Social Media has been around for years, 4.2 billion of us are active users and 41% of people who have the internet use Social Media for work.

But, for many different reasons, the idea of converting from old, cherished methods to something new, doesn’t sit well with everyone.

Put your self in this persons shoes for a minute:

You’ve heard and read a lot about Social Media for business, but you don’t get it. 

You hear about Social Selling, Virtual Selling, Remote Selling, Modern Selling, Digital Selling, but you are yet to be convinced.

You are on LinkedIn, but you mostly use it to check on competitors and look for new hires. 

You hear people talking about increasing profitability and market share, but its not clear how it works.

You see people in your position in other organisations getting a lot of Social airtime, but you question what good it does them.

Some people in your team are getting restless and are talking more about how “we should be Social Selling” but you tell them “we use the traditional methods that got us where we are”.

All this noise - You know there is something in it, but you don’t want to commit and do something to the organization which you don’t fully understand…

The answer…. run a pilot.

Social Media has changed the world, its changed home life and its changed business life, whether we like and accept it, or not. Gartner tell us that 80% of business-to-business transactions will be conducted digitally by 2025, that means that the shift is happening now. 

Hanging onto a romantic vision of the past or some rule about how things work (that you made up yourself…) isn’t helping your team and your future outlook, it’s not helping your current forecast. 

Ok, you don’t like it - and you don’t have time - and you don’t think its for your sector – and you don’t think its relevant – and, and, and…. All those thoughts are just getting in the way.

We run Social Selling and Influence pilots for organisations, of all sizes, across all sectors. Whether you are a small engineering company in Inverness or a large Tech economy in Cape Town, if you sell something to people in other businesses, the same methods apply.

Pilots are a great way of proving a concept without full commitment, and if you are the type of leader who likes to see and compare the data, this is how we do it.

Everything we do is driven and supported by data, everything about Social Selling and Influence is measurable. So, let’s run a programme with a select group of your team and compare the results…

People like me will tell you that the old world of advertising, cold calling, email marketing and events have slipped from the main means of demand generation into the legacy of the past – lets prove it.

We will take the pilot group and install a social culture; we will enable them with the Social processes they need in the new way of working. 

He Social Selling team will have optimised profiles, learn how to grow their network, build influence and Social trust. They will begin to achieve digital dominance over your competition and place themselves in the position where they can have conversations that they could never have had by any other means and have them regularly.   

This is not just a “LinkedIn training session”, this is Strategic Social Media transformation.

Once the pilot group are trained, we start to ramp up. We compare the results from the Social Selling team and the team using non-Social methods.  People like me will tell you that every time we run a pilot, the Social Selling group beat the other teams in results, you probably don’t believe that right now, lets prove it. 

When we run our programmes with organisations and teams who follow the plan, they see a 30% increase in revenue and a 40% decrease in Sales cycles. How long is you current Sales cycle, 50, 100, 180 days?

We know that taking the ‘19 plan and trying to make it work in ‘20 didn’t work. Taking the ‘20 plan and trying it make it work in ‘21 is just the same. There must be a restructuring an adjustment of mindset and a moving around of budgets.

The critical thing for 2021 is that you need to experiment and trial things. If your team is not skilled and currently practicing Social Selling and Influence, then a pilot is a must.

Live Social ’21…

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite