When we first started DLA Ignite, 6 years ago, we were seen as niche.

The team here has done an amazing job and 6 years later social selling is mainstream.

We often see cold calling vs social selling arguments on LinkedIn (oh the irony) and I totally get that people are nostalgic for a world that we used to live in.  But the argument has moved on.

The question now in business is.

Do you want your business to be analogue or digital?  It's as simple as that.

People that promote cold calling, leaders that get their teams to cold call are in the analogue camp.

Being an analogue company is a Boardroom decision and that is totally fine.

That said we are seeing whole industries shifting to digital

Has my industry shifted to digital?

We are seeing whole industries shifting to digital.  

In fact, we teach clients to be digitally dominant.

If we take Chris Fleming CEO at CyberHawk or Phil Buchan at Cyber Hawk, look at their posts and their engagements.  This isn't a business that hasn't nickel and dimed, they haven't sent their salespeople to read a book and some blogs.  This is a business that have invested in strategic social and are now digitally dominating their space.  

It's time to change your business

Yesterday, I was really flattered, as salesperson started following me, because his manager had recommended following me.  This is fantastic, it can get very lonely sometimes, creating content like this.  The fact that people are going to read it and hopely they will get something from it, is an amazing feeling.

But ..... my blogs won't transform your business and it's transformation that your business needs right now, we know hope isn't a strategy.

Our social selling and influence training and coaching course, will transform your business, your salespeople, your pipeline, your win rate, your social and political standing in your business.

Here at DLA Ignite, we are here for change.  Changing businesses and changing salespeople for the better. 

Like many industries there is a fork in the road, do we go analogue and do we do what we did in the past or do we go digital?

So who's 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"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind” 

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.