Technology is going to transform our lives and businesses within 18 months……Yes, 18 months and we must be ready and prepared to change and adapt.
Listen to this weeks interview with Christina Kerley, known as CK and find out how you can prepare for the future changes.
Dylis: Hi there and welcome to the Inspired Selling Podcast with me
Dylis Guyan. This is the place where business owners and salespeople who sell to bigger businesses discover how to attract, convert and retain more of their ideal clients. I have got a really special guest for you today so let me introduce her first and then I can tell you more about what we’re going to talk about.
This lady is called Christina Kerley known simply as C.K. She’s an innovation speaker and I just want to be clear on that, it’s not an innovative speaker she’s an innovation speaker and futurist. So, be excited because you’re going to get some insight here that really you’ve not had before. Now C.K. has spent the past twenty years at the forefront of digital revolutions and she guides fortune 500s and executives either in senior roles or career transition across the 10+ next generation technologies that will disrupt, dominate and define the next ten years.
So along with her own business she is a faculty member on the Nextgen Innovation at Reuters Business School, she’s keynoted at blue chip companies including Johnson and Johnson, Verizon, Microsoft, The United Nations, The Advertising Council and many many more high profile companies.
If you ask anyone they’ll tell you C.K. is a passionate high energy entrepreneur who reinvents her business and herself through new technologies and she’s always in search of the next big thing. So make sure you’ve got your drink, your notepad and your pen because you are going to be blown away with the content from this lady in the next half hour. Welcome C.K. I am so thrilled to have you with me today.
Christina: Aww thank you so much, first of all I want to say to the listeners I’m so excited to be here today to talk about wonderful technologies, next generation across the next two, three, five and ten years and thank you for that lovely and warm introduction very kind of you.
Dylis: You are more than welcome. I’m not sure that I’ve actually described you sufficiently C.K.
Christina: Oh you certainly did a beautiful job.
Dylis: Let’s just kick off, we know we’re going to talk about the mobile revolution to start with, so just put some context around that, tell us what you mean.
Christina: Absolutely, well when it comes to mobile, when we’re really talking about the mobile revolution and mobile devices and our mobile world think about it this way, over the past decade we have witnessed, had a front row seat to a global phenomenon playout right before very eyes. I mean without rival, without a close contender, mobile has truly set the world ablaze, connected an entire planet and claimed its heavyweight title ‘the master of all media of all time’.
We have never seen a medium and a technology connect us, be so personal, be so core to our business work as we have in mobile. We check our mobile devices on the low end 80 times a day high end 150 times a day. It is the one device that is always with us unless we left the dang thing at home and then we spend our whole day wondering what happening on my mobile phone. It is the one technology constant connectivity that we cannot do without; I say we’re without our mobile lifeline.
So that’s really when we talk about the mobile revolution, that’s what I mean but I want to take it a couple steps further Dylis for your audience because truly the mobile world and while we’re awash in mobile devices truly it’s become acutely clear that the real mobile revolution actually isn’t about devices at all, those are just the screens, it is about new behaviour. Think about it this way, it’s not how an entire planet has changed to mobile but how an entire planet and its entire people have changed as a result of mobile and constant connectivity because our behaviours are different our expectations are more profound.
Mobile has truly left no areas of our lives or our work untouched. Think about how we’ve changed we are far more demanding, we are less patient if patient at all, we have much higher expectations and far far lower threshold and that impacts us in our personal lives but certainly in our executive lives whether we’re the owner of a business, whether we’re in a marketing role, a sales role, an I.T. role we have changed as a global society due to mobile okay.
So it’s really become a issue of not mobile but people and people are our customers and executives and consumer roles, I mean just think about how much we’ve change and how much we expect, I call it the expectation economy, instant gratification. Just think about how we expect unlimited access to content, thought leadership content, consumer content whether we want it in snack sized servings or think about the phenomenon of binge watching, now it’s become an all-out norm.
So we’re really looking at how mobile has changed our behaviours and changed our expectations and what we can do as businesses to better serve those new expectations because it truly is a mobile world and back to the beginning of this question the mobile revolution is one of behaviour and expectation stemming from what people, our customers, not from devices and screens those are just the catalyst. Does that make sense?
Dylis: It absolutely does yes and even if I look at my little grandchildren their lives are led by technology, by these mobile devices.
Christina: Absolutely.
Dylis: So it’s critical that we really grasp this and understand the impact it has when we’re looking not just in our personal lives as you mentioned but in our work lives too and I know you’re going to talk about that later on so that’s really kind of you to explain that clearly and reminded us as to how this mobile revolution has impacted already.
One of the other questions I wanted to ask you was that you teach your executive audiences many technologies I know that includes the ‘Internet of Things’ or IOT for short, which is brilliant.
Christina: Yes.
Dylis: And you proclaim that the physical world is digital’s newest frontier. So can you unpack this trend for our listeners?
Christina: Oh I’d be happy too. So as you said internet of things or I.O.T. for short, due to this, our planet right now is undergoing a very unique revolution wherein the physical world and the digital world, two realms that have always been divided and distinct are now beginning to converge communicate and collaborate.
Here is why Dylis, because through the internet of things I.O.T for short, inanimate otherwise dumb objects are being transformed in the smart devices and here is how, we are infusing, we are able to infuse: 1. Computing, small sensor 2. Connectivity whether it’s broadband or Wi-Fi or .N.F.C. near field communication and 3. data generation directly into real world objects which sounds really techie but what it comes down to, is that we’re the last generation to ever look at computing as separate things.
Now we’re so advanced, now sensors are so miniaturised and so affordable that computing is being infused into everything from the appliances in our home, to the cars that we drive, to the building where we work, to the cities where we live, to all the supply chains and all products. So think about it this way IOT marks the massive progression where our world is moving from smart phone, that’s the last ten years, to smart everything, this is the next thirty, forty, fifty years.
So while mobile, made our phones smart and ignited that mobile revolution for people and expectations that we just talked about; while mobile made our phone smart I.O.T. is turning everything smart so now the physical world becomes digital’s newest frontier.
Think of it this way the web is literally breaking out of the box, outside of our screens and into the world all around us. So we’re going to see a physical ecosystem of connected objects, places, products and things. So we are going to be the last generation to say computing just existed in technical and technological devices because now computing becomes part of every single thing. So those grandkids that you talked about…
Dylis: Yeah.
Christina: They’ve never lived in screen, in a world where screens weren’t responsive to their touch they probably go up to your T.V. touch it and say why doesn’t anything happen? They’re used to their IPads, IPhones, androids being responsive. We’re the last generation to play with toys that didn’t talk back to us.
Dylis: Yes.
Christina: So in a decade anything that’s not smart or responsive, just a dumb umbrella doesn’t glow when its meant to rain outside to remind you to take it with you will be considered broken or just a relic from the past.
Dylis: Yeah.
Christina: This has extraordinary capabilities for businesses you have to understand for businesses they can turn inanimate product through an affordable small sensor into a dynamic marketing channel. So we have this saying right the product sells itself, now literally the product can sell itself because a sensor can be affixed, you can go ahead and tap your mobile phone to that product and it will give you information whether a coupon or whether information about the B2B product.
It can help to increase that personalisation with your audience, it can even make it so that an otherwise dumb product becomes a smart device that has ongoing and after market value or so that you can track it for innovation. It’s truly the sky is the limit but indeed the physical world is digital’s newest frontier. I want to tell your audience that all the researchers in analysts are saying that with I.O.T. it will be ten times the magnitude of mobile.
So think about the trillions of dollars and billions of mobile devices now it becomes trillions of things and trillions upon trillions of dollars in profit, be it due to A. revenues made or B. cost saved on a tremendous amount of waste that we have not known about because we haven’t been connected. So it’s really important to understand that the physical world is now digital’s newest frontier and now the physical and digital world are going to collaborate.
Dylis: Fantastic insights C.K. and I’m so excited for my audience that are listening because this puts them ahead of the curve.
Christina: Absolutely.
Dylis: So those who are listening hang on in because we’re going to talk later, about how you can leverage the next generation technologies in your business but we’ve got some more technologies to talk about that C.K. is going to give us some insights into. So one technology that I know we’ve talked about that elicits fear and excitement is the rise of the robots but you call it the rise of the cobots. Now can you explain what you mean and give us your projections on how intelligent machines will affect our lives and our livelihoods? I mean how exciting is all of this I hope the listeners are as excited as I am about getting these insights.
Christina: Absolutely, absolutely, well while the headlines and Hollywood movies portend a terrifying army of Terminators sent to destroy us, the real story is quite the opposite because the real story of robot is the birth of an entirely new breed of collaborators and they’re engineered to advance us I call them the cobot because it’s the term for collaborative co robots. Robots and cobots are smart machines that will not replace us not at all they’ll work alongside humanity to make our lives easier, our processes is safer and our work far more productive and far more profitable.
Understand this, we have for so long been looking at productivity of our work, yet 50% of our time is spent on administrative tasks and can sometimes mind numbing tasks that aren’t focused on performance and we’re actually having to do robotic tasks right now that take us away from our true value. We are not competing with robots not at all. Robots can take care of repetitive tasks, they can take care of scheduling our meetings heck look at how much we use calculators, look at how much we computers.
It really comes down to automation and to tools that have always advanced humanity and always given us a better standard of living and raised our jobs rather than taken away. So sure robots and cobots will take care of tasks but for the majority of roles they will just take care of tasks that aren’t really truly in our wheel house and aren’t really leveraging our value.
So think about this as a race with the machines not against the machines and that they will really serve us and allow us; this really important for your audience, to focus on what our business does best.
Dylis: Best yeah.
Christina: We’re going to get the following, we’re going to get time, all the technologies I’m talking about Dylis not a single one can bend time not yet okay, so we only have a finite amount of time so we need to get more of it back and to do that we need to automate more and more processes that are better for the machines at calculating or pouring through you know multitudes of data in a millisecond moving with precision.
We need for the cobots to take care of those tasks so that we can spend more of our time on more of the work that matters and guess what, in our personal lives have more time for more of the people activities and passions that matter to us most that’s where it comes into play. Think about everything we’ve automated to date dishwashers washing machines and the like in order to get more time back.
So we actually don’t need to fear the cobot actually the smartest businesses and I’ll tell small and midsize businesses are so darn adulated they should leverage this will bring those robotic processes in, in order to have more time for what, the work they do best. So that’s really what it comes down to but I understand the fear and I understand that some jobs will be replaced but remind your audience this, there was nothing known as a data scientist fifty years ago heck twenty years ago of you said I was an S.E.O. specialist they would have looked at you and rightfully so as if you had three heads.
We have taken away jobs throughout our, you know history in order to get better jobs, those poor people that had to collect tolls and now we have an easy pass to automate that we need to bring those jobs into higher and higher levels.
Dylis: Yeah.
Christina: And robotics, automation of any stripe flavour or kind always has helped to bring abundance and always has helped to bring a better economy and better job, it can be a rough process, understandably so, but most important for your folks to know that the robots and the cobots will help us and they’ll be a co worker that we invite; We’ll look back and say O.M.G. I can’t believe we did all those tasks for all those years. They will give us our time back and they’ll give you Dylis more time with your grandkids.
Dylis: Yeah and this is the thing, change will never stop, there were always be change there will always be advancement and it’s about being open to embrace that and maximize it…
Christina: Wonderful.
Dylis: Within your business, so I absolutely love this and it’s really funny because my mother she’s still alive she’s 94 this year.
Christina: Aww .
Dylis: And she only lives about five or six minutes away from us and we talk about the years when she was a young girl and there was a poss-tub and a mangle for your washing machine.
Christina: Yes!
Dylis: And we talk about all of the relices really things that would be in antique shops now but you know if you hadn’t moved with the change you would have still have your poss-tub and and your poss stick and your mangle that you had to turn manually. You have to change, you have to move with that change, so I find this really exciting.
Christina: Very good that’s an important point for your audience and what the audience needs to understand, what our fellow workers and our fellow entrepreneurs need to understand is change isn’t easy for everyone. It’s actually…change is the most constant and yet it is the hardest things for folks to adapt at. Darwin taught us way back that those who adapt will get a leg up.
Dylis: Yes.
Christina: So embracing that change and actually working on it and enacting that change and initiating will get you further, faster and will get you prepared, let the rest worry about the change you’ll understand what this change can bring you and that change if we hadn’t changed we’d still be in caves, we’d still be hunter, gatherers.
Dylis: Exactly.
Christina: Understand automation robots of the day was the wheel, was the lever okay think about if we hadn’t had computers but those companies that embrace computing early on got a leg up.
Dylis: Exactly.
Christina: So don’t do what the majority do and understand what you had on it’s important, we live in a time of permanent tech revolution, remarkable record setting innovation at relentless pace and we’re going to have to get really comfortable Dylis with being uncomfortable.
Dylis: Exactly.
Christina: But those who manage chaos and change those are the ones to whom the spoils will go, they’ll get the lion’s share of business, innovation, exciting work and yes profits and they will set the role model and they will move the bar and everything else will fall into place as long as they’re doing what you said and that is to get comfortable and to embrace this change.
Dylis: Yes and not be scared and not end up being a late adopter. You know getting it, this information, these insights from you are actually putting us ahead of the game because we’re aware of some of the stuff that’s already here of course but some stuff that’s…
Christina: Yes ma’am
Dylis: So I’d like to just look at a one more of your…
Christina: Yes.
Dylis: Technologies
Christina: Yes ma’am
Dylis: And everywhere we look there’s a new headline on artificial intelligence and your take is that our society has moved from the information age into the intelligence era so why is it imperative that enterprises no matter the industry or size and I’m going to say that again no matter…
Christina: No matter.
Dylis: The industry or the size why should they begin adopting these technologies.
Christina: Well the short answer is that no matter the industry or size because these tools and technologies are already affordable to us through cloud based system mind you; I am a business of one and I can afford being able to hook into I.B.M. Watson but Here is the thing the reason that they should adopt is because it will give them a competitive advantage one, two their competitors aren’t going to begin adopting these in time they want to get a leg up and three the advantages are fully unprecedented.
So to let me first explain about the info age and now the intelligence era okay, for your audience. So the last twenty years from 95 to 2015 computers especially with the advent of the web brought us access to vast levels of information in fact we call it the information age. But where the 20th century belonged to computers the 21st will belong to intelligent machines and systems, that’s A.I. Don’t let intelligence worry you they’re intelligent in a different way it’s just machines that learn and improve.
Our computers right now are as dumb today and tomorrow as they were yesterday we need machines that improve because due to A.I. and immense levels of data and big data we need to better understand how we can use all of these insights to get ahead of competitors okay, to sense any threats and to see what we might be missing in our business because we’ve never 1. been afforded an era where we can track the data but 2. be able to glean intelligence from it.
A.I. is a ton of technologies and tools, don’t let that worry you let that excite you because it’s going to give you better insight into your business and we’re finally to a time where we’re moving from “dumb information” into smart Intel and smart insight and its imperative that enterprises, small, medium and large start tapping these tools because without them you won’t have a competitive advantage and here’s the really big thing without them in due time I’m talking twenty four, thirty six months you will be flying blind.
Important for audiences to understand and listeners to understand in 2015 a whopping twenty four months ago only one percent of software applications had a layer of AI and intelligence by 2018 three and a half months from the recording of this podcast fifty percent will. This is how quickly things change.
Think about back to mobile how Blackberry poor Blackberry right was the leader in the market. They got comfortable for thirty six whole months three whole years and look at what IPhone did. Now we’re down to cycles of twenty four months and again these tools and technologies they are now being baked into everything from sales force you know the software the service sales force with Einstein as its “A.I.” to I.B.M’s Watson to S.A.P’s Leonardo and all of these companies to I.B.M. cloud they are understanding that they need to offer these services via the cloud for companies of all sizes.
So it’s really important that companies look into these technologies start piloting them to better understand how they can get ahead and how they can do like I said with the robot what they do best and spend more time on more of the services, products and solutions that will get them ahead with their existing customers and with new prospects.
Dylis: Brilliant, absolutely brilliant and so how can the audiences of B2B companies leverage these next generations technologies? Or should I say next generation technologies because…
Christina: Absolutely.
Dylis: As we said at the beginning this podcast is for B2B sellers to attract, convert and retain more of their ideal clients and so how can they use these technologies, what specifically can they do in order to generate more inbound quality leads and as you have said time and time again teach never preach.
Christina: Oh I love it, so specifically this with all of this change, with all of this next gen technology, with all of the concern, fear, excitement this is a huge opportunity for sales and marketers to teach not preach and to use these technologies and give your customer visibility as a sales strategy so they can educate their clients and prospects through articles on this, through white papers and e-books or have in person high touch seminars and events or hold online webinars.
Start teaching what you’ve learned through podcasts like these as well as books and the like to your audience and then map the tools, services and products that your company does to help aid them along the way A and B educate them on what the near and further out future of the next twelve, twenty four, thirty six months of the ten years is going to bring them.
When you teach your audience something you are absolutely changing them and endearing yourself to them so you’re actually helping, never selling which is so important because you’re endearing and 1. existing customers will be that much more tied to you because you have readied them and prepared them and educated them and you will draw a prospect to you as well because they’ll be saying, that company knows about what’s happening next and what the true implications and opportunities are and can help us so we want to be aligned with them.
So teaching never preaching is so helpful. We’ve got videos, we’ve got posts, we’ve got online webinars, we’ve got white papers that can become e-books that can be sliced up into specific articles that can be E newsletters that can be a campaign of S.M.S. and text messages excuse me. There are so many tools available that once you have the content and the strategy the content being let’s break down the next gen tech for our audience which is such an opportunity our competitors aren’t doing it.
Dylis: Exactly.
Christina: once you have that you can decide amongst all the tools you want to use whether it’s through social media, whether it’s through e-mail, whether or through mobile, whether it’s through I.O.T. or whether it will be all of the above but to really use this content in person seminars, special events being a featured speaker at local chamber of commerce or a big industry event because you have the content that others don’t.
Even if you’re not a big name if you have the content that they want to hear and take it from someone who has spent twenty years in a business of one who constantly is saying what’s coming next, what coming next? That’s how I’ve been able to build up and be featured at these different conferences because I always have content that they didn’t have yet. So that helps too.
Dylis: And what I love about this C.K. is that it really differentiates you from your competitors because not only are you bringing value in the product that you’re buyer is going to be using etc. you’re also bringing insights that will help them differentiate themselves from their competitors.
Christina: You are absolutely right it is a key differentiator and I want to say this, along with being a key differentiator on the selling side what this will also do for companies is to ready them for all this change and allow them to leap frog competitors.
When you differentiate okay you’re also able to leap frog the competition and really build a competitive advantage and we are seeing this left right and centre with small start ups that are leap frogging competitors okay and being able to really capture that market share because they are not afraid to change. They are saying let us use this as an opportunity.
Here’s what’s really great, sales has a front line to customers, they understand their wants, their needs, their expectations and what they’re fearing, what they’re excited about and what they’re missing, they can bring that information plus technology like a Venn diagram and figure out what are the products, services and solutions that we could build in health now that technology is affordable. Okay we’re not talking about billions of dollars and how can we use our core competencies and create a suite of all new services that will blow away all our competitors.
There is only up side to be gained, I think this is truly the message here, there is only upside to be gained in your current business, in your current sales strategy, in your current marketing and your current services and solutions by going to the next, by being open minded learning about these technologies, experimenting with them and then bringing it back to humanity your customers, your prospects and seeing what’s needed, what’s missing and how you can fill that void to do what you said differentiate and what I said leapfrog.
Dylis: Yeah fantastic, C.K. this has been just amazing.
Christina: Oh good.
Dylis: And insightful so where could the listeners go to find out more, to look at your videos to read about the ten plus technologies in the ten years and also if someone wanted you as a keynote speaker how would we get in touch with you?
Christina: It’s really easy to find allthingsck because you go to www.allthingsck.com. So I’ll spell that out A-L-L-T-H-I-N-G-S-C-K .com. I am a true geek and lover of new next gen tech if ever there are one oh gracious I must have ten to fifteen videos I cover ten tech. I have all sorts of articles so you can really learn from my website as well as get in contact with me the email is there but that’s easy too so ck@allthingsck.com I want everyone to feel free to reach out to me with questions, I’ll challenge my ideas, ask about new opportunities because the end of a podcast, the end of the speech I always say it’s just the beginning of a conversation and your listeners and your audience have been so good to go through this with us that I want them to feel free to be able voice in as well.
Dylis: Great that is so kind thank you very much and you know what more can I say but that you have been a super guest and brought something new, something different, something that people haven’t heard before and I hope that they’ve embraced it and that they do get in touch with you C.K. to find out more. So once again thank you so much it’s been a such a pleasure.
Christina: It has been my pleasure entirely, thank you so much.
Dylis: Bye for now, bye.
Christina: Bye bye.
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