Imagine a stream of leads...

Often we see marketing blurb written by companies, who always start by saying "imagine a stream of leads" of course we always imagine, whereas reality is a little different from that.

We had a pitch from a supplier the other day that opened with "Imagine how a potential client would feel to receive a personalised website/digital pod with links/references/videos/demo logins etc" I cannot think of anything worse.  Come on, a sales pitch is a sales pitch even if somebody is wearing white gloves.  And we hate sales pitches.  

We are, after all, just another salesperson; people look at us salespeople and think "why would I believe anything you say?"  We are "the enemy".

Sales is based on trust

I'm just got off the phone from an old friend, James Bennett, we talked about sales and these are my notes from that conversation.

1.  Forget the selling cycle, there has to be a buying cycle before you can go anywhere.  Of course, our role in sales is to create desire.  This is not forced desire, you can't (anymore) take a customers and rub their nose in your solution.  The days of cold calling, cold email and advertising are over.  The buyer is empowered, we all have mobile phones, we all have access to an infinite amount of data.

<It's worth mentioning that with a cold call, cold email or advertise -- the empowered buyer can go on online and check you out and your competition all without you buying.  As people now know, cold calling, cold email and advertising all drive business to your digital dominate competition.>

2. The skills we need as salespeople are empathy, curiosity and an ability to create conversations.  But for people to buy, they have to trust you.  They may like you, they might not like you.  But they have to trust you.  The mistake salespeople make is they think that people have to like them.  So they run around expending energy, trying to be liked, when, in fact it's not a key competence. 

3. The third thing that sales people need to do is provide to their clients a sense of security.  This isn't just case studies, but consistency, turning up on time, taking notes, doing what we say we will do.

The problem with many sales people today is that they have been used to a "continual stream of leads".  People that came on the stand at an conference, people that downloaded a whitepaper, a SDR making a call.  Problem is, the pandemic has changed all this and it's not going back to the way it was before.

A key competence for sales today is the ability to go and have conversations with new people, people they don't have a relationship with.  I actually know one vendor who has a created a role of "conversation creator" and his job is to help the business and the salesforce, relearn the art of conversation.

Let's not forget it's a conversation that creates a sale; a brochure, a webinar does not create a conversation, they don't create sales.

You want a continual stream of leads?  Get your sales people having conversations on social 

A continual stream of conversations requires a methodology

For your business to move to digital you need to have a methodology, preferably a methodology that has been tried and tested.  Too many people are not consistent on social, they post something every two weeks and probably get no return.

More on that in the next paragraph.

But Tim we are all over social

Often companies say to us "we are all over social".

When they explain, it is because somebody is posting on the Linkedin page. The other week a CEO sent me a post where he had received 40 likes. 35 of the likes were from his staff and the other 5 were from mates.  This is all tactical, in other words this isn't strategic.  It's just a random act of social and people are posting in their own echo chamber.  

You might be on social, but this isn't digital dominance, it won't "move the needle".

In fact this is a cost to the business, not a revenue generator. 

What ROI could we expect by taking social strategically?

Typically, when an organisation starts to gain traction each year we would expect the salespeople to generate an average of £500k- £1m in pipeline and in excess of 200,000 views of their content per person as well as creating some fantastically targeted content that really engages the people in their target accounts.

This is making a difference, and this is "moving the needle".

Ironically though, whilst we can measure the success in pipeline and revenue, and we can measure the success in terms of the amount of content that’s created, and we can measure the success in terms of how many views we have had on content, and we can measure the amount of engagement those view have generated the most important thing for us at a personal level isn’t the hard facts…it’s the soft stuff.

You need to be asking the people in your organisation, what revenue return (otherwise what is the point of doing it?) are people getting from their social activity. 

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 to transform businesses.  This is all done in the form of case studies.  Companies just like yours, realising that they need not to be just on social, but digital dominance is the real competitive advantage today.  No hard sell, just practical examples.

DLA Ignite is a global business and we understand that a "cookie cutter" approach to digital does not work, we have to take into account local language and cultural sensitivities.  Which is why we have built teams across the globe, that can support you by country and industry sector. 

For more information contact me here, visit our website, or visit our Linkedin company page and contact one of the DLA Ignite team members.