To sell 5G to verticals, you’ve got to speak their language
At the recent AT&T Business Summit in Dallas, Texas, executives highlighted the wide ranging benefits 5G can bring to various enterprise and industrial verticals. But, in this case, it’s not about just selling a network or selling a set of technology solutions; it’s about selling business outcomes.
In an interview with RCR Wireless News, Abhi Ingle, SVP, Advanced Solutions, AT&T Services, said, “This is a continuation of what we did last year, which was to move all of our internal sales, marketing, product offers into a vertical structure. At the end of the day, what we do is to help our customers transform their business. We were approaching it too much in terms of technology, not products. What we heard from them is, ‘Hey, come in and tell us how I change my business to achieve outcomes in my language.'”
Case in point, the operator recently invited companies in the manufacturing, retail, health, finance, and public sector industries into its Foundry innovation lab in Plano, Texas, to collaborate on new digital solutions. A new area within the facility has been given over to “all aspects of an industry environment”, going from manufacturing to distribution to retail. AT&T said the initiative will help enterprises drive their own digital transformation and bring new technologies to market more quickly.
“If you look at the Foundry,” Ingle said, “the Foundry is always in a place where we bring in third party innovators to work with us. A lot of what we’ve talked about in terms of here’s the product sets or blueprints that can change your business, those are awesome ways to get started, but it’s so important to have a physical manifestation where you can touch, feel, visualize and, most importantly, experiment with what we’re talking about and that’s what the Foundry has always been about—it’s about building things together.”
He gave the example of retailer that wants to provide consistent customer engagement through seasonal increases in activity. “What we want to do is help customers talk about how we can help them achieve the business outcomes they are tasked with providing. For retailers, they’re not saying they want to build an elegant network. They want to have an experience for their customers that keeps them engaged, that’s responsive to them at the time they want to shop. They don’t want to let down their customers. We play a role in all of that, but if we go in and talk about network on demand it doesn’t mean anything.”
