When did it happen? 

Look at this data — The latest data on internet use, social media use, mobile use, and ... https://datareportal.com/reports/digital-2020-global-digital-overview 

To quote the report

“More than 4.5 billion people are using the internet at the start of 2020, while social media users have passed the 3.8 billion mark. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s population is already online, and the latest trends suggest that more than half of the world’s total population will use social media by the middle of this year.”

The thought that your customers are not on social media or your deal influencers are not on social media is now utter ridiculous. 

I turned the television on today, there is the outbreak of the Cornavirus in China. The BBC were interviewing somebody who was stuck in Wuhan and had tweeted a video about him and his Granny who is staying with him.

For a start the BBC does not need to send a journalist to the area as this guy gives great TV. He has the UK Foreign Office on the back foot and he is setting the news agenda on this story.

How is it that a person nobody had heard of can control the news agenda with a social media account and an internet connection? Because that is the world we live in.

It only seemed yesterday that social media was about cat photos, photos of your lunch and “influencers”.  Now the news agenda is driven by social.

You may not like it, but that’s the way it is.

The same with the world of business, people are dabbling in business with social. It could be you look people up on social before a meeting, right through to our customers who are going through complete transformations. Either way, social media is not a glitch or a fad in business it is now strategic to the way business works. 

What companies are looking at social?

It seems to be early adopters and the early majority.  We are seeing change makers in companies coming to us and saying “marketing is working anymore”.  It takes a brave person to say that. But many, many marketers can see that the old ways of interruption and broadcast (advertising, cold call and email) no longer work. Or you have to spend more and more money to get the same or less results. Where we see clients getting 30% increases in revenue with social. No other marketing method can give you that sort of transformational ROI today.

These agents of change know that pulling the same old, same old, levers won’t get the results that management teams want.  Sales and Marketing are in a rut! 

Get a piece of paper out and write down your company name and your competitors. Then write down your and your competitors marketing budget. You may need to estimate this. The write down the number of salespeople who and your competitors have. These are your levers you have, that's it. To win more business you need to spend more on Marketing than your competitors. Significantly more.  

To grow faster than your competitors, you need more sales people than the completion.  There is also a finite market, in other words only so many people making a decision in any one year.  That means you need to win EVERY deal.  To gain market share will require you to drop your price, which might drop you in the middle of a price way. This will hit margins and certainly not something you want if are increasing your spend on marketing and sales.

These are the levers you have. 

But.

You could disrupt! 

Our changemaker clients know they have to do things radically different to win. 

Maybe it’s time to be an agent of change yourself and get ready to disrupt your market with social selling? 

If you are that agent of change, get in touch!