Yes.
Social selling / digital selling is the way we sell now
There was a time when social selling was deemed as maybe oddball or an unstructured outlier, but things have changed in the last 6 years, now it’s become the de facto structured way to sell in the modern world.
Let's be honest
Let’s be honest, the internet, social media and mobile have changed the way we buy, the COVID-19 pandemic has just compounded it. We also know that all the research; McKinsey, HubSpot, Gartner, Salesforce, etc, etc, etc, all agree with this.
Those that disagree have become “flat earth” dissenters and often for good reason. They have built livelihoods based on the sales methods like cold calling and email, that were mainstream but have now slipped into the past. Life is like that, once the world ran on steam, now steam is for an eccentric few. Think how the world has changed with cars, once gasoline (petrol) and diesel were the only choices, now hybrid and electric have gone mainstream.
It goes without saying that this vested interest is crippling your company and is one of the reasons you are being outsold.
How do we know you are being outsold?
There are a number of problems with cold calling and email, the first is that technology and legislation is against you. GDPR, ad-blockers, iOS13 are all there to stop you, even before you try and call me or email me.
The problem you have with cold calling and email is it’s lack of results. We are totally immune to every salesperson in the world trying to sell their products with the usual “buy my products because we are great message”. You as a salesperson are lost in sea of sameness.
Social allows you to get around all those laws and allows you to differentiate yourself and your company, exactly where your clients are. On social.
Are you really going to start a relationship with manipulation?
I recently spotted that a cold calling guru was selling a course of “email titles that get read”. Really?
Jill Konrath said “I hated pitching; it felt so self-serving. I detested anything that smacked of manipulation.”
She’s right, as soon as you move into the realm of manipulation you have lost. People buy from people, not manipulators. If you have to manipulate your way by tricking people into read your emails, surely it’s time to find another sales method?
A friend of mine told me she was using a dating app and she said she didn't want to meet any men, that were smaller than 5 feet 10. She's 5 feet 10 herself. She went on a date and the man turned up and was 5 feet 6. It was a short date. (no pun intended). She said to the 5 foot 6 man "why did you lie?" He said, "I thought you would give me a second chance".
Lying and manipulation is not the way to start a relationship.
Social is by far the most efficient and effective way of selling today. No manipulation.
Don’t believe me, let’s run a pilot. Let’s go head-to-head with your current methods.
Is all social selling the same?
I do need to temper that by saying I cannot vouch for other social sellers, but I can vouch for our methodology.
Cold calling and email does not scale
The next problem with cold calling and email is its inability to scale. Gartner say that the average buying team is 10 people. I’m transforming a supply chain software company and they tell people the average buying team is 100 people.
When it comes to them making a decision, there will be a vote. How will you make sure that those 100 people vote for you? By cold calling them all and pissing them off? Social is easiest the easiest and fastest way to build those relationships, have conversations and lock out the competition.
Are you "on social" or digitally dominant?
We are seeing company after company being outsold, not because the are “on social” all business leaders say they are on social.
Here at DLA Ignite we coach companies to be digitally dominant, totally locking out the competition. Your business becomes the only choice for the modern buyer.
Can you get your leadership to buy into this problem?
The biggest barrier we see to adopting modern selling and marketing techniques are two fold.
- Marketing
We had a senior marketing leader say this to us the other day. Let’s place this into context, they did a marketing degree 20 years ago, but they realised that things have changed. They said to us “marketing no longer works” but at least they were honest to say “they didn’t know what to do”.
They thought they were doing all the right things, investing in martech, building email lists, creating content and pushing it out through an employee advocacy tool. But they knew they were not getting the results and the results were dropping day by day. They admitted they could no longer keep telling the Board of their business it was working. Sooner or later they knew they had to admit that marketing wasn't working anymore.
If you are a marketer in this situation, then contact me or any of the DLA ignite people on LinkedIn and we will have a confidential meeting and take you through a plan for the future.
2. Sales
If I was paid a $ for every sales leader who called me up and said, “my leadership team won’t listen to me, they keep telling me to make more calls and send more emails” or “they have got some sales guru in and it’s like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic” I would be retired now.
Like above, do please still contact me or one of the DLA ignite team in confidence and we can take you through a modern selling plan. We also can, with you help, walk your management through case studies of what strategies other companies in your industry have implemented and more importantly the results they are getting.
As I've said before, we would be more than happy to run a measurable pilot and to run run a team of your people against a team of your people using the old legacy methods your are using. Simple as that.
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