As part of our continued partnership with the Management Consultants EY, one of the partners said "it's not disruption you need, it's evolution".  And he is right.

Providing the sales department with social processes to create competitive advantage and incremental revenue, is just a step on the changing evolution of sales.  We often forget that the internet, email and telephones where not as abundant as they are now.  The same with transport technologies things evolve.  Horses and carts evolved into the automobile, where the vested interests in horses and carts forced somebody to walk in front of the automobile with a red flag.

Social Selling is not disruption it's just the continued evolution of the noble skill.  Oh, and it's not going away.  80% of the internet enabled world is on social media and that grows not shrinks.  We are seeing the promise of digital marketing waning.  No body looks at your website.  Nobody looks at your adverts.  GDPR has put an end to your email bombardment.  Where can you go other than social?

Where things get interesting is where we use social to drive the strategy and culture of the business, for example in my previous company we used social to run the business.  In fact we got an efficiency uplift of 25%, so that was an additional 25,000 employees at zero cost.  Now that is a ROI and competitive advantage.

By using social in sales will give you a 25% - 30% sales uplift, you can then reinvest that money across the business so the project is in fact cost neutral to the business.