Yes, I know, "firing" people is a little harsh, but I listened to a webinar from Gartner the other day and it got me thinking.
In the recent Gartner webinar
Panel Discussion: 8 Questions to Prepare CSOs for Postpandemic Success
Which you can access here, Steve Herz, Maria Boulden and Dave Egloff from Gartner talk about companies that have a "digital hope" strategy.
A few years ago I had dinner with a venture capital (VC) company here in London and I asked the question
"what the first thing you do when you buy / invest in a company?"
Without hesitation the person said
"Fire the marketing department"
I asked "why?" and they said, "if the marketing team hasn't come up with a strategy to go digital by now, they never will. It's quicker and easier, for everybody concerned, if we fire them, get in a temporary team and then build a digital marketing team from scratch".
Do you have the leadership that will get you to digital?
Now fast forward in the webinar 45 minutes.
Gartner also say that when you announce the need to be digital "some people will self select out of your organisation and you need to let them go. Even though this is a really difficult time to look for talent. You are better to let the people go without the digital skills you need to compete."
"You need to look in non-traditional places for the sales people of the future. Also don't choose sales people based on past experience. There is nothing about the past that is teaching us to sell today. You cannot just poach your competitors people. You need digital dexterity".
There is nothing about the past that is teaching us to sell today.
You need digital dexterity
Gartner also say that the plan, must be data driven, in this blog I explain what digital measures look like and in this blog I explain what the outcome of a digital sales project looks like.
The parting thought from Gartner was that sales leaders should see this move to digital as an opportunity and those that embrace digital will be the winners.
They also said "Careers will be made in the next 18 months".
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.
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