I've just sold one of my bikes, it seemed a good idea at the time to have two. But this meant two lots of maintenance and it took up space in the garage, so it went on eBay and now it's gone.
I remember learning to ride a bike. I was staying with my grandma (we called her Nan) one summer and she had the job to hold the saddle as I go the balance of the bike.
Once I had mastered the bike, there was no stopping my new found freedom. It was all about learning to ride with one hand and then no hands.
Digital transformation is your bike. It's pretty useless until you have the people (the rider) and the process around it. Just like Martech and Salestech, as the saying goes
"A fool with a tool is still a fool".
Covid19 Has changed business. We've had companies that we were talking to, where there was always another priority. But now they know there is only one game in town. Social.
They know that all that marketing fluff and bluster that people took part in before covid19 did not work and in a world that is digital. It works even less.
As a business you need to invest in your team(s) you need to give them the digital skills they need to work in a world where there are no face-to-face meetings.
You need to give them the skills so they prospect on social, so they can form relationships on social, so they can progress deals on social and so they can close deals on social.
This is afterall the new normal.
Innovation in Social Media
In the past social media was seen as a tactic. You posted something on social, nothing happened, which just proved it didn't work.
My advice is that you should check out Simon Kemp's - Digital 2020 - Global Snapshot in it he says
"The world has changed dramatically over the first three months of 2020, with the COVID-19 pandemic impacting almost every aspect of our lives. These changes have been clearly evident in the world’s digital behaviours too, especially as billions of people turn to connected devices to help them cope with life and work under lockdown."
He goes on to say.
"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, despite delays in reporting in some key countries due to the coronavirus outbreak.
DataReportal analysis indicates that 4.57 billion people now use the internet, an increase of more than 7 percent since this time last year. Social media users are growing even faster, up by more than 8 percent since April 2019 to reach 3.81 billion today."
Social is Where Its At
Social is where its at. You customers are NOT waiting for you to interrupt them and for you to broadcast at them with advertising, email and cold calling. It pisses them off, so why do it?
But your customers are on social. So why don't you connect to them and build relationships with them?
Social Selling (or Modern Selling as it tends to be called nowadays) enables your at home salesforce. In fact all your employees to prospect (sometimes called social marketing), to take employees through the sales process and for you to close them. This does not mean you don't have phone conversations or zoom calls, but social can be used all the way through the sales process to support the sales from opening to closing.
Social Selling Business Case
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 $4 million additional revenue per annum. This isn’t a one off, this is every year. Forever!
Another Business Case
Let's take a large tech supplier as an example. They have 500,000 followers on Twitter, it does make you wonder how many people actually "follow" what they say as they say the same as all of their competitors. "We are the best", "We are market leader" and nobody believes them.
They have 300,000 employees, even if you only empowered 10% of the work force and that workforce only had 100 followers, you would still be influencing more people (3m) than the corporate account.
Increase the number of people you empower and increase their networks and you increase further the influence.
Another Business Case
In a recent blog, Alex Low from DLA Ignite, described the social business case a different, but still compelling way.
"Assume you have 1000 employees in your business and 100 salespeople. Everyone knows someone or is connected to someone.
If each one of those employees were able to make 1 meaningful business introduction to your sales team.
10 Introductions per Sales Person or 1 new introduction per month, to each salesperson for 10 months.
Your average contract value/order value/sales value is £$€10,000
1000 unique & relevant introductions made, worth a potential of 10,000 each.
1000 x 10,000 = 10 million pounds, dollars, euros etc of potential business opportunity."
This is the power of the network and the power of your people activated through social media.
The Low Risk Approach
Here at DLA Ignite, we are not pivoting, we have been transforming companies to do this for four years. We've been telling people they are wasting their money with advertising, wasting their money building email lists and wasting their money with cold calling. By using social you can get twice the output for half the cost of legacy sales and marketing methods.
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.
It's time for your own innovation in sales and marketing. You know the old ways don't work. You know you have limited time and cash. You know, as a leader you need to do something to stop the waste and cash burn otherwise you won't have a business.
If you want to get out of this mess, it’s time to talk to us.
As The Economist recently noted, one of the most obvious consequences of the current Covid-19 pandemic will be “the infusion of data-enabled services into ever more aspects of life.” We except digital transformation to be an even bigger imperative for organizations in the short-term future.
https://hbr.org/amp/2020/05/digital-transformation-is-about-talent-not-technology
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