So, you are a small business or a start up and need visibility, leads and a pipeline. 

You probably have a little black book of contacts which is great, you are going to need that but, how do you reach out to new business connections these days? 

How do you put yourself and your team in the position where you are all able to make connections with people that you have never met and that are important to your business? Many tell me that they are hearing that Social is the way to sell things these days, but they are not convinced it’s any better than email and phone calls.

I’m often asked in whether Social Selling & Influence applies to small service companies and whether it actually makes a difference to their visibility and opportunity pipeline…

The answer is yes. 

Let me explain why, and how...

Imagine a small company who specialise in a product or service. They compete with larger organisations, who do what they do as part of a collection of services. The small company is completely focussed on the service, the larger companies see that service as a division or department.

In many cases you come up against those larger companies in tender scenarios. The have more people than you, more resources than you and, in many cases, can apply more flexibility to pricing in order to win the work.

So why would you think you can overpower these larger companies in any way….?

It all starts with a strategy.

We set a strategy that builds you and the team towards a position of digital dominance. We outline the barriers and the levers, we highlight the assets, and we create a Social Media mission for the team.

We optimise the profiles of the team. This means their profiles will be buyer centric and digitally optimised, they will have profiles that are working for them when they are asleep – Few large companies have even thought about optimising their team’s profiles…so you are one step up.

We then start growing your network. Connecting and building relationships with key people – we do this at scale…another step up.

We start to build influence. Creating rich and diverse content which educates, inspires, challenges and entertain our growing network and engage in conversation with key people.  All of you are doing this, not just your marketing or salespeople, the whole team.

You will start to receive inbound from the new visibility and the people you are bringing into your network...

When we build in Multichannel networks, we boost your profile and content across different networks, you start to achieve digital dominance.

You start to take control of the digital narrative in your chosen sectors.

Each sector and sub sector has an amount of digital chatter. Imagine it as hot air balloons. Some sectors have very large balloons such as the American tech sector, lots of players, lots of chatter and some really big, loud voice. Some sectors are smaller, say the subsea engineering sector. A smaller balloon with some chatter. When we start to have your small teamwork in a strategic and panned way, using keywords to optimise content across multiple channels – they start to take ownership of the digital share of voice.

It all starts to build: 

Visibility - Your marketplace recognises and your team.

Trusted advisor status - You are recognised as experts.

Pipeline, growth & inbound - More opportunities.

Recruitment opportunities – People want to work with Social organisations.

One of the main differences we see with smaller companies who are Social Selling is the whole team approach.  Some larger companies will have their Sales teams Social Selling, you are different. You will have your CEO or MD, your CFO of FD, your CTO or head of engineering, COO or Operational lead, HR Director or Manager, SCM lead, Sales lead, Marketing lead…all of these people growing networks and creating engaging content. 

The whole team connecting with people who can buy your products or services, people who can influence an engagement and people who can amplify your message.

So, in many cases smaller companies are nimbler and more internally connected. With just a few things, done regularly and at scale on Social, your small company can overtake the larger, stiffer competition.

Another element that grows when you decide to go Social is employee engagement and a shared sense of purpose. You are all in it together and can share in the effort and successes. 

Growing your networks, building influence and trust with your buying community, increasing visibility and dominating the digital share of voice over your larger competition and watching your pipeline grow…all of this and its fun!

Lets connect and talk about how your team can claim that digital share of voice...

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite