The Boston Consulting Group studied what the best of the S&P Global 1200 companies did to come out of the 2007-2009 recession, they found five factors that stood out and are relevant today.
One of those is "Increase Demand Vitality", let's look at this.
Companies and Employees Are Scared
The reaction with our pipeline has been interesting as companies were talking to and there was always another priority have called us up and accelerated the close.
Two large companies literally called us up on the Wednesday and wanted us in on the Friday.
This isn't us boasting, this is what really happened.
Many companies come to use and say:-
"We are in a declining market, suffering from price pressure.
As an organisation, we’ve relied heavily on our install base for our sales pipeline. But that cannot be leveraged as a means of protecting and growing our revenue.
We need new logos, and that means we need to look to how we manage and achieve success round the sale funnel.
The days of relying on a Global Marketing push to guarantee success are behind us. Every individual involved in selling, needs to be in marketing, both themselves and the product that they are selling.
Covid-19 has accelerated this, in a permanent manner!"
We are getting more and more sales people coming to us telling us how desperate they are that the companies they work for won't move to digital. The job market has moved, so where as 3 months ago they would have jumped ship. Now they are pleased they have a job. But can see that the company is going nowhere, it has no relevance in the modern world, there is no ability in the company to understand the modern customer. Those companies will run out of cash.
Digital Isn't a Nice to have - It's a Must and Now
While talking to our of our partners / resellers today, Thomas Ross, he explained a great manufacturing metaphor.
He said "Right now, sales is like manufacturing. You need to look at your plant and work out, what tools need to be replaced and what tools need to updated".
Covid19 had accelerated the world to digital and as leaders, you have to look at your business, from top to bottom and make some quick decisions.
"What go you here, won't get you there".
You need to decide, both on the current cash reserves you have and the people in the business. What is going to take you forward in this digital world.
So what can you do in the next 90 days to get back on track?
First You Need a Strategy
The strategy session is about getting the leadership team together as well as those people that have influence but not authority.
First you need to understand the problem "as is", then brainstorm the "to be". Be clear to understand all the issues in terms of the people, the process and the technology.
You need to go where your customers are on social.
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 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."
You Need a Methodology
Many organizations move from the stage of not knowing to "random acts of social". This is where there is a view that you "must get social" and social means posting on social media.
Modern selling is about three things:-
1. Your Linkedin profile.
2. Your network.
3. Content.
They are all interlinked. The modern buyer is looking for help, you Linkedin profile should offer them that. Your network is where you take your territory and place it online. Content is what your buyers are looking for. You need to inspire and educate.
Moving to Digital The Business Case
In case you are required to justify getting people into support your social selling program, here is a business case to help you.
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!
The Low Risk Approach
Here at DLA Ignite, we are not pivoting, we have been transforming companies to use social and digital for four years. 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.
