The Calm Before The Storm: How The Pandemic Recovery Will Change Business, Tim Hughes

My partner's 26 year stayed with us for a night this weekend.

It's always amazing to hear his view on the world, he's off to work in Portugal. Why? Because he can work there just as much as he can work in London. The weather will probably be better in Portugal. His plan will be to go back to Barcelona in Spain, when the Covid situation does down.

Some of you may know I still use physical music, CDs and I collect vinyl records.

We talked with my partner's 26 year old and he has never used physical music, not one CD. His 29 year old brother did have CDs, but he does not use them anymore.

This is the speed that digital is changing the world and while it is often deemed (by Baby Boomers I suspect) that digital is about people of a children's age. Here we have people that are nearly 30, who see the world is digital. It's the same for your prospects and customers.

What does "being digital" mean?

We see our mobile phones and apps as the way we get information and communicate.

Covid, we all know has accelerated this and this isn't just about getting used to Zoom calls. If you want to visit a pub or restaurant here in the UK, you have to book first, via an app.

Communicating using our mobiles, using apps and being on social media is how we live and work today.

Companies are becoming flatter, more networked, and less hierarchical at speed

In this article by Josh Bersin he talks about how the world is getting "flatter".

Josh, often talks about this with regard to hierarchy, and he is right. I look at it from a sales perspective. I've talked before about Julie Sweet the CEO at Accenture and Bernard Looney CEO at BP. These people are on social, in fact everybody is on social.

That's why, if you want to sell high (C-Level) today you use social selling.

Josh, explains in this article "companies about the “network model” and how agile organizations outperform hierarchies in almost every business area."

This is the same, internally and externally on social media.

Our research shows that compared to cold calling, you can get higher with social selling. Our research also shows that you can get more calls at a higher level with social selling and you can convert more calls with social at a C-Level than you can with social. Compelling evidence that if you sell at a high level, you must have empowered you team to sell with a social selling methodology.

I totally get that if you sell a commodity, you sell it low in the business and you sell it at a low price, cold calling / telemarketing may be a better option for you.

More and more companies are now stopping cold calling and moving to digital for sales

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling

The article states...

"Merrill on Monday rolled out a revamped adviser-training program that prohibits participants from cold calling and directs would-be brokers to use internal referrals or LinkedIn messages to land clients instead. The decision comes after the program’s 3,000 trainees were told to stop outbound recruiting efforts to find new customers last year after problematic phone calls."

Why?

"The revamped program is intended to bring the firm’s prospecting techniques into the digital era and boost completion rates."

No shit sherlock!

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

This isn't me saying that social selling has a better response rate, which our research shows, this is Merrill Lynch saying it. Merrill Lynch the multinational sales organization.

Mic drop!

OK, but what does McKinsey say?

A recent McKinsey report announced that, those companies that sell digitally are out performers, see article here.

You can see that the market has flipped from analogue to digital. From cold calling to social selling.

Time to join the dots...

With Bank of America Merrill Lynch and McKinsey both saying that digital selling is the way to go, how long will you go keep ignoring this?

If this article has been useful and you think it would be helpful to your network or individuals then please share it. Please also tag in the individuals.

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Articles for the CEO

Can I be fired for not social selling?

What's the difference between legacy sales and modern selling?

Is making no change to my sales team an option in the world today?

Can my business speak directly to the modern buyer while retaining control of the message?

Articles for Sales leadership

What is social selling?

Can I get a consistent prospecting framework for managers with social selling?

Can I get complete visibility to measure and monitor each reps results with social selling?

Can I get accountability across my sales team for prospecting with social selling

Can I gain an effective prospecting framework with social selling?

Can cold calling and email marketing kill my business?

Can I measure our social selling project?

Can my lack of confidence of social be holding my team back?

Can I get the most from my sales navigator licenses with social selling?

Can I de-risk my pipeline with social selling?

Can my salespeople create content?

Articles to support sales people - sales process and sales tips

Is social selling inmailing people on Linkedin?

Can I unblock deals with social selling?

Can I get more meetings with VPs with social selling?

Can I get on more short lists with social selling?

Am I being outsold by my social selling competition?

Can social selling stop prospects from ghosting me?

Can I be a catalyst to change with my prospects with social

Can I influence the buyer's journey with social selling?

Can I optimise my selling time with social selling?

Can I gain a competitive advantage with social selling?

Why automation is a zero sum game

Can I get a predictable prospecting system with social selling?

Can I sell $1 Million deals with social selling?

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The Flattening Of Organizations. Companies are becoming flatter, more networked, and less hierarchical at speed. When I wrote the Deloitte Human Capital Trends 2016 (Deloitte took my name off the report, but I did write it), I spent a year talking with companies about the “network model” and how agile organizations outperform hierarchies in almost every business area. This is now happening at scale. A great example of this is the team that built the Ford F100 Lightning – it was a network of experts who came together to help Ford build its EV program and expertise. We have been studying this for years and our new research on Organization Design is coming out this summer. What we’ve discovered, working with companies like Telstra, Nestle, Google, Prudential, Uber, and others, is that “business-driven” org design is now replacing “spans and layers” in almost every company. The Spotify Model of guilds, chapters, and tribes has now been proven, and most software companies now use it.

https://joshbersin.com/2021/05/the-calm-before-the-storm-how-the-pandemic-recovery-will-be-massive/