Ep.116 Inside the IoT Revolution Meet the Innovators Shaping Tomorrow's World! -Vince Bradley Pt 2/3

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Don’t miss today’s episode with Vince Bradley, CEO of Abundant IoT, as we meet more champions of the IoT Revolution and the innovators of tomorrow. Vince has such a unique niche in the channel as we discuss everything from Mobility, IoT, sensors, EV Charging Infrastructure, and even ESG(Environment, Social, Governance). Did you know we can help your customers with energy both gas and electric? Did you know there are credits to unlock? Did you know you can help a business be more valuable with a higher ESG Score? Well, don’t miss this episode if you want to learn more as Vince unpacks it all!

Welcome to the podcast that’s designed to fuel your success in selling technology solutions. I’m your host, JoshLupresto SVP of Sales Engineering atTelarus and this is Next Level BizTech.

Hey everybody, welcome back. We are continuing the IoT track. Today we’re talking about the IoT revolution and we are meeting the innovators shaping tomorrow’s world. Today on with us, we’ve got a known name out there, Mr. Vince Bradley from Abundant IoT. Vince, welcome on, man.

Thanks, Josh. Good to be here.

Vince, for anybody that doesn’t know you, give us a little bit of your history in the space and then let’s speed up and we’ll talk about kind of your role and we’ll get to who is Abundant IoT.

Sounds great. Well, you know, Abundant was formed with the vision for IoT in the channel, but with integrating energy services.

So, you know, Abundance is an energy word, I would say, and the logo we even have is symbolic of how important energy is to IoT. A lot of people forget, you know, you turn that light on, you forget, right? But it’s all connected, right? So specifically, my vision for the company was really that it was hard to add energy to the channel 15 years ago, right? It was different, right? But today it’s much easier because of sensors, right? Taking that telecom cloud and connecting it to energy with sensors, right? So it makes a lot of sense to do it that way. And, you know, so that’s the surprise there, I guess, huh? Yeah, and help everybody understand your background a little bit, right? You’re not new to the space, you are an OG in the space. So for anybody that doesn’t know, what was it before Abundant IoT? Walk us back through that. How much history you’ve gotten this space?

Yeah, so you know, when it comes to connectivity, telecom cloud, definitely had a nice run with that with WTG, World Telecom Group, we were one of the top few master agents back when that term was used now, of course, TSD, TSB. And so we were very successful, exiting, you know, selling to a unicorn. And back in the day, did really well with that. So we get the space, it totally. And frankly, that’s exactly why we’re doing this upsell motion, right? Giving that opportunity to advisors for that reason. And so, you know, today, like as founder and CEO of Abundant, really, what I’m doing is vision, product developments, as well as marketing communication, right? That’s kind of my main focus at Abundant. Love it. Love the, love the gaps it fills here. And we’re going to get into, we’re gonna get into IoT a little bit here and energy and all kinds of good stuff in a second. But, but give us a I love to bring on people that have had experience that have learned good lessons, learned lessons the hard way. Walk us through one of these, right? Key lesson learned, previous mentor, boss, mistake made, whatever it is, just share something here with us.

I love that question, you know, because, you know, really what it is, is like with the WTG motion, right? What I kind of learned, joining this stage and seeing some other things is bootstrapping WTG was probably one of the biggest mistakes I ever made, because we could have grown it so much bigger. You know, we did extremely well, we could have been way bigger, kind of done a lot more with that. And so that’s probably number one. But again, then Abundant wouldn’t have happened, right? Because I would have done it then. And so I’m enjoying the journey. I’m really, you know, this time, we, you know, brought some investors in and, and looking at it, we’re bringing in, we want to grow this way bigger than WTG. There’s a good vision here. Good business plan. People are really enjoying what we’re doing and jumping on. So, you know, and I was also working too much Josh, when I was bootstrapped, right? I was just I was like, Come on, you know, I was my wife would yell at me, you know, and I got sick of that too. This time, I’m way more passionate about as I mentioned, it’s more of a purpose based motion that we’re into right now. And so, you know, it’s nice, right? Because I’m enjoying it more. And I’m working less, or at least I’m working on working less. There you go. I love it. I love a good plan. Okay, so so like IoT, we’ve heard about IoT for a while, right? We think about sensors, we think about those things. But walk us through from an IoT perspective, what are some of these recent catalysts that have helped create such a great opportunity for partners? And really, why is there so much area there to help customers?

Great question. You know, I mean, as it relates to abundant, you know, what we basically did is we did the research, right? And found out that 30% of the TAM in IoT comes from energy. You know, as I mentioned before, people forget about that. They’ll talk about IoT mobility. Well, that’s why, you know, we’ll take that close second place on the TAM right behind mobility at 40%. And you know, what everyone really talks about at the end of the day. They’re not talking about they’re talking about mobility and IoT. So we’re talking about energy. It’s a big part of it. We’ve got a background with it, right, as well. So, you know, recent general industry catalysts, you know, to me look at I look at, you know, massive moves towards digital transformation, right? I think the most important thing about this is the I mean, it’s just a huge space right now. It’s really taken off. A good example would be Marriott Hotels. You know, last year they mandated that employees have panic buttons. So a lot of them are not in compliance today, right? So that mandate has dramatically accelerated the adoption of IoT, things like that, right? Where it’s mandated now to do these things. And so, you know, we call it EIOT. IoT focused on energy services and we take it further by, you know, integrating EV charging. So, you know, that’s, we focus more on electricity and natural gas, but the EV charging motion, the Marriott’s also mandated our wholesale provider. And so if a property hasn’t been approached yet, then we can bring in the EV charging, which also connects back to the IoT, hence EIOT, right? So good opportunity there. And it’s nice to see the IoT proliferation really kicking in now. And a lot of the initiatives sort of requiring IoT. That’s kind of what was missing before, in my opinion, was the mandates and the need to do that digital transformation. Yeah, that’s fair.

Always, I would use the Lego term, right? Legos are great. Legos are fun.

But Lego did well when they came out and said, “We’re going to have this, rather than this bucket, which is what I grew up with. We’re going to come out with this kit, this Star Wars kit, this unicorn, this mermaid, this Disney thing.” And they catered everybody to go, “Yeah, I could see what that product is, right? I could build that product. I think this is very similar to your point.” And now there’s so many of these use cases. There’s so many mandates. And maybe let’s just talk about that one for a second.

This is hard for businesses. All this stuff is hard for businesses. I can’t even imagine being on the business side and having to figure all of this out. So talk to me about some insights, common challenges the businesses are facing, if they go and try and implement some of these, right? Their expectation versus how it really goes kind of slide.

Yeah, great question. And customers need a lot of help with IoT because it’s a technical motion, right? And it doesn’t have a defined path. That’s a big problem with it. We view IoT as being an extension off of the foundation of connectivity, right? That foundation is there. Telecom, cloud, services, the technology advisors have today, right? And so, really, all the advisors need to do is ask their customer base, what pain points do you have in these buildings? What is it that’s causing a problem for you today?

One of my favorites, our technical solution architect, Tim Wu, he says, if the devices could talk, what would they say? I love that one. It also really creates for an interesting conversation, right? You’re on a dry, boring call, talking about all this technology, and then all of a sudden you ask that question and it just takes off. I think some of the biggest insights to common challenges businesses are facing when they’re implementing IoT though. So, there’s a general mismatch in the expectations, right? It’s there. We’ve seen it, you’ve seen it. So, to get right to the bottom of your question, that motion of implementing the IoT, it’s a journey. It’s not a destination. And that’s number one. That’s probably the biggest problem we see. People think, I need to do this. I need to fix it now. Well, get ready and buckle up. It’s going to take a while. There’s several phases and understanding where the customer is on that journey is so important. If they don’t know where they are, they can’t level up, right? So, I think one of the biggest blockers to IoT as well is not having identified the issues themselves, right? We need to do IoT. We’re not sure where to start. These are the kinds of things that make it hard, right? It’s important to an organization, but in addition, a lot of compliment are really implementing band-aid solutions, right? We’re just going to do this for now, right? Well, that’s not really the IoT journey. That’s not going to get them where they need to go. And I think another one, another big issue is the mini technologies.

You know, really, there’s a massive scope creep, right? In IoT, it’s huge, right? I want to do this right now. They end up going there, right? So, the projects often get too big. The budget was not thought through for the long term. You know, it’s a big mismatch in terms of what customers are really looking at, what they expect when they start on the journey and the reality of what happens, right? Don’t believe the hype, right? Yeah. Yeah. So, we got to help them. We definitely help them uncover that.

You know, I think that’s what we always talk about is there just tends to be so much more once we get in and uncover, right? To your point, it might be IoT. It might be streaming data that comes in now from so many sensors. It might need to go to a data warehouse that needs security, blah, blah, blah. The opportunities just run wild. Yeah, you know, I think really enterprise customers, they have to have a project manager for efficient IoT projects, right? That’s another kind of a blocker as well. Fair. Fair.

Okay, so let’s talk. You alluded to some of these here, a question or two ago, but talk to me about the misconceptions or the understanding of the products that are under the IoT umbrella. Is it, you’ve alluded, it’s more than sensors, yes?

Oh, yeah, it’s so much more than sensors. I mean, it’s kind of a good way to look at it is, you know, with the, you look at the efficient IoT implementation, right? It’s, they have got to really identify, you know, they really have to identify if they want a short-term strategy to solve the problem. Like, okay, we need to fix these issues right now. Or if we’re looking for the long-term, you know, what I call the whole enchilada in IoT, and that strategy for a better result, right? You know, obtaining this information, you know, if they don’t, they can’t get this information upfront, it’s going to minimize, I mean, getting the information upfront minimizes the customer frustration. You know, they really come in with a better perspective. We come in with a checklist of items and it really kind of bridges the, you know, the gap between the expectations and the reality. So I think that’s really the crux of it is helping that customer understand not getting sucked into those pain points and those pitfalls, right? It’s planning. It’s all project management. If they can answer the questions that we have, we come back to them, we say, okay, here’s the scope of what we want to do. There’s a lot of work to be done upfront to really get it right. That’s kind of the way I would summarize it. All right. So you were mentioning ESG earlier. Talk to us about first of all, what ESG is and how do you help there? Explain what that is.

Well, I want to actually I want to finish it. There was one thing I wanted to tell you. Okay, and then I love the SGA. I want to jump in on it, but you talked, I missed kind of the misconceptions, right? I want to just give you a little more on that. Do you go for it? So, you know, you talked about it. Is it just sensors, right? And it is more than sensors. I have so much to say, as you can tell, right? We do a lot.

I can’t get it all in, right? But a massive misconception, I think that one of the biggest ones is just that. That is just sensors, right? And I think the realization that so much of the IoT ecosystem includes other things, right? Like I talked about energy. Well, let me just focus on that for a minute. There’s so many things and it didn’t used to have sensors, right? LED, HVAC, water, harmonics, solar, EV, all of these things have sensors now, right? They didn’t in the past. But the customer’s ability to get a better result for their organization comes from the realization of what IoT is, right? That’s a blocker.

So knowing how to take these other services out there and bring them in, right? Like how we, as an example, we unpack billions and incentives from the government, right? To massively defray costs in IoT. I guess what I’m saying to you is that we can use energy efficiency revenue, like the inflation reduction act, all this kind of stuff and the incentives to help fund the IoT projects. I guess the best way, the best misconception is it’s just sensors, right? That is the biggest misconception. It’s way more than just the sensors themselves, right? It’s what they’re connected to. So that’s, I wanted to get a little bit more on that. Yeah, but makes sense. Makes sense. So take that into consideration as anybody goes and listens to the next part now. Now talk to us about what is ESG and how does that play in, right? Because what you’re talking about savings from one product to go pay for another is vastly different.

Yeah, well, you know, ESG, right? I mean, it’s the most understood, most, most misconceived term ever out there. ESG stands for environmental, social and governance. We focus on the E in ESG. It’s a really big deal to enterprise customers. And the reason I say that Josh is because investors are using ESG ratings to decide who to invest in. So if a company has already started doing stuff to help them with the sustainability of renewable energy, they’re going to get more investment than they would that a company that hasn’t done anything about it because of what’s going on, right? So that’s a big factor in the enterprise. It’s really well known, but it’s not really that well known SMB. So we help the customers in two different motions.

The first motion that we use is just most of the products and services, the ones I mentioned before, right? Those help ESG ratings. Just by virtue of putting them in. So that’s one motion, right? Just by working with abundant, we’re helping raise ESG scores automatically. So we help the enterprise.

You know, another way, again, unpacking those billions in incentives as well, right? We can help them with that too. So we unpack that stuff for them as well, right? Which helps them to defray costs and helps them to fund these projects, right? It helps them to bring in sustainable and renewable technology. The second motion we have is actually our consulting arm. And we have an ecosystem of consultants, ESG, global, domestic, different focus areas, all that stuff. And they actually help with the consulting services. And this is compensable to the channel, by the way. Everything we do is compensable. And so as part of our ESG as a service product, you know, we’re on the journey ourselves, by the way, Josh. We hired a consultant. You know, we eat our own dog food, right? We got a materiality matrix. We got a ESG position, right? And a mission statement. All of those things, we did them all. Why? So we could understand it, so we can help customers to understand it better and bring it in, right? We also use the technology to sell the service, right? We use that ESG technology to help sell the service as well. And, you know, we know what’s important to customers because we’re on that journey as well. So we can help them, right? We can dive in and we’re on it ourselves.

And so again, that’s kind of a high level on it. There’s a lot more to understand about it, but it gives you kind of an idea really for tech advisors in the channel. This is something that could be monetized, right? So it’s a really, really big opportunity, especially in the enterprise and bid market. Yeah, I think it’s, you know, it’s so fascinating to see that I love distilling down the products that we have that are compensable and how that changes over time and how that varies from so different what it was three years ago, five years ago, ten years ago. And to be able to say that we can get paid on consulting to see your ESG rating and that, you know, valuations and targets of companies. If your ESG rating is high, impacts future investment. I mean, that stuff is mind-boggling. But if I’m a partner listening, right, I’m hearing, great, another wedge that I can find my way in. I can get in with an ESG conversation. I can help them with all of these different sensors. I can help them with infrastructure. I can help them just energy across the board and environmental across the board. I love that there’s so many areas of that because it does seem very broad. There’s a lot, right? But to be able to consult on it, that, you know, teeing up an opportunity to bring you guys in is one thing, but that consulting engagement, I would assume, tees up so much more additional revenue because they’re like, oh my gosh, we need this, this, this, this, and this. Oh, hey, guess what? Here I am about an IoT. We can help with that. Exactly. And you know, you’re right, Josh, it’s a, it’s a coming in from top down, right? When you come in with ESG, you’re C and V level entrant, right? We know how to take websites, web pages from enterprise customers and scrape them for the CSR, the corporate sustainability report or sustainability initiatives. We take this information. We unpack it. We choke on calls. Customers love that. Like, wow, we didn’t even ask you to do this. We just wanted to understand what you do. And you already proactively went and looked at the information, come back, you’re ready before we even ask the question. So yeah, it’s a great way to get in top down, get at the high level and then open up the conversation to the entire wallet share of that customer for sure.

So, so let’s talk kind of outside on the edge of, you know, the IoT side, the SD side. You guys have got other services, right?

There’s a way to kind of expand. You mentioned a little bit. I want to harp on here with the EV charging because I think that’s extremely unique to our portfolio. So let’s say, let’s give a situation here. Let’s say a partner has XYZ customer, they’re mandated and or they want to deal with some EV charging and build up that infrastructure so that people want to come to their facility. How does abundant IoT help with that?

Yeah, so we can, my favorite example is the Marriott, right? And actually I can give I can give some information on a case that if you want to talk about that IoT case study in a few minutes or before we’re done or whatever at the end of the day, you know, what we do then is we come in and say, hey, look, you know, what do you got today? Here’s a list of a few questions, right? Answer these questions and then we can tell you what we can do. We kind of avoid the owner operator model because it’s more of, you know, interest rates have gone up. So it’s harder to get the funding as well on that motion, right? But if someone’s going to buy the chargers and all that stuff, we do that all day and we have a great ecosystem and we can do a lot with it. Simply answer a few questions. You know, what do you want to do with this? Where do you want to put these and then we can be off to the races. And like I said before with Marriott’s right now, they’ve mandated our wholesale provider. So we just go in and the business just comes to the advisors. It’s really easy to get into. Put it this way. It’s easy to get way more from your logo, right? You’ve got the connectivity. You got the cloud, right? Well, we want to help you get the tentacles into the rest of that customer so that you don’t lose that customer. In fact, upselling energy. Our retention rates go to 99% Josh. Once we do that because they now they’re looking at you like you’re way more value added. Than just bringing them the telecom and cloud. Now you’ve expanded and given them a lot more. So as it comes to EV charging massive space, huge opportunities. Neve funding with 5 billion in incentives.

I mean, there’s a huge opportunity there. So love to talk more about some other products if that’s okay. Or did you have a question on the well, I want to I want to unpack before we go on to this one for additional stuff. I want to unpack real quick for anybody that has no idea how EV charging works. I’m just I’m just a business with a building and a parking lot and you say, okay, abundant IOT helps with let’s get really specific on the part that you help with. Does the customer need to buy the equipment? Can they buy the equipment through you? Do you help with the consulting designing project management? Like break that down for anybody that’s listening and has some of these customers. This might be a fit for.

Absolutely. What we can do is projects from dirt just to be clear. We don’t like the three-year projects because it’s a lot of work, but we can do them smart. I’m sorry, smart building, smart city.

EV charging canopies, right? All kinds of different things we can do. So yeah, you can they can come with nothing like hey, we’re interested in this and we can help them with everything. We can help them to say that you can buy the EV charging equipment. We can help them to understand how they can monetize it for their customers. We can even help them to understand how they can draw more customers in increasing morale for the organization, right? Their team comes in because they got the EV charging, right? There’s so many things we can do. So it’s actually really pretty simple. Answer these questions. We come back. We say okay, this is the solution and we look at the different options with our wholesalers. We say okay, this is the one we recommend for you. It gets the services get ordered. It does take a more than a minute because again, this is infrastructure, right? You’ve got to actually build this stuff out. So it takes a while. But at the same time, you know that retention you’re getting from the customers huge. So yeah, all of that is possible including the consulting aspect of it. Yeah, beautiful. But at the end of the day, I mean if partners know okay, this sounds broad. There’s a lot of different areas.

You can sell it. You can consult on it. You can get paid on it at the end of the day. That’s the box we check. So great if we have more, we’re going to talk more bring those in and I know they’re unique situations and we’re getting into you know, sub station power mapping and all kinds of wild stuff, but it’s just great. It’s another it’s another area that partners can help and I love it. Yeah, I mean and just to expand on that, you know, one hot item right now is energy procurement, which is a terrible product name, but that’s what it is. And so here we are with electricity and natural gas, right? Two products. Everyone knows everyone has them, right? Well, guess what? Right now with your customer base, the pricing is really low right now in 22. It was super high right now is buying season. Spring is what we call the shoulder months and it’s buying season for the electricity and natural gas and that pricing is low, especially with gas right now. Electricity prices are going up, but they’re going to go up a lot in the next few months. Right now is a great time to ask the customer for their electric bill. Why? Because we can look at EV charging. We can look at LED lighting. We can look at the harmonic filter. Harmonic filter, by the way, in any state, just to be clear with that. So getting the electric bill, getting the gas bill as well, getting those bills right now is a huge opportunity for everyone. Why? Because we can help them save money right now in most cases and we can also help them to protect them from budget to give them budget certainty, right? Look what happened that year. A storm three years ago in Texas, right? People’s rates skyra even last summer in Texas, the rates spiked, right? So I only want to mention it as a service that is really important, but what I wanted to mention is because when we talk about EV charging or LED or harmonics or just electricity, we need the electric bill for all those things. So I just wanted to mention that I thought it was important to mention. Yeah, I love it. I love it. Get it is kind of the old school model, right? Show me your long distance bills and I’ll see what I can shop for you. Now it’s show me your power. Show me your gas. Show me your electric and I just love the so many different areas. We can take this. But get those bills get a copy get them to abundant and then let’s kind of get a game plan together on what can we do here? How can we help right energy included for sure by the way, you know, a couple of things. I want to say really quickly on sales enablement. First of all, our PRM right exemplifies, you know, Microsoft Nextiva all a bunch of music is encrypted data. We can’t have no access to it, but you can put your logo in there and co-brand and send out a campaign for any of the services that we have. We can spend that up for you in literally just a couple hours. So there’s a great go to market motion on all of this that exists right now at abundant iot.com. And by the way, when you’re there to stop by and say hi to Abby, Abby is our bot and with what we do, you got to have a bot. And it’s funny because we’re like she doesn’t know an answer to this or that question. Like, hey, you know what? She’s learning and there’s a lot to learn at abundant, right? You’ve already talked about a lot of things and one of my favorites actually, this is probably the hottest new product that I have found. I just want to mention it is IT Services Auction.

With this product, we can actually save customers, enterprise customers, 44% off of their IT spend. It’s pretty mind-boggling actually.

And you know, it truly can help companies to improve their EBITDA, even avoid layoffs.

And you know, one advisor recently made $750,000 commission just from a few hours of work and the process only takes a few weeks. So I had to mention this one because it is so hot and because you know, we’re partnered with them for the energy services and you know, the ROI, you know, it just it’s incredible what we can do with it. So particularly for enterprise customers, right? For 100 million to a 5 billion, that sweet spot, you know, you add the IOT conversation, you’re talking energy and now you’re talking IT Services Auction. These are all enterprise upmarket plays, right? So that’s why I also mentioned the IT Services Auction product because it is upmarket and it’s so dynamic because when we can come in and help them in all these different ways and help them defray costs at the same time, you know, in the short term, continuing to drive efficiency within their network on the journey as well as solving problems in the organization. Josh, I mean, that’s really what our at the end of the day, that’s what we want to do, solve problems and help the channel to monetize it at the same time. Right. Let’s get in here as we get kind of close to the last couple of thoughts. Let’s get in here on a use case. So again, my favorite is somebody came to me with a deal that started out here and then ultimately, you know, from what the customer said and the partner said it was we just ended up finding so many different things. So walk me through an example, get specific on a deal. What did you come in? What was the pain point? And ultimately, how did we end up solving it? Any specifics on that type of solution?

Yeah, I love the case studies. And so I think I’ll probably go back to the Marriott example just because it’s so relevant. And also there’s a good IOT element to it as well.

So, you know, with that, I think I think a good one to talk about would be, you know, looking at what they did with those hotels. Right. So let’s take an example for hotels.

And the problem really with the hotels is looking at, you know, what do we do with all this? Right. First of all, we want to look at, you know, the whole conversation with IOT and how we can, you know, they again, they started the journey kind of not sure what they wanted to do. But they did have a few, you know, a couple of pain points. Right. So we kind of brought that to the table and said, okay, what can we do for you on these pain points? Right. And so with that and the use case there, right, looking at all these hotels and say, well, should we go to corporate with this or should we just deal with you individually? Right. That’s the other question. Are we going bigger or we’re just going to stay focused and be local or regional on that? So, you know, this example right here was a good one. Right. A client for hospitality management company. Right. It’s just it’s a company that is obviously managing these Marriott’s. Right. So a leading brand, right. California hotels is what we’re talking about here. And so some of the key facts, right.

The brands committed to equipping the hotel, right. The employees with with this wearable safety panic button, right. And we’ve heard a lot about panic buttons. I think we all have an IOT. They’re extremely hot right now. So this is basically for safety, right? The alert panic button. So multiple cities and states pass laws at required hotels to provide an alert system and or or pace potential clients, right. And so the compliance actually ended last year. That’s why this is a golden opportunity when you approach those Marriott’s and his other hotels right now. So the problem here was the hotel needed to comply with the brand requirements, right. And the laws that needed a solution that could meet the requirements on an affordable price, right. On a budget. That was also the big challenge. Where do you go to get this? What is the right budget? What do we need? Right. What features do we need in the panic button? The systems had to provide room level accuracy, which is another requirement. That’s very difficult service landings and closets, right. There’s a lot of complexity with this and a common area accuracy, right. So it’s hard to manage all of that places where existing Wi-Fi or cellular coverage is not consistent and strong. So the solution we brought to the table using, of course, Laura, when I’m sure you could all guess it, right. But actually more the long firefight, which is Norway and combined with blockchain, right. So long find networks are able to provide a system that has no dead zones, right. This is the distinguishing factor there. No floor jumping either, right. And it didn’t require accessing an existing Wi-Fi network or LAN, right. So it’s more secure and using blockchain as well. System did not have to connect to the customer’s LAN, which of course eliminated the security risks, right. That we always try to address in IOT.

So the IOT transmitted over lower LAN, low power, low bandwidth, long distance for those that are aware of it, protocol and secured by the blockchain, right. Obviously way more secure than your, you know, your lower LAN that can get hacked, right. And the upsell is the long find network has a huge sensor network and allowed the property and the temperature sensors, right. This is the key distinguish it right here, right. For refrigerators, for food safety, inspections, water leak sensors, under sinks, right. I mean, this is, you know, a lot to unpack here for a fraction of the cost, right. 90% off infrastructure costs versus access points and other legacy technology of the independent systems, right. And they were able to view all the sensors and the alerts from the same console, right. So it’s a great case study. It was a great win. The advisor makes a solid five figure amount of money upfront and a great residual as well, right. So kind of a great story and thank you for asking. Yeah, I think the beauty in that too is a program or product like this. You know, we hear about some of these complex things and then when we hear security, we go, ah, man, I got to get the security team involved. That’s going to set it aside. But so many of these things can go out of band to your point, right. Are we, are we doing a big upstream corporate mandate or can we just handle this ourselves with the four or five, 10, 20, whatever it is facilities. And when you get some of the capabilities like you’re talking about to do these things out of band, I just can speed up the sale cycle, right. Because if we can prove that, no, we’re not touching the land to your point, we’re not, we’re not integrating with anything necessarily that isn’t secure. And so you got a lot of options there. I just love how that could potentially speed things up. This is just, it’s, it’s such a great product fit in so many different areas. As you mentioned, it’s an awesome example.

Yeah, the EIOT is, it’s a great solution. That’s why we love talking about IOT connected with energy, right. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s really taking off right now in a big way. It’s the right time for it, right. Post pandemic, a lot of this ESG stuff coming along and now everything’s shifted, right. Everything in the world is different as we all know, but even the way we do business has shifted dramatically, right. So it really helped IOT, I believe with the proliferation. Yeah. Okay. I’m a big fan of probing questions real quick as we kind of wrap this final couple thoughts here.

What is a couple probing questions you can give me and who do I talk to about all the things that we’ve talked to if I’ve got an existing customer or if I’ve got a prospect? Any products that you want to harp on, what’s the question? Who do I talk to?

Yeah, so great question. I mean, if you’re, if you’re talking about, you know, you know, what’s the question for which product, right? So let me just talk about energy for a minute because that one is red hot right now and it’s also the way to get in, right. Like I was saying before, you can talk about IOT all day and night, but if you’re not differentiating yourself, right, then you’re just a price, right. So I guess what I would say is that energy conversation, right, or EIOT as I put it, right, coming in high, coming in with that ESG conversation, right, is better because then you’re just dealing with the top, right. And you can come in that way. So a great question, an amazing question to ask for that high level is, you know, what are you doing with ESG, right? Now, I will say right now, it’s interesting, depends on where you are in the country. This is a political topic. Let’s be honest about it, right? Let’s put it out there, but it doesn’t really matter what you think about it because we can monetize it, right? I mean, in the channel, it’s a golden opportunity for everyone and that’s exactly what we’re doing. So, you know, again, another way to ask that question would be, hey, what are you doing about corporate sustainability, right? So you don’t have to say ESG, right? If you want to go right to it, you can say ESG. It just depends. What I recommend is go to the website before you ask any questions. So Josh, I’m giving you question zero, which is go do the research first, look at the customer, kind of what they’re doing, right, and then formulate the questions from that. So hopefully that’s an A- answer. I don’t know. But what I will say about it is starting with that question is good, right? Here’s another great one, right? Let’s just talk straight IoT for a minute here. What is your IoT solution or what is your IoT strategy? Now, this may seem simple and kind of like too vague, but you know what? It works, especially, you know, what is your IoT strategy? Like they want to talk about it and you want to listen and you want to take notes and help. I’m out with that, right? So we love those two questions. If it’s an energy focus or we want to talk about the energy after looking at the website, we might go, we might start with this energy focus question. If not, and we know that it’s more of an IoT conversation, we start over here. We read the room is what we essentially do. And so those are those are two of our top questions, I would say. And you know, I would also just add by expanding this as a little bit if I can by giving you what advisors say, right? So let me just give you that real quickly. You know, our most successful technology advisors have simply told their customers, right, about this. They’ve said we’ve added energy services to the mix. Why? Because it’s the other big utility, right? Think about it. And they and customers get that. Oh, you can help me with the other big utility. That makes sense. And there’s massive incentives to do so, right? There’s no question. There’s a lot of billions of dollars in incentives. And we’ve also seen that the customers who are not sure about their IoT journey, right, as it relates to these questions, or they needed more time for budget allocation.

So we can go around the metaphoric backdoor and say, hey, look, let’s talk about the energy conversation because we can help fund the IoT, right? So there’s a couple of questions.

And, you know, again, that’s more of a straight IoT. Explain the transformation. Talk about the digital transformation. Another great question. What’s your digital transformation strategy? Oh, yeah. That’s a third, right? So it’s kind of like you get a few different questions depending on when you read the room. You know, have they added IoT to help customers become more efficient and expand from their existing telecom infrastructure, right? This is also a huge retention tool as well, adding IoT to the connectivity, right? Great opportunity, great upsell motion for the channel. I started talking about IoT, you know, this trend, you know, almost 10 years ago. Here it is. And it’s finally happening, which is great to see, right? I think we’ve all been waiting for this and it’s finally here, right? So, yeah, I mean, it’s a great time. There’s a few questions and, you know, we’ve got a lot more. So, I think those are good too. I mean, the end goal, what I want to make sure that people get out of this is, A, you’ve got a big familiarity in this space. You’ve got a lot of experience from energy to sensors to chargers to consulting to credits and, you know, everything in between. But the whole point of this is, I mean, we’ve probably uncovered 10 or 15 areas to wedge in, right? If you’re looking within your customer base and you understand what you’ve sold to them, where you want to move in additionally with them, this is a different conversation. When we talk about ESG and we talk about sustainability and we talk about, you know, saving money on energy at a time where people are looking to optimize cost, right? That’s an interesting conversation if we’re trying to make our customer point of contact the hero in this. And great, if that funds another project, awesome. Either way, the energy project alone helps them and saves them and makes you money. So, it really is a win that can open the door to so many other places. So, I love those questions.

Love that talk track. It’s good stuff.

Yeah, I mean, we’re having fun with it. I mean, at the end of the day, right? It’s, you know, we’re changing the channel, right?

Cliché aside, you know, I know, but I can’t help it because it’s true, right? We’re offering a new path in the channel, you know, of digital transformation, right? Bringing the energy in via IoT, right? If you could just imagine that picture and a picture tells a thousand words, you know, the picture on our website, if you go to our ecosystem on our website, you can see it at abundantiot.com. That ecosystem kind of says a lot about what we do and why and you can kind of see why there’s an opportunity there from the channel. Yeah.

Final thought here. So, if I’m an actual end business now, right? This is the thought for the end business. I’m considering IoT, maybe ESG, E-charging, whatever it is. Any of the things that we’ve talked about. What, I mean, obviously, the cheat answer here is pull your partners in, pull the TAs in. We can all help you with this. But what would you say, just a little piece of advice, the pitfalls to avoid, key considerations for the business out there trying to figure out how to make this transition?

Great question. You know, we always, as a provider, we have to appeal right to the customer and the advisor, which could be tough. So, you know, again, we start by identifying enterprise objectives, right? Like I said, we go to the website, you know, we go and we do a scrape on that customer, right? Before we read the room, before, right? So, that’s where we start. This is a reminder. Get proactive. That’s my biggest feedback I can give is go to find that out and we can help you with that, right? So, and then when we come back to them, presenting that, right? Makes a big difference. So, that’s, that’s, you know, I know it’s a little bit with what I’ve already said, but at the end of the day, it is so important, right? And I think that with that, you know, they’re impressed with that. You start off on the gate with the customer engagement. They see what we’re doing, right? Once they know the objectives, that’s where we can start. It’s easier to answer the question, right? We usually advise starting with energy. And as I mentioned, you know, like that’s what our logo is about, right? The green section of our energy because it funds the IoT, as I mentioned before. And it also, and I didn’t mention as much about this, but the energy itself can help them save money as well, right? Which in addition to those incentives I talked about is a great way to get started. So, like I was saying before, you could use that energy to kind of fund the IoT journey. But the biggest pitfall to your point in the question, right? Is not to tackle the whole enchilada.

That every time we see a customer going, okay, we’re going to do it all.

You know what? We haven’t seen anyone do it all. It’s just competing budgets, projects, scope creep,

pullback, confusion, not having ample resources, right? Human resources for project management. These are all things. This is the biggest pitfall we’ve seen. And so it’s nice and it’s ambitious, but we try to get it down to bite-sized chunks, you know, go using the metaphor, right? Like I said before, go through the back door, right?

Have a conversation about what’s important to them and increasing the retention, right? Rather than coming through the front door, savings, efficiency.

No, no, it’s about talking to them about what they don’t know, right? What are the dynamics of what you can do that you can bring to the table? And so this again, if they start off with the conversation about we’re going to do the whole thing, you know, okay, you better have nine phases in that. And you better have a budget for each phase, right? So that pitfall is massive. Every time a customer tells us that, we try to break it down for them. We give them a phased approach. We ask them to compartmentalize it, right? So that’s really the biggest advice I have on IOT is to avoid the whole enchilada. I love it. Well, this my man that wraps us up for today. We covered a lot of good stuff, a lot of different things. So they really appreciate you coming on and covering all these cool topics, man.

Absolutely. Appreciate Josh so much for the time. It’s great to be here and great to be changing the channel with you guys.

So look forward to the next ones and seeing you around. Thanks so much. Awesome. All right, everybody that wraps us up for today. Mr. Vince Bradley, Abundant IOT. And as always, if you are not liked and subscribed yet to this podcast, go to Spotify, go to Apple Music, wherever you’re listening to, make sure you get those notifications as these things drop every Wednesday. That wraps us up for today. I’m your host, JoshLupresto SVP of Sales Engineering. This has been the IOT Revolution, meeting the innovators shaping tomorrow’s world. Until next time.

Next Level BizTech has been a production ofTelarus Studio 19. Please visit Teleris.com for more information.