One of the things that scares me about articles, is it's a least 5 years old in approach.

We deal with CEOs every day, who have believed stuff like this and have no pipeline and have rent to pay and people to pay, but no way of paying them.  People need to stop listening too all this stuff about "one more call".  It should be dead and buried a long time ago.

Let's look at the world today, it was summed up nicely by Gartner last week on a webinar. 

Some quotes from the Gartner summit today, I highly recommend that you listen to it if you haven’t. 

"We are see sales leaders shifting headcount to those salespeople that are digital savvy" 

"We are no longer looking at a bare minimum of virtual selling, it is now a core competency for salespeople today”

"the world is not going back to the way it was before, we are going to be selling virtually for a long time”

"Buyers are looking for a seller free experience"

"We need to have a salesforce that goes to where the buyer is and not where they were"

"We were all given a break in 2020, I'm not sure leadership will cut us slack in 2021”

"Now is the time to take a hard look at the way we sell"

Research From All These Companies Back This up

Mckinsey say so, Gartner say so, Hootsuite and We Are Social say so, Hubspot say so, Google say so, MIT say so, Trustradius say so Twilio say so .... 

There seems to be a clear movement (and winners and losers) between analogue and digital companies. 

Why the way you sell has to change and change quick

This article makes a number of fatal mistakes

1. It assumes that the world is still based on interruption and broadcast.  It still assumes that advertising, cold calling and email marketing are approaches that buyers want and like.  Sales and marketers are gradually having the rug pulled from under them, why?  Because as buyers we hate this stuff.  Legislation such as GDPR, CCPA, etc has been designed to stop all of this unwanted interruption.  Technology has also joined in, Apple iOS 13 has stopped people cold calling me, for sure.

The problem with all of this is the fact that cold calling, advertising and email marketing is now driving business to your competition.  How?  If you cold call, email market or place adverts, then the buyer today is able to go online and check you out and check out the competition.  You are therefore probably driving people to your social media savvy competition. 

2. Search engine optimization (SEO) agencies make SEO sound like there is some sort of witchcraft to it.  SEO is very straight forward, people come to Google and search for a problem. If your content is the answer to that problem, then you will be found.

If your content is not the answer to that problem, then I guess you will have to use the mystic services of a SEO agency.  Let's not forget they have a great business model, they know that the Google algorithm changes every quarter.  One day you are on page one and the next day you are on page 100.

The answer is very simple and we cover it in our social selling and social influence course.  We empower your team to create their own content, with your own, agreed key words.

Teach me, don’t tell me

A report that came out in January 2021 on search, stated the following.

"Digging a bit deeper into online search activities, this year’s reports reveal that people are more likely to research “how to do things” on the internet than they are to look for information about specific brands, products, or services.

This finding has particular salience for marketers, because it offers valuable insights into the best ways to engage an audience.

For example, rather than merely telling people that your brand is the ideal solution for a particular problem, a ‘how-to’ video may be a more effective way of capturing their attention.

In other words, branded content where you say "buy my product because we are great" just does not resonate with buyers today.  Buyers are looking for insight, they wanted to be educated, they want authenticity. 

3. Per per click (PPC) - see the answer to 1. above 

As part of my podcast, back in October 2020, I had a fascinating conversation with a Martin Lucas and he explained the following figures are typical engagement rates for digital advertising.

1.61% Facebook

1.91% Google

0.35% Programmatic (this is where ads follow you around when you browse)

That means that digital advertising has a 98.81% failure rate ..... as a business, are you really going to invest in these activities with such a high failure rate?

So what should a business do?

So what's the alternative?  How about using social media?  

This is about using a world beating, proven methodology to use social media strategically as a way to get get leads and meetings, to nurture sales through the buying process and to close deals.  Good "old" selling but in a modern format.

We are not talking about advertising on social media

Now I'm not talking about using advertising on social media, that isn't social, it's, advertising.  It's like saying you are a football manager, because you advertise on the hoardings as a football match.

We are not talking social media being used tactically

I'm not talking about using social media tactically, where somebody in marketing might post something every two weeks, or a VP posts something and you are all asked to jump in. A CEO sent me a post the other day, he was very proud of, it had received 40 likes.  Which is great.  The problem was that 35 of the likes where from his own reports. The problem with this is that business is talking on social in an echo chamber.  

Before we jump into a couple of case studies for selling on social (the returns will blow your mind), let's looks at the way social has "eaten" the world.

The state of the nation of social in 2021

Here are the headline stats and trends for the global ‘State of Digital’ in January 2021:

"In terms of Social media: there are now 4.20 billion social media users around the world. This figure has grown by 490 million over the past 12 months, delivering year-on-year growth of more than 13 percent. The number of social media users is now equivalent to more than 53 percent of the world’s total population."

You can get the numbers and the reports from this report here.

Using social media at work

We know that 4.20 billion people use social media worldwide, but did you know that 40.4% of these people, 1.7 billion people use social media for work.

A CEO just said to me

He believes in a "K" shaped recovery from the Covid 19 pandemic.  That is, with the companies that absorbed and invested in digital growing in this post-pandemic world and those that didn't invest, fading into obscurity.  He said to me...

 "there is a race on.  First we need to shock people into understanding that the world has changed.  Second, we need to give them the skills to work in the changing world."  

He went onto say "By giving my team(s) “new world” skills will gives us a competitive advantage."

Interesting that he finished by saying

"The thing is there is a “burning bridge” and we need to make sure we are over that bridge."  

Who's doing this?

We talk to a lot of people who say "we are all over social" when you ask them what this means, they are actually still treating social as a tactic.  Somebody in marketing might post something from time to time, a VP might post something and an email is sent around for everybody to "like" it.  All tactical.

I always ask people "so how much business, did you get out of your last post?"

I usually get blank looks.  I clarify my question "so how many leads or meeting do you get from your posts on social?"  If you want to see how companies are accelerating by using social as a strategy, read on.

Case Study 1.

This is Eric, he's one of the team at DLA Ignite here is a post that he put up.  We have all seen posts like this, we see them everyday, but people treat social tactically.  You post, because you think you have to or somebody tells you you should and walk away.  Let's talk about this post. 

 Eric's post of his 16 year old son, Austin, on his Birthday got 18,000 views and 165 likes, which is great.

But better still, he got 6 - C-Level meetings from this post?  How?

Let's stop and think about this for a second.  

This post took 10 minutes to create and it got 6 C-Level meetings, how come?

Because, all of Eric's post are strategic.  He knows exactly why he is posting it and knows how to monetise it.

He doesn't always post "humanised" content, I'm using this as an example.  

But an example of why you need to get your employees and sales team on social, just think of the $ impact to your business.  Especially if you scaled this across your business. 

How does Eric do this?  He builds relationships with prospects and customers and because they have a relationship with a human, not a brand, people are happy to engage.  Eric is also able to cut through the myrmid of noise that brands keep putting out.  If you are a buyer, where will you spend your time?  Reading an advert that says "buy my product because it's great" or look for the insight and educational content that people like Eric is putting out?

Case Study 2

In this case study, Danielle Guzman, talks about how Mercer, empower their employees to talk on social.  The ROI (return on investment)?  Danielle explains how Mercer as a brand will develop the business a certain amount of business, because they are well known in certain markets.  She also confirms in this video how empowering people on social and giving them personal brands gives Mercer 4 times more revenue than the brand. 

In a recent article, Nick Dangles, co-founder of Kinetic, was asked for his best advice on social selling and he said

“The best advice I can give about social selling is that it’s not about selling. It’s about creating meaningful and engaging content that will resonate with your audience. Approaching social selling with the intent of providing something of value will give much better results than simply pitching your company on social media,”  

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 in the form of case studies, what we are doing for other businesses to transform them to digital.  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.