Fine-tune your Business with Latest Tech | Jay McBain | Engati Engage
Jay McBain joins us in this episode of Engati Engage where we discuss how to fine-tune your business with the latest tech trends to optimize and automate processes.
Jay McBain is an accomplished speaker, author and innovator in the IT industry. Named to the Top 40 Under Forty by the Business Review, Top 8 Influencer by Channel Partners, Top 8 Thought Leader by Channel Marketing Journal, Top 20 Visionary by ChannelPro, Top 25 Newsmaker by CDN Magazine, Top 50 Channel Influencer by Penton, Top 100 Most Respected Thought Leader by VSR Magazine, Global Power 150 by SMB Magazine, and Top 250 Managed Services Executives by MSPmentor.
Fine-tune Your Business with the Latest Tech Trends — A Video with Jay McBain
Fine-tune Your Business with the Latest Tech Trends
This section will contain a summary of our interview with Jay McBain. But, if you’d prefer to hear him yourself, our Spotify podcast is embedded below.
Every industry is going into a subscription-based service model, so the point of sale is just a start. What role do you think conversational agents/ AI can play in retaining and satisfying current customers?
“ We’re going through an interesting time,” says Jay McBain. Jay works for Forrester research so lots of different people are looking at lots of different angles. Essentially, you have every company in every industry becoming a tech company. Whatever they specialize in, has now become their side job. For example, every service company is now a tech servicing company.
You’ve got people become more tech savvy.
It’s leading to new buying, new channels, and new partnerships. There’s a big swing at Forrester, in terms of how people buy, how people engage. It’s now about creating this subscription model to create a customer journey that never ends, and how we go about managing that.
One of the fastest-growing areas is this idea of Chatbot s. The #1 feedback from customers on what companies should do to recover in phase 2 of COVID-19 is automation.
COVID-19 happened to be a big failure on the human side of processes, workflows, customer experience, customer success, customer support. So companies now have to double down on their transformation strategies and really focus on those who are blocked, or hindered by humans today. Jay sees it as a huge growth area in our customers and clients. And the world of business is telling us that this will be the fastest growing industry at least for next 18 months.
You’ve developed an innovative “dandelion marketing” approach. Could you please elaborate on this and how do you think today’s digital era is contributing to its effects?
So here’s the idea-
You’re in your backyard, and you have these dandelions growing. And for millions of years, they grow the same way. They send out a bunch of seeds and your backyard turns yellow over time. We don’t know which seeds are going to plant, or how much wind there is, or how much rain or moisture.. There are over 1000 variables we can’t control. So rather than making every seed better. And increasing chances of each seed by 10%, it’s never evolved to pass this idea of the kind of quantity in terms of spread.
So the same analogy is used in marketing- Where in the channel world, there are 54 magazines that people read, 64 podcasts that they listen to. There are 150 trade shows, etc. There are so many variables. So for a company to do a good job in marketing today, it has to be a dandelion or community based approach. We have to understand what people read, where they go, who they follow. And being able to leverage these influencers and super connectors. We spent too long in marketing thinking that people are going to come to us. Podcasts, ebooks, etc., are important but they are only a very small element. And they may not plant. So you have to focus 80% on effort inside the community and getting your message on other people’s platforms
If you’re looking at a crystal ball, what are the upcoming channel trends you see in the next 12 months?
Every year, Jay writes trends pieces. He has written at least 10 of them this year. What he has noticed is that there is a new buyer that’s been changing almost every industry.
We’re moving to a new marketplace, and there’s a change in terms of how buyers transact. Tweet this
The use of chatbots, the use of ai, will be massive in terms of marketplaces. There’s going to be a change in terms of the ecosystems. In fact, 76% of CEOs around the world said the current business model will be unrecognizable in 5 years.
Here’s an example-
If you were to build forklifts and add an IoT device to it. No longer are you a forklift company but a data, or tech company. Your new partners will include Microsoft, AWS, Google, Salesforce, etc. So you will have to build a tech ecosystem. You’re going to be delivering a 1000 data points per second. In 5 years, it’s not going to be about how big or fast or powerful your forklift is. It’s going to be about how you integrate into the project. How you integrate into the broader tech stack to drive better efficiency, management of that particular industry.
So the CEO of the forklift company won’t be thinking about the dealer channel the same way- They’re not thinking about the feature benefits. They’re thinking about how they service the new customer, the new buyer. And how to get into new opportunities by delivering more value.
How do you believe the world of automation, conversational intelligence and AI will change the way we work, acquire business and service our customers in the future?
There’s going to be a major change. Currently, the new buyer spends 68% of time digitally before talking to a salesperson. In this digital method today, 81% starts with googling them, but they’re reading every ebook, listening to every podcast, doing everything to become educated. They want to become an expert in solving their own problem.
There is a huge opportunity for AI and bots to help automate this early part of the journey. 73% of buyers make vendor selection before talking to a salesperson. So a majority of big vendors lose deals before there is a deal. Automation is now there to guide customers.
There are over a million potential solutions in the marketplace, but no company is going to hire these many salespeople or write these many ebooks to educate. AI and automation can guide the customer and pave the last mile for them.
What are your thoughts on the future of Sales pertaining to AI? How do you eventually see Salestech play a role in the future role of a Sales professional?
Jay urges every salesperson to become a digital salesperson.
The actual demo, the actual sales call, the actual journey a customer’s on to buy something is radically changing in front of us.
Salespersons are going to get obsessed over getting customers in their territory engaged with AI and chatbots early. So to get visibility to it, you have to add value to it and influence that room. Your chances of winning using AI have gone up exponentially.
Pave the Last Mile for your Customers
Jay McBain says AI and automation can guide the customer and pave the last mile for them. Do that now, with an Engati chatbot. Start now for FREE. No credit card needed.
Fine-tune your business with the latest tech trends — A Spotify Podcast with Jay McBain
Engati Engage
We hope you learned a lot about fine-tuning your business with the latest tech trends in this interview with Jay McBain. Engati Engage will be back with a new expert in a new episode soon. Stay tuned.
Find Jay McBain
Dinis Guarda certainly has a lot of brilliant insights regarding AI and Blockchain. Follow him on LinkedIn and Twitter, or check out his website to get even more value from him.
More from Engati Engage
Now that you’ve found some insights on the next big tech, you should definitely find out how to get ahead of your competitors with it.
Check out our interview with Jeff Kagan on how to overtake your competitors with AI.
Originally published at https://blog.engati.com on April 30, 2020.
