Covid19 seems to have disrupted business in many ways, there are two that I have seen recently.

1. We have been talking to a number of companies who said they wanted to do social selling, but there was always another priority.  Then out of the blue they called us up and said they needed us to help them immediately.

This included Management consultancies and blue chip SaaS / Cloud vendors.

This article I have "Passled" shows research says the same thing.

2. The second area that we have seen is where people signed of six months projects.  As in, it would take six months of elapsed time to complete the project.  And the project was completed in 6 weeks.

The New Normal is Digital

 Stéphanie Genin, vice president of global enterprise marketing at social media management firm Hootsuite recently said

“After weeks of adapting to Zoom parties, video appointments with doctors, online schooling, social distancing and tapping into social media for virtually everything, will people be happy to go back to their old ways of working and engaging with each other?”

 

she then goes on to ask. 

“The answer will be no. Social media has been holding communities together and organisations will need to assess how to manage the new normal.”

What does this mean for buyers and sellers and what does it mean for business leaders?

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."

Social is Where Its At

Social is where it's 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?  Use this time to invest so you come out fitter and stronger.

Social Selling Business Case

Not convinced here is a little business case to help you.  Now is the time to accelerate your move to 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. Forever!

Invest In Your Team Ready for the New Normal

Some come on, give your teams the digital skills they need, if there is a "V" shaped recovery then you are going to need them to have the right digital and social skills people have now.

So now is the time to act.