Yesterday I was on an group video call and was asked “what is the one thing we can all be doing better at Social Media for our businesses?”….I thought for a minute and said “be different to everyone else…”.

The host smirked at my answer and asked specifically for one thing to do...

The fact is, it’s a silly question. It’s like asking someone “what is one thing I can do that will help me run a marathon….?”  An equivalent answer in line with my response above would be “run more….”.

Crossing the finish line in a Marathon takes careful management of a series of inputs and outputs. Its takes mindset, game plan, nutrition, sleep, short runs, long runs, sprints, hills, resistance work, yoga, Pilates, stretching, rest, community, equipment….and so on.

No 'one thing' makes the difference, its about the consistent application of a number of 'things' which are applied, repeated, measured, altered and repeated - repeat...

Let’s take Social Selling, it’s the most popular of our transformation programmes these days. There is no hack, no trick, no one hint, no 1-hour Masterclass that will change anything, there is no magic wand.

Social Selling is about changing you and your teams habits and behaviours.   

Let’s put this in perspective...

We train and coach Management teams, Sales Marketing & BD teams and Technical teams in all sectors across the world – Our Social Selling and Influence transformation programme is 12 weeks. 

Its not 12 weeks for fun or for our benefit, we know that this is the time required to allow the new habits and behaviours to bed in with your team. This is about getting this right and getting you what you need from Social Media, over and over again. 

When we leave you, we want to make sure you have the foundation, processes and culture in place to continue. We are interested in transformation, not transaction.

Social Selling takes training, planning, commitment, measurements, feedback, adjustment and focus. 

And what does this investment give in return..?

·        Visibility – recognition in the marketplace

·        Owning the ‘Share of Voice’ in your chosen sectors

·        Trusted advisor status

·        Pipeline, growth & inbound

·        Recruitment opportunities

·        Employee engagement & shared sense of purpose

But, then there are those claim they will bring all of this to you, and you don’t have to lift a finger. You know.... these guys….

“Hi, how are you using LinkedIn to generate leads? We can quadruple your leads for you by using our targeting technique which combines LinkedIn and cold email outreach freeing your time to focus on what's important to your business…”

Its likely you have seen many of these recently.

That simple eh..? 

Hand over your precious brand to someone else who will carpet bomb your precious clients with email and LinkedIn spam…Is that how you want your brand to be recognised?

In Social Selling we talk about building influence, growing your network, creating meaningful connections, establishing trust and having conversations you would never have had by any other means – how can you do this by carpet bombing your client base?

And yet, some are still on the fence, still flogging the dead email and advertising horse.

So, we should be Email Marketing right..?

It seems not. As open rates goes down, you have to send more emails to get the same results. According to Hubspot, the response rate to emails fell to a record low of 2.1% in April. In other words, 98% of email marketing efforts failed to reach new prospects. 

Hubspot tell us, "Sales teams are sending about 50% more email to prospects than they were pre-COVID, but responses continue to drop. Last week, sales response rates hit an all-time low for 2020 at 2.1%, a lower response rate than Christmas week 2019."

This graph from Hubspot showing the number of emails being sent going up and the response in decline. 

Hubspot also says, "These trends tell an important story. Email prospecting, to put it bluntly, is out of control. It's easy to send thousands of emails with just a few clicks, and in a chaotic time, we understand why sales teams are sending so many.

But volume and quality is a tradeoff — the time a team saves by sending out email blasts is wasted if that outreach isn't personalized, relevant, and helpful. These gaps are clear in the data."

What about advertising? If cold calling and email aren't working for leads, we should advertise more...right?

It seems not. The current engagement rates for digital advertising are:

1.61% Facebook

1.91% Google

0.35% Programmatic (where the ad follows you around when you are browsing)

That means that digital advertising has a 98.81% failure rate and based on the amount of money that is spent on digital advertising, this means $265 Billion is wasted on digital advertising every year. 

Stop the waste, the waste of time, energy and money from your organisation. Train your teams in Social Selling & Influence (there is a difference...)

The ‘Gartner Future of Sales 2025 report’ predicts that by 2025, 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels. Chief sales officers (CSOs) and other senior sales leaders must accept that buying preferences have permanently changed and, as a result, so too will the role of sellers.

We need to act quickly – If you are a company leader and have a Sales, Marketing & BD team that haven’t yet retrained in Social Selling and Social Media Strategy, act now.

For those unsure of what to do...

We will complete a review of your current social / digital / virtual / remote selling capability. For free… 

We will take your team (up top 10) and perform a complete root and branch Social Media Performance Assessment.

Sales, Marketing, Management, Technical, HR. Procurement ....whoever you want to include.

This will include: Profiles, connections, followers, inbound and outbound activity, content, engagement, follow up, results.

We will map your business against the DLA Ignite baseline and present back to you our findings. We will show you where improvements can be made and what results should be expected.  No hard sell, just present back to you a road map. 

You may have entered lock down analogue, this is your chance to leave this pandemic, digitally optimised.

Lets talk about how to transform your team with Social Selling & Influence.

You can reach me here

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite