Last night my partner and I went for a walk in west London where we live.
It gets dark at this time of the year, 16:00 in the afternoon. Before the Pandemic the roads, buses and trains would be clogged with commuters who have to travel into the City of London to work and they are now on their way home.
Last night, we are in the middle of a pandemic and things have changed. There are no commuters on the roads, buses and trains on the way home. In fact, as we walk along the road you can see one light on in each of the houses and it's somebody in a home office. Why? Everybody now works from home.
There has been a massive change in the way companies market and sell today. It started a number of years ago, but the pandemic has accelerated this. Let's look at an analogue vs digital example from before the pandemic.
There has been a clear divergence between analogue and digital companies.
In November 2019, 12 months ago, BMW in the UK got 28 pieces of inbound on Linkedin, they converted 14 of these. Let's assume that the average price of a BMW is $50,000, that means they sold $700,000 of BMWs, for zero marketing cost. So what?
Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) their competition? They shut down their plant because of the lack of sales last November. They blamed it on Brexit, the UK General Election and market conditions. But they are the same market conditions that BMW found themselves under, but BMW increased sales.
BMW are digital, JLR are analogue, even back 12 months ago a gap started to show in business.
B2B Buyers Hate The Tactics From Sellers and Marketers
Recent research from TrustRadius from September 2020 states
"When asked what their marketing pet peeves were, buyers’ number one and two responses were marketing emails and sales cold calls. While this isn’t exactly surprising (who loves cold calls?), it highlights the growing disconnect between tech marketers and their buyers."
"Digging deeper, we asked buyers how likely they would be to respond to these tactics. Unsurprisingly, over 90% of buyers say they are “not likely at all” to respond to non-personalized messages and cold calls."
This is pretty damning indictment on current sales and marketing
95% of people ignore emails
93 % of people ignore cold calls
90% of people ignore chatbots
81% of people ignore targeted ads
57% of people ignore notices about online events
This is a damning indictment of the world of sales and marketing today ... it would be wrong for me to say that all the money spent of sales and marketing is wasted, but a good percentage of it.
This is the Reason Your Company Needs To Digitalise
This October (2020) report by Simon Kemp outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.
Worldwide social media users: 4.14 billion - 53% of the world's population use social media in other words, more people use social media than don't use it.
Simon says that "two thirds of the working population in the world is now active on social media."
But there are more fundamental issues with sales and their lack of use of social.
There are so many people out there in social media land who are "posting and hoping".
Posting and hoping, isn't going to work, it is just a "random act of social" you have to understand strategically, why you are posting and have a methodology to follow up the engagement, to turn it into meetings.
The average person on Linkedin has 903 contacts and they will be x colleagues and recruitment consultants. I would suspect that you are already thinking that is pretty useless to your business. It is.
It does not matter how good your content is, you can have the best copy in the world, you can hire the best photographer in the world, but your content is just adding to the noise of all the other content.
Although there are no official figures, the average person is now estimated to encounter between 6,000 to 10,000 ads every single day. With the figures nearly double that of 2007. So what can you do to make sure that your content not just is seen, but converts into leads?
What Is Now Table Stakes For Sales and Social
1. First you need a great profile. Think about the needs of your audience and work back from there. Your prospects and clients do not need the world's best salesperson they need somebody to help them. Your Linkedin profile is your shop window and should show case you 24 hours a day. The days that Linkedin was a CV have long gone.
2. You need a network (not contacts). The average person on Linkedin has 903 contacts and they will be x colleagues and recruitment consultants. You need to be connected to the people you want to influence. Your prospects, your target accounts, your customers, the people influential in your markets. Remember that in B2B the trick is to be memorable.
3. Finally you need content. When somebody comes to your Linkedin profile, you need content to show people what you stand for. That does not mean you need humanised content all the time. You need to have content that educates that provides insight, tell me something I don't know!
So what do I mean by a "strategic" approach to social and what do I mean by a "methodology"?
Selling on Social Case Study
This is Eric, he's one of the team at DLA Ignite and he got 6 C-Level meetings from this post. The post took him 10 minutes too create.
This usually shocks people.
How can a post about Eric's 16 year old son get 18,000 views and 165 likes?
But better still, how can a post like this get 6 - C-Level meetings?
Because, all of Eric's post are strategic. He knows exactly why he is posting it and knows how to monetise it.
A Quick Look at Our Content Pyramid
Based on our research, we have created this pyramid of content. Advertising is of course at the bottom, with humanised content at the top.
That said, humanised content will get you the most engagement and it is that engagement that having a methodology will enable you to monetize that engagement.
As a bonus, here is a link so you can read how Eric is getting C-Level meetings with Linkedin stories. Something that has to be be part of the sales kit bag of all salespeople who sell at C-level.
The Payoff
Everytime we run our social selling programs, we always get 30% increase in revenue and a 40% reduction in the sales cycle.
There are also some softer benefits, you and your team get a new life skill and as a leader you are providing the business with a digital legacy. Supporting the transformation to digital for the business.
Where Do We Go From Here?
Just give me, or one of the DLA Ignite team and hour of your time and we can walk you through what we are doing for other companies. No hard sell, just take you through what other companies are doing to transform.
Please contact me here or one of the DLA Ignite team here, so please pick one of our industry experts or one of our experts in your geographical locality. Our website is here.
The myth of innovation is that great ideas will appear spontaneously and will make a company an overnight success. What truly innovative companies understand is that innovation is a never-ending process, a feedback loop that raises products and services to such new heights that they seem like totally new and different things. Many early innovators or disruptors fail to evolve, resting on what made them successful. Unfortunately for them, competitors are always looking to leapfrog over them and disrupt the market. It might be counterintuitive to cannibalize what made them successful, but that is the only way to exceed expectations and valuations.
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