If you didn't know, here at DLA Ignite we transform businesses that wont to sell and market in a digital world. 

During our training and coaching we get very close to our customers, from co-creating strategies to empowering sales teams and employees.  One of the interesting things of the job is to stand back and look at the spin-off benefits.  What do I mean?

One of the messages we go to market with is the fact that we can increase your revenue by 30% and reduce your sales cycle by 40%.  This, for most business leaders is easy to understand and being the only social selling vendor that says we can connect social media and revenue and profit creation it's something we are very proud of.

But there are also business benefits, which we didn't see when we started 6 years ago that can have efficiency, effectiveness and competitive advantage for any company that employs us.

One of these is the breaking of silos between sales and marketing.

Are sales and marketing still throwing rocks at each other

I used to work for a corporate company where sales and marketing used to throw "rocks" in the form of emails at each other.  Either side blamed the other for the world and its ills.  The events were "rubbish", the leads "weak" and sales didn't follow up on leads generated.  Have you ever worked anywhere like that?

What we've seen with the implementation of our social selling and influence course is that digital creates a peace between sales and marketing.  In fact, sales and marketing gradually come together united in a single strategy, single culture and single purpose. 

Let’s talk about what happens when companies embrace our strategic social selling and influence program

1. The whole Board is involved, after all social media is not a couple of 90 minute tactical sessions, the modern business knows that taking social media strategically is a board level mission.
2. The sales team become recognised as leaders in their field, buyers are “attracted” to them and rather than ignoring “just another salesperson” prospects start walking towards your sales team. The number of sales qualified leads (SQLs) increases and the number of deals closed increases.
3. None of this has mentioned “marketing” and the reason for this is that social selling breaks down the old silos of sales and marketing. During our social selling and influence course we will teach you to create a content factory, get you on page 1 of Google and show you how to digitally dominate your industry space. All of this will increase your MQLs (marketing qualified leads) and SQLs. I know this all sounds like witchcraft but our references will soon back this up.
4. Part of this is to get Marketing to lead from the front, promoting social selling at the board and in sales. It needs marketing to lead the creation of the new digital organisations processes, that are going to take you business forward into this post-pandemic world.

Next step, would be to get one of the DLA Ignite team to talk to you and walk you through some of our case studies. But I offer a world of warning, we will totally blow your mind. 

Thanks to Eric Doyle and Lenwood Ross from DLA ignite for their client experiences and inspiration for this blog. 

So whose doing this?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

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"