%

The housing sector is weakening with steep ring IR, 1st home buyers from the last 2 years will struggle and fixed mortgage holders will have their mortgages finished in the next 12 months.  

Rising Inflation is a key issue across the globe for the Reserve Bank, with a risk of recession and stagflation

Read - Why Inflation is Rising

What is Stagflation

Source: CBA FY22 Results

Telecom State of Play and Growth Areas - 2022

Telecom State of Play and Growth Areas - 2022 

For background on Why Telcoms are struggling please read my POV in 2012 - Why Telcos are Endangered Species

Weekend Reading

 My predictions on Macro Economic View of Australia FY23

How Humans and AI are Collaborating 

The B2B Lead Gen Stumbling Blocks and How to Overcome Them

Given the complex nature of B2B lead generation, it goes without saying that there are plenty of stumbling blocks that can hinder lead gen efforts. With this in mind, we’re diving into the common pain points marketers experience when filling the funnel while offering solutions that lead to better marketing results.
1. Marketing Without a Cohesive Lead Generation Strategy 

2. Marketers are Focusing on Lead Quantity Instead of Quality 

3. There are Gaps in Content Marketing Efforts 

4. Content Marketing Isn’t Aligned with the B2B Buyer Journey 

5. Marketing Efforts Aren’t Consistently Optimised 

B2B buyers Transparency make Vendor Purchase Easier

Research has shown that nearly two-thirds (65%) of B2B buyers felt vendors placed more emphasis on selling than they did on listening to their needs. Because of this, buyers are turning to other non-vendor-controlled sources such as user reviews, free trials and product demos to investigate the cons before making a purchase. To get ahead of this, vendors should be more forthcoming and listen to what their buyers are telling them. By highlighting their weaknesses, they may actually start to make more sales.

What is your customer's Unique Value Story

Supercharging the executive summary 

The most important part of any sales proposal is, of course, the executive summary. It’s likely to be read by stakeholders with the significant decision or approval authority who won’t go into all the detail. And some of those stakeholders may not have been involved in the previous discussions. Some may even be questioning “why do we need to do this at all?”
This is where an executive summary that deals with your customer’s three critical questions: why change, why you and why now? can be such a powerful selling tool. Summarising the customer’s unique value story in your executive summary not only promotes your organisation, it also promotes the need for change and reinforces the benefits of urgent action.

Why Telecom Services, Goods, Cost of Living is Expensive in Australia

In a country like Australia, most industry verticals follow 3 or 4 pillar models like Banking (CBA, NAB, ANZ, Westpac), Retail (Coles, Woolies, Aldi), or Mining (BHP, RioTinto, Fortescue) Telecom Industry is heading towards a 4 pillar model. Since most industry verticals are in oligopoly, products & services are priced as status quo or skimmed, and economical pricing is missing in most cases, resulting in higher prices for consumers & higher cost of living. Besides, key players are opting for decentralization to grow and find new revenue streams.

 

 

Australian Economic Outlook - FY 23

 Australian Economic Outlook - FY 23

Australian Economic Outlook - FY 22 (Feb Update) - 

The Future of Cloud - 2022

In 2022

Cloud Benefits, Risks, Controls and Mistakes to Avoid

 

Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Companies in Media Ecosystem

Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Companies in Media Ecosystem 

• Appier 
• GumGum 
• Sizmek by Amazon 
• IBM Watson 
• Dstillery 
• Invoca 
• Influential 
• Quantcast 
• Heuritech 
• NetBase Quid 

More details here

Weekend Reading

 

Ten Rebranding Do’s And Don’ts 

• Do re-imagine your business beyond the logo. 
• Do gain support from the C-suite. 
• Do get internal as well as external insights. 
•  Do keep it real. Do bring in all key stakeholders. 
• Do leverage the opportunity to drive broader change. 
•  Do over communicate. 
•  Do keep it aligned. 
• Do make sure your people can deliver. 
•  Do find the right partner. 

  What’s in Today’s MarTech Toolkit? 

Close to two-thirds (64%) of all the marketers surveyed are currently using artificial intelligence (AI). A full 60% say they have a fully defined AI strategy. This year, the leading use case for those marketers using AI is to drive next best actions, followed by personalizing the overall customer journey and automating customer interactions. 

 How to Win over a Team of Experts Try these three strategies: 1. Look inward to the team. Your success will depend on your ability to build interdependence and cooperation among team members. Focus on the team itself and see whether you can find ways to improve communication, interaction, and debate. Aim to create a group whose members learn to rely on each other and are less dependent on you to be involved in every decision. 

Exercise: Identify a decision you believe the team can make (it should not be a decision regarding a crisis situation). Use team meetings to work on the decision. Solicit input from everyone without allowing debate on the ideas. Summarize what you have heard from the team. Redirect the team to focus on the core areas, then encourage debate. 

 2. Look outward to the organization. Seek ways to resolve the team’s problems with the broader organization. Examples include things as simple as securing a budget, getting top-management backing for a project, or winning the cooperation of another department. 

Exercise: For a current team challenge, list the people you know in the organization who could provide any of the following: additional information or perspective that could help the team or shift its perspective; access to individuals who could support the team by doing small tasks, or people who would like to be involved in solving the problem; and bridges to other groups or stakeholders. Then use your network to tap those resources. 

 3. Look to build team members’ reputations. Although this strategy doesn’t specifically address a pain point, it still shows employees that you have their backs and are interested in their career development. Help team members expand their networks and their perspectives. With a broader network, a team member can more easily address his or her pain point and bring new perspectives to the team’s challenges.
Exercise: For each team member, list two to three people who would value knowing of that individual’s experience, perspective, and capabilities. Use your connections to set up one meeting for each employee. Coach the individual on how to best manage that meeting. Check on the impact the team member had.

Strategis for Mananging Digital Transformation

The goal, according to a recent PCW report, is to get beyond titles and delve into attitudes and behaviours. That’s the approach that leads to more relevant communication, rewards, performance and development, the report reads.

Selling Better, Faster using Real-Time Sales Education

SAAS Companies Growth Valuation “Not all software is created equal. Software businesses that don’t have a short term path to FCF (call it <2 years) have gotten wacked in the public markets. But, just like pre-2015 when the market assumed software wouldn’t turn profitable, the same thing is happening now. With a longer term horizon we’ll see many software companies turn profitable. The important task is finding the businesses that can turn profitable, while maintaining attractive top line growth. That “holy grail” combo will be a smaller percentage of software businesses – ones growing >20-30%, with FCF (free cash flow) margins >20-30%, with annual revenue >$1B. Final thought - what gets me so excited currently is that we’re seeing companies still in hyper growth mode, at a scale of ~$1B ARR+, hit mature FCF margins. Crowdstrike (>60% growth, ~30% FCF margins), Datadog (>80% growth, ~30% FCF margins), Snowflake (>80% growth, ~20% FCF margins), ZScaler (>60% growth, ~20% FCF margins), and ZoomInfo (~60% growth and >30% FCF margins) all have incredibly impressive profiles. 

Top 10 EV / NTM Revenue Multiples

How to Influence your Buyers for Cloud App Modernisation

How to Influence your Buyers for Cloud Application Modernisation

Cloud Offerings for Application Modernisation

Buyers Persona Mapping with Cloud Offerings for Application Modernisation to execute the Sales Strategy 

Persona Mapping from - Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus

Eight Steps for Every CFO to Apply in Recession

 Eight Steps for Every CFO to Apply in Recession

-

• Prioritisation - Make a prioritised list of the trade-offs in your budget with a reason for why.
• Cloud - Accelerate movement to the cloud, while paying attention to shifting pricing strategies from software providers as prices rise.
• Business Process - Radically challenge workflows and processes to make them faster, simpler, and more agile for the long-term.
• Leverage and Cost Arbitrage -  Fundamentally rethink the way your company leverages humans (locations, hours, part vs full time, in-house vs outsource).
• Digital Talent - Clarify your Employee Value Proposition (EVP) so you are positioned to attract and retain the right digital talent. Aggressively source key digital talent that will shake loose and help accelerate your digital plan
• Digital Investment Roadmap - Develop a future vision of the customer and employee to accelerate the right digital investments for 2025.
• Automation - Invest in predictive and autonomous digital projects that will make the organization faster and leaner.
• Measure and Focus - Narrow the metrics you use to measure and manage digital initiatives to the few that align with outcomes.

Source  Gartner, BCG, Mckinsey, HBR

Why Cloud - Reality vs Perception, Impact on IT

 Why Cloud is in Demand

Cloud - Reality vs Perception

Impact on IT

Pricing Strategy - Mistakes to Avoid

 

Telecom Cloud Evolution, Use Cases and Infrastructure Market

• Telecom Cloud has evolved from an early infrastructure offering to a solution-centric and to being an aggregator. 
• Telecoms are struggling to get ROI in this domain while the sector is still growing by 30-35% YoY. 
• Players Like AWS, MSFT, Google, Dell (EMC/Vmware), IBM and others are not letting Telecoms to play in this space. Besides Telecoms with so many customer-centric assets are struggling to refine their operating model to take advantage of the cloud to diversify and increase revenue.

 

Telecom Cloud (Distributed) Use Cases 

Cloud Infrastructure Services Market - 2022

Why Cloud

Cloud Sales Roadblock

Weekend Reading

Digital Business Ecosystem Under The Hood 

In an ecosystem, we typically see three types of horizontal business models emerge - Aggregators, Integrators, and Infrastructures - which may be distinguished based on their position in the value chain. Additionally, firms may specialise and act as capability providers.

Five Anxieties of Tech CEO

• The first is dealing with increasing individual and team performance. Technology moves at such a rapid pace that is challenging to keep up with evolving new concepts. 
• The second is with doing more with less – either with resources (people and budgets) or time to meet the company goals. 
•  Most technology organisations have developed specializations over the years and the CEO experiences the third anxiety of leveraging with partner organisations as specializations are all over. 
• Often, either the organization, the investors or the board has a new vision, and the CEO now needs to deal with the fourth anxiety of how to synchronize one’s execution with a new vision. 
•  Finally, the technology world has grown global and technology teams take the job to where the talent is. This now means managing and leading the global workforce, the fifth anxiety.

Want More Deals - Teach your Sales Rep to Write

Why B2B Marketers Must Stop using the Jargon

“Don’t hope to impress customers with the language they won’t understand. Instead, impress them with how much you understand them,” the post said. “The reality is that jargon varies so much from organization to organization – and even from department to department inside of an organization – that it’s always better to speak in plain terms than to risk fanciful obscurity.”

Replacing the Sales Funnel with Flywheel 
Using a flywheel to describe a business allows us to focus on how to capture, store and release our own energy, as measured in traffic and leads, free sign-ups, new customers, and the enthusiasm of existing customers. It’s got a sense of leverage and momentum. 

The metaphor also accounts for the loss of energy, where lost users and customers work against our momentum and slow our growth. 

The two dynamics that make our flywheel spin fast: are force and friction.  

Why Inflation is Rising - Macro and Geo Political View

 

Future of Cloud - Upcoming Talk 2022

 Sharing the Agenda and Summary from my Upcoming Talk on,  "Future of Cloud - 2022"

Distributed Cloud Battle - AWS vs Google

 Distributed Cloud Battle - AWS vs Google

Evolution of Cloud Migration Strategy for IT and Business Application

 Evolution of Cloud Migration Strategy for IT and Business Application  

Source: Gartner, BCG, CCF, Forrester

Weekend Reading

 

• Key to Building a Great Company
• Do the hard things. To build a great startup, you have to move fast. But you shouldn’t let urgency distract you from tackling big, thorny problems. Doing the hard things is one of the most effective ways to build true defensibility. 
• Protect your principles. Having clear company principles helps your team make faster, better decisions. It’s easier to act autonomously when you have a clear framework to follow. Failing to protect these values can shift your company towards an “exception-based” culture. 
• Pay your debts. Every time you make a sub-optimal corporate decision, you create a “debt” that must be paid. This is true across engineering, product, and marketing teams. To avoid debts spiraling, keep track of them and proactively pay them down. 
• Build a brand. If you’re building a good business, you’ll inevitably attract competition. For consumer companies, it’s essential to create an impactful, differentiated brand. If you do it well, you’ll outcompete better-capitalized opponents.”
• Career Advice
• Try to be the best at what you do. The money will take care of itself…In business, persistence pays off…Others may have more advantages than you, but no one has more hours in the day than you. No one can outwork you unless you let it happen…Find your workplace tribe…No one cares about your disadvantages. Overcome them…Managers must be managed.
• Action for Sales Leader When Inflation is Rising
• Actions - Once you and your peers have assessed the market landscape and your ecosystem, take action. Incorporate immediate actions into existing sales plans and future required actions into your B2B sales strategy. 
•  Leadership Actions 
• As with all changes that affect our teams, we must take a leadership role. For example, we must treat economic downturns and the changes that we have to make as a comprehensive change program. As usual, this starts and continues with communication. 
•  Communication. When economics impacts our business, our teams and those within our partner ecosystems need reassurance about the future of the company. In addition, they need reassurance of their personal futures. Share executive team views on the market. Communicate the results of any assessments that have been made and actions that are planned. 
• Care for your team. Managers must ensure that open and transparent communications are available. Continue to appreciate and recognize employee efforts during what could be a challenging time. A culture of appreciation drives employee engagement and productivity. 
• Budget. Although sales does not have tremendous discretionary budget, it goes without saying that leaders must reduce all unnecessary spending, including travel, and consider hiring freezes where appropriate. 
• Go-To-Market Actions 
• Position resources toward the market priorities that will drive the best current and future results. For example, some industries such as healthcare may be more recession-proof than others. 
•  Demand engine changes. Shift marketing spend to appropriately drive demand in target segments and nurture those that will be poised to act when recovery occurs. Share Six Tips Marketing Operations Leaders Can Use To Prepare For A Potential Recession with your marketing partners. 
• Digital routes to market. Consider how buyers may be changing their purchasing behavior. If, for example, they desire self-service, consider if now is the time to invest in digital selling capabilities. Doing so can meet buyer needs and reduce human sales expense. 
• Seller enablement. Educate direct and partner sellers on new messaging, offerings, packages, etc. In addition, coach them to ensure that they can effectively leverage these resources. 
• Coverage and quota. Shift coverage to ensure that existing and targeted priorities are effectively covered. Consider changes to quota or incentives to drive action to the highest-potential opportunities and clients. Also, consider how quota or incentives may have to be adjusted if existing targets are no longer achievable. 

• Define ROI from Digital Transformation 
• Example - Insurance 
• Once the link between digital capabilities and customer and business metrics has been established, begin to map these digital capabilities to the customer lifecycle, the insurance value chain, and a technology stack. 
•  Demonstrate how digital technologies: Improve product design, marketing and sales, service, and engagement. 
• Lower the costs of underwriting, acquisition, service, and compliance.
• 12 Best Sales Methodologies & The Key to Customer-Centric Selling
• SPIN Selling 
• N.E.A.T. Selling™ 
• Conceptual Selling 
• SNAP Selling 
• Challenger Sale 
• The Sandler System 
• MEDDIC 
• Solution Selling 
• Inbound Selling 
• Target Account Selling 
• Command of the Sale 
• Gap Selling

Global Financial Crisis to Global Inflation Crisis Spectrum

 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) to Global Inflation Crisis (GIC) Spectrum

Inflation Impact - CIO and CFO Ask and Priorities in 2022

CIO Priority for OPEX Relief by Reducing Spend on 

• Collaboration software 
• Data centre build-out 
• Consulting 
• Infrastructure hardware 
• ERP applications

CIO Priority for driving Growth by Increasing Spend on 

• Digital transformation 
• Cloud, AI, ML, RPA
• Cost Arbitrage levers like Outsourcing and Offshoring
• Data warehouse, Business intelligence, Analytics
• Security software 

IT Spending and Market Trends 2022

 

Source Gartner IT Spending Trends 2022

Elon Musk Effect on Twitters Business and Brand Equity

 

Effect on Share Price, Twitter Business, Employees, CEO and Exec Team

• Elon Musk who leads Tesla and Space X announced buying Twitter for $44 Bn supported by venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, the crypto exchange  Binance, and Oracles CEO Larry Ellison. This helped the falling share price to rise again. 
• On July 10 he announces to pull out because of a lack of clarity on users (primarily bots) and financials and since then the price has fallen back to the same price of $33 when the deal was announced to acquire.
• Prior to this deal, the share price was in decline from early 2021.
• It is likely that it now goes into litigation and worst for Musk will be to pay $1Bn in the penalty, but it has a detrimental effect on Twitter's business, employees (morale), and more importantly, its brand equity will take a severe hit, resulting in further decline.
• Twitter CEO and his executive team will not survive this fiasco.

Trends from AT&T about Fibre Economics and Data Growth

Key Trends and Message from AT&T Results from Mar 2022

• Monthly consumption is accelerating from 900 gigabytes to nearly a terabyte today.
• We are consuming roughly 30x more data in our homes than we are on the go with our smartphones. 
• Homes are getting smarter, and they're becoming more demanding environments where flawless, high-quality broadband is required. Our home has become a work environment.
• The average household today has 13 devices, and that's expected to triple by 2025.
• Enterprises are managing a multi-cloud environment they require more low-latency and secure bandwidth.
• Fibre is economical and superior; therefore, consumption over wireless is used for high-value mobile applications. 
•  IoT connectivity is growing 18% year-over-year. The next wave of digital transformation is being driven by cloud, AI and connected sensors.
• Data growth is exploding post covid driven by hybrid arrangements, pent-up demand and everything digital.
• Fibre is not only economical with data demand but is superior, reliable and secure. 

Suggestions for the Federal Govt on NBN.

• Make 250/100 Mbps the minimum speed requirement on the network. Currently, Avg speed in Australia is around <60/20Mbps
• Waive off the outstanding debt of $27Bn, and that will enable NBN to reduce the wholesale price to around $20-$25/month per user
• Make FTTP to all areas (>93%) where it can be served.
• These 3 suggestions will drive the green economy and innovation, reduce carbon footprint, reduce pressure on the city's infrastructure, drive growth in country areas and drive SMB growth and reach outside Australia. 

 

Persona Mapping - Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus - Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales

Excerpt from my upcoming book at amazon.com - "Sellers from Mars and Buyers from Venus - Elements of Nature Meet B2B Sales" 

How a Sponsoring Executive of Action Centric (Fire) Persona and Calm and Stable Persona (Earth) will engage with others. 

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Sponsoring Executive

An executive sponsor is a person in the management or an executive team responsible for driving the outcome of a proposed solution to resolve a business problem. In business-to-business sales, an executive sponsor can be on either side, at the buyer's or the seller's end. 

At the buyer's end, it is primarily someone who has a keen interest in resolving a business problem or is a decision-maker and strongly influences the outcome of a sales transaction. 

At the seller's end, it is primarily someone keen on growing the business by investing capital and resources.

  

Following are the key responsibilities of an executive sponsor at the buyer's end:

• Prepare and own the business case

• Engage and work with other sponsors and stakeholders in positioning and selling the business case internally and externally with suppliers

• Recommend or assist in the go-to-market approach

• Govern the communication with stakeholders

• Govern the risks and the outcome of the business case 

Let us explore how a sponsoring executive at the buyer's end engages with the internal and external stakeholders by applying the elemental attributes learned in previous sections.

Fire – Action 

Sponsoring Executive

• Business Case Preparation

o they are seeking a futuristic and innovative roadmap or a solution, preferably for short and mid-term 

o a lot of data points are provided for analysis and problem definition

o budget allocation will be generous and is eager to allocate work   

• Go to Market Approach 

o fond of an audience and connecting with higher authorities means they employ a top-down strategy

o being time-consuming, a mechanism like RFP is least appealing 

o they reach out to innovative and agile (swift in delivery) suppliers, or internal teams for selling the business case

    

• Positioning 

o growth-oriented – being passionate for innovation and driven by future trends with the intent of growing the business, their initiatives are positioned as growth-oriented

• Engagement

o being open and honest, they interact with honesty and transparency, loses cool if the opposite side is not transparent

o the sharpness of fire is reflected in their sharpshooting style of conversation, and they have no hidden agenda

o they are competitive and use charm to impress upon stakeholders 

• Communication  

o timely, quick and action-oriented

o they lack depth in conversation, like to take control of the conversation 

o they use data-driven insights and visuals to communicate  

• Governance   

o they exert pressure on stakeholders by repeatedly chasing activity progress 

o they seek action and quick wins 

o they are tolerant and considerate but will have failures or lapses in execution provided the information for the root cause is shared transparently

The book is on promotion for a limited time only.