How times have changed over the last 6 weeks.  Not just in terms of Covid19 and the changes this has placed on society and business, but the changes week by week and day by day.

This has required us as Leaders to move out of our comfort zones on so many, many things.

From working out our cash position, resetting the forecast, re-focusing the go-to-market. And the word "furlough" I hadn't heard of before.

The time though is for leadership and for us to do things we didn't think were possible.  Before Covid_19 hospital said that all patient to doctor visits had to be face-to-face.

Think about the number of business that told staff, they had to be in the office, every day.

Things have changed, for sure. 

This is where as a leader you need to show leadership and prepare the business for the new normal. 

Covid19 has accelerated the death of old style interrupt and broadcast marketing. This was created in the 1930s .. you open a newspaper (remember them?) and I interrupt you with my advert.

We are already seeing that digital advertising is reducing because people are just inundated with messages. The average person has 1,000 messages trust at them everyday. You can have the best copy in the world, but you are just another message.  That's even before we talk about ad-fraud. 

Cold calling has had its day.  I'm in the middle of creating a spreadsheet for my boss against a tight deadline and you interrupt me and broadcast you message.  Fine on low cost transactional sales, but not in B2B enterprise where you need to build a relationship. 

I'm amazed that people even talk about email, even pro email people research show that open rates are so low.  Most people have now moved away from email to social.  Even my 82 year old mother complains about "old people" that insist on talking to her on email, rather than messenger.

This is where, as a leader, you need to take your business forward into this new world of digital.  The world that has been crafted for us by the coronavirus.  Where there are no face-to-face meetings.

The world where we are all on and using social media.

The number one social media report, created by Simon Kemp in Singapore, shows there are 5.16 billion people with mobile phones, 4.57 billion internet users and 3.81 billion active users of social media.

The latest data show that the number of internet users and social media users around the world have both increased by more than 300 million over the past twelve months.

In terms of users, LinkedIn is now up to 690 million total members, increasing from 675 million back in January. Total members, of course, are not active users, the more common stat used to reflect social platform performance, but as an indicative measure, it does show that LinkedIn is continuing to expand, and gain traction in more markets over time. 

In regards to active usage, Microsoft says that Linkedin sessions have continued to rise, up 26% for the quarter.

As a leader, you can see that the old guard of advertising, cold calling and email is in the decline and that the use of social media by society and the world of business is in the rise.  All accelerated by the Covid19 situation.

For your business to remain relevant in the next 12 months and the next 5 years, you have to make the switch of budget and resources from "old" sales and marketing to modern sales and marketing.  We all know that the marketing and sales plans we had pre-covid19 are no longer fit for purpose.

And this isn't about using social as a tactic, this is about using social, internally and externally, strategically to drive your go-to-market and better of all to increase output and reduce cost.

The Business Case for Social

We expect each of the people we train in social selling to be able to make (if they do what we say) at least one additional meeting per week.  Let’s assume that 4 of those meetings turn into proposals and you close 1 of those proposals.  That means you are closing one additional deal per quarter.  If your average deal size is $100,000, then each sales person is closing an additional $400,000 per year.  As sales team of 10 will create $4 million additional revenue per annum.  This isn’t a one off, this is every year.

The natural reaction of people is to go to comfort zone, this isn't going to cut it in a coronavirus world.  You know your have to do something different and you know your current plan isn't fit for purpose.  When are you going to change before the cash runs out.

There is no big deal coming to save us, we have to act and make changes now.

In sales, you will make savings as you won’t have the expensive meals and travel to pay for as your sales teams won’t be entertaining clients or even meeting them.  All sales is now taking place through Teams. Zoom etc and taking place on social media, Linkedin for example.

What you need in sales is your sales teams programatically making and building relationships on social media.  This after all can be done in real time.

Now a number of you will be saying to me right now you already do this.  Come on, be honest with me.  Go and look at your Linkedin profile and look at your marketing people’s LinkedIn profile and look at your sales people’s Linkedin profile now compare them to mine. https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/

Does it create, curiosity in your prospects?  Does it create inbound? Are you connecting with people? Are you connecting with people and they actually want to connect with you?  Are you using Linkedin to prospect?  Are you joining conversations with your prospects and doing this at scale? Are you using content to move deals through the pipeline and close deals?

Many of our customers have also realised that by empowering the sales people to use social, they are the people initiating the conversation with the customer.  This reduces the sales cycle by 40%.  I’ll leave you to discuss that with Marketing.

Here at DLA Ignite, we are not pivoting, we have been transforming companies to do this for four years.  Exactly how I have explained above.  We have the track record, we also know what when we run our social selling programs the results are repeatable and predictable.  In fact, we have done this so many times that we are a low risk option.

If you want to get out of this mess, maybe it’s time to talk to us.