Six Key Themes for CEOs to Win the Growth Battle in 2022, Tim Hughes

As we moved out of 2021 into 2022 so where should a CEO, CRO, CMO, CFO place their bets?

Here are six themes that your business need to bet on in 2022!

1. The world has changed, i'm sitting writing this before my keynote at the B2B Marketing ABM (Account-based marketing) conference in London. For a face-to-face conference after the pandemic, there isn't a bad turnout. About 400 people have paid to attend. Tomorrow is a free, online event and there are 1,000 people. The world has gone on-line and your sales people in fact all of your people, need to be there.

2. "Digital hope" is no longer an option. We see so many organisations cobble their digital tactics together. There is no strategy, they hope that somehow the sales team will work it out. They won't. Sales is strategic, it is also a process. Hope was never a strategy.

3. You need outside help. Brandon Lee, part of the DLA Ignite team talks about when he moved his family from California to Georgia. They didn't know Georgia, so they rented a house for a year. They then spent that year working out where were the best schools and the best places to live. Brandon said on a call the other day "get the experts in, hire them for a year, suck all the knowledge out of them. That's the fastest way to get digital".

4. Join the RevOps movement. RevOps is all about getting all revenue generating teams under one leadership. Having a strategy, that all the teams, sales, marketing, renewals, customer success all can work too.

Don't forget digital isn't about tools, it's about people and process.

5. Double down on social selling. We know that our buyers are on social media, searching for your products and services, you need to be there and so does your sales team. Social selling is not social spamming, social selling is about having conversations with people on social.

I'm sitting writing this, after lunch as a conference, being the salesman I am, I always see lunch as a great opportunity. First there is the random people you can stand next to in the line (queue) and strike up a conversation with. Next there are the people I can walk up to and say "hi, I don't want to leave you standing by yourself". Again, a great opportunity to have a conversation.

Social is the same. Meet up with old contacts. Meet new contacts. Find people who want to buy. Social media is a networking event, open 24 hours a day.

An old colleague just walked up to me and we talked about old times, we are going to meet for lunch.

Social is about conversations, after all conversations lead to closed deals.

We have clients that have taken the digital dominance route, where they use social as a tool to totally wipe the competition out.

6. Change the way you measure marketing

Great strides were made in the last few years so sales and marketing can speak the same language. We have all sat in meetings and talked about "leads" and we know a lead in marketing is not the same as a lead in sales. Hence the terms marketing qualified lead (MQL) and sales qualified lead (SQL).

With social, you can now measure the entire buyers journey, from when a marketing or sales might engage with a potential client, all the way to it hitting the CRM. Using the CRM, "leads" can be tracked all the way to revenue.

Each key stroke on a salesperson's keyboard and the time they spend in digital can be attributed top revenue.

In other words, every deal can be tracked on social media from initialisation to close. This means that marketing is now front and centre to the way that digital and the business is governed. Marketing can go to the Board can present where the business is going and how they are impacting on the direction. It makes Marketing the driver of digital for 2022.

So who's social selling?

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.

I don't believe you Tim!

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

Here at DLA Ignite we don't do "hints and tips sessions" we don't want you to waste your money. Our social selling and influence methodology will provide your sales team with the stable platform for growth. It is also the only social selling program based on 70:20:10 change management principles which gives your business the mindset change and habit change they need in this digital world.

	Posts:	3795
	Reposts:	0

Contributors

About

Contact

Statistics

Digital Leadership Associates Archive

So who's social selling?

I don't believe you Tim!

Articles for the CEO

Articles for Sales leadership

Articles to support sales people - sales process and sales tips

Articles to support Account Based Marketing / Account Based Selling - ABM - ABS

Articles about Employee advocacy

Articles for Marketing

Should you outsource your social media?

Articles for social procurement

Articles for the CFO and Finance