Can I be fired for not social selling?, Tim Hughes

Yesterday I was on a podcast and we had a great debate.

I love it when the other person takes a contrarian position and provides an opposite view point.

The person said that many companies didn't want to empower their sales teams on social because "we all know the problems".

The thing is, people "don't know the problems" of NOT being on social media.

The assumption is that there are two evils and not being on social is the lesser of the two evils. But this is not the case, social is now the de facto position for business.

I asked the person, is it OK for your business to be totally invisible digitally to your prospects and clients? Is it Ok to be totally invisible to the modern digital buyer? Is it OK for your sales teams to be not prospecting where your clients are, on social?

Surely, this has a massive impact to both your bottom line and your profit?

Leaders often think that putting their heads in the sand that social media will go away, it's fad, it's for posting photos of cats and that's it. And that old thinking is the problem. It's like thinking that email is a fad and we will go back to writing letters.

In fact, by NOT taking your business on social you are imposing a massive self inflicted wound on your business.

I pointed out in this podcast that for any business that decides to NOT to empower their employees on social there is a $cost. In fact, I suggested on this podcast, if your strategy today is NOT to be on social then you need to submit a business case to the board to support this premeditated laceration to your business. Why?

You are invisible to your clients and prospects

1. The first issue not being on social present to your business is that you are totally invisible to your clients.

It's taken as read today that our buyers are on social, all the major thought and opinion leaders, backed by research say this. McKinsey, Gartner, MIT, Hubspot, Salesforce, etc etc. You can get the full story in this free #Digital2021 April Global Statshot Report: https://lnkd.in/gmRByPp - Interesting enough it shows that there are 55.1% of the world's population now on social media and 16.5 new users join every second. The days of "my customers are not on social" and "social media is a fad and will go away" no longer exist.

Not being on social will mean you will submit lower EBITDA then the business could have achieved, let's talk about that.

You are losing 30% of your turnover

2. The second issue that companies face by not being on social is the revenue and profit you will be losing out on. Our social selling methodology will increase your revenue by 30% and reduce your sales cycle by 40%. We can assume therefore, that you are missing out on 30% of this revenue. But it's not just about lost business, you are making it harder for your business, you will have a higher loss to win rate.

We are working with a teams who are not social selling which means they are always been late into deals or get the "you should have called us 2 months ago" comment from prospects. Not being on social, is making a massive impact and by deliberately having a policy that will reduce your pipeline, growth, inbound and new logos, surely is a board, if not a CEO decision?

You won't be employer of choice for your industry

3. Missing out on recruitment opportunities. One of the "spin offs" we see about having a social strategy is the additional recruitment opportunities your business gets. People see your company, the culture, your purpose and the people and that is appealing for them to want to come and work for you. This isn't just about empowering the sales team, but human resources (HR), in fact the whole company. We have one client that has focused on this and they have stripped out the cost of recruitment consultants, headhunters and recruitment advertising from the business. This is a massive budget saving and massive efficiency improvement. These savings and such competitive advantage in this pandemic. What about the employee experience and retainment?

You won't offer to your employees a common purpose

4. You are also missing out on offering to your employees a platform for them to engage and for them to unite around a shared sense of purpose. Employees today, expect to have a continual learning path and be able to share knowledge with each other. One (of the many) transitions to the digital world is that people have moved from information hoarders to information givers. We now feel safer in our jobs not by living with the "knowledge is power" but by being contributors and sharing the knowledge for the benefit of the good.

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