"Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success. Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. Whether you think you can, you you think you can't - you're right. Anyone who stops learning is old, wheather at 20 or 80." - Henry Ford-
In this article by McKinsey, they demonstrate that we have had ten years in disruption in the last 3 months.
They suggest you "Consider how quickly e-commerce has replaced physical channels in three months."
Dig a bit deeper in the article and it talks about how Covid19 has widened the performance gap.
If we take the interview with Charlene Li, author or co-author of six books on leadership and transformation – including her latest, The Disruption Mindset she says
"The companies that emerge successfully from the pandemic, therefore, won’t focus only on new technologies; they’ll also focus on new opportunities."
If we put these two pieces of research together .... our prospects and clients have moved online (McKinsey) and we need to chase new opportunities (Charlene Li).
To survive, Covid19, we have to do something different and certainly do something different from what we did pre-covid19.
Exercise
Here's a little exercise, get a piece of paper and a pen. Write down, your three competitors and your own business. Now write down, next to the companies what they spend on marketing and how many salespeople they have.
You should now have a table with a comparison of your competition against your business and based on marketing spend and salespeople.
For you as a business to outsell your competition, the only levers you have is to spend more on marketing or to have more salespeople.
Or disrupt.
A Disruption Meeting
So here's a thing, why not have a "disruption" meeting with us?
I've just got off a team call where we talk about what we have done in the last week. Very informal, none of this "stand by the beds" stuff, but of course as it's a business call, we often talk about business.
One of the team did a presentation yesterday, the amazing thing (for me) as we come out of lock down was it was in an office and he actually stood up and presented to the Board of the this business.
No Zoom, they stood and presented. It feels such a long time ago, when we did that! I digress. So how could we present to you about your own disruption?
Social Media Has Changed How We Live and Work
At DLA Ignite a presentation will consist of some context, so research that shows the way that social media has changed the way we live and the way we work.
We are not saying things have changed, the figures from the research show how the world has changed. For example ...
We Have Transformed In Work and Play on Social
In this report by Simon Kemp he outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.
Linkedin have just announced there are now 706 million people on Linkedin.
How You Can Make a Difference?
We then talk about how you can make a difference.
Using ourselves as a case study, we show you what we do to "social sell". We don't advertise, we don't cold call and we don't send spam emails. We social sell.
We always point out that we are presenting to the Board of the business, through our own use of social.
Explaining with examples, of how we use social, is a great case study. Everybody who works for DLA Ignite has to be a "high water mark" of social. Why? Because if we are to stand up in front of your sales team and say "do this", it will be a short conversation if we are not exhibiting those behaviours.
(Somebody just launched a social selling business this week by sending an email. Would you really buy from a company that sold social selling, that didn't use social selling?)
What are Your Competitors Doing on Social?
Next we show how your competitors are using social. Everybody is interested in what their competitors are doing and we can show you an analysis of what your competitors are doing. Most of them are invisible to the digital customer, so this allows you to see the competitive advantage and revenue potential. If you move into the digital space, you are out maneuvering and out selling the competition, which is a good thing, right?
Who's Doing This? - Case Studies
We then walk you through the companies and the people that are doing this already. The actual $ the people have achieved.
I often write about BMW, while this is B2C it is a considered purchase and they use LinkedIn to generate leads. In November 2019, they got 28 pieces of inbound from Linkedin and converted 14 of them. Let's assume a BMW is $50,000, then that's an additional $700,000 of revenue for zero marketing spend.
This is in the same month that Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) complained they couldn't make any sales and were closing down production.
My point being that even before Covid19 there was clear winners and losers.
We do have NDAs in place with all of our clients, as you can imagine this is a massive competitive advantage, but there are details, like the one above, we can share.
If anybody tells you there is no Return on Investment (ROI) from social selling, they don't know what they are talking about.
Next we talk about the opportunity and show a list of target accounts ... companies that you currently don't have relationships with, you could sell to with social and digital.
Target List and Accounts and People
In this meeting it ended up with us giving a presentation on Sales Navigator. Not a technical presentation, but focused on your business. Using certain search criteria, we pulled up a list of 800 people all of whom are possible target people / companies. They are all are people that could buy from you. It surprised this business, that they were not connected to any of the people. Again, this gives you some idea of the potential you have.
Where Do We Go From Here?
At the end of the meeting the MD stood up and thanked our person and said "We went into lockdown analogue, but we will come out of it digital".
Out of this meeting you will understand:-
1. How social has changed the world and the facts to back this up.
2. Where you are compared to your competition with regard to digital.
3. Have a view about who else in your industry is doing this, the business case and the level of investment.
4. An action plan of where you could be focusing your efforts in a pre-covid world.
5. Having an open and honest conversation about what is achievable to be digital (and disrupt) and what isn't.
We, obviously, hope that you will want to progress this project in a structured and robust way .... and you will want to use a proven methodology.
The ends this article, if you want to read some stuff about DLA Ignite I have included a few paragraphs.
We think that having being do this for 4 years, we are no fly by night company, it gives us a great track record. We have a proven methodology and all our customers get results. The methodology is repeatable and predictable as to the results. We are giving people a life skill, so they and you get these results, forever.
And finally, it's all we do.
If you went for knee surgery and found the best knee surgeon in the world, then that would be perfect. If the knee surgeon said they were also a ini cab driver and a gardener. In fact, the longer the list of "services" he provides the more likely you won't use him. The same goes for your "full service marketing agency". I'm sorry, but they are not experts on social. But all you have to do is look at their social profiles and compare them with ours.
But ....
You have to stand up in your organisation and tell people that things have to change. You need to raise as sales meetings, management meetings, leadership meetings and board meetings that you need to be social selling.
And you need help from a reputable company that understands change and is totally focused on getting results, though social, for its clients.
I'm contactable here
https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/
According to Li, most companies seek disruption in order to drive growth when in fact growth itself is disruptive. The companies that emerge successfully from the pandemic, therefore, won’t focus only on new technologies; they’ll also focus on new opportunities.
