Can I benchmark my social selling?, Tim Hughes

We often get asked by companies "when it comes to social selling, what does good look like?"

We often see comments on social media like "we have a strong social media presence" or "we great at social selling because we drive people to our content with social media" both comments I have seen in the last week.

In both cases, the two companies in question, (I checked them out) were pretty poor at their use of social. How can it be that senior people in a business can think they are great at something when it's clear (to me anyway) they are not?

Peter Drucker was right when he wrote: “What gets measured gets managed.”

But why is this so often taken to a false corollary like “What can't be measured isn't worth managing”? that's because, most people are talk to think that social media cannot be measured.

Today isn't to come up with a list of measures, I've done that before, so let's keep things simple

What does a benchmark of social selling look like?

I always ask two questions and these questions should be asked by every company board, all non-executive directors, sales leaders, marketing leaders, in fact anybody in the company in a leadership position.

The two questions are ....

1. From your social activities, how many conversations / meetings / leads do you get?

2. How much revenue do you get, (directly linked) to your social activities?

All high performance businesses know the answers to these two questions.

Business is business

I've worked for big companies and small companies and business has always been about sales, that is selling something, getting cash in and making sure the employees and suppliers, get paid.

A leader of a small business I worked for said there are three important things when it comes to business; "sales" which is a metaphor for everything to do with helping to sell, "manufacturing" this does not mean you are a manufacturing company, but it's a metaphor for everything you create to sell.

Here at DLA Ignite, we create and manufacture knowledge. The last item is "cash". As a business you have to have cash to have a business. If you lose a leg, of that three legged stool, sales, manufacturing, cash you cease to have a business. It's something I subscribe to.

Let's go back to the questions above, I know that people will read those two questions and will start to wriggle out of answering them.

That social is about visibility, social is about bring on brand, social is, social is ..... yes, you can have all of those things, but if social isn't driving you leads and meetings somehow; and social isn't driving you revenue and EBITDA, then it's a cost, not a profit to your business. Simple as.

What is social selling?

We define social selling as

Using your presence and behaviour on Social Media to build influence,
make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to
conversation and commercial interaction.

I've seen definitions of

"Social Selling is about developing relationships as part of the sales process, uniting substance, building rapport, faith & credibility."

"I believe that Social Selling is nothing but leveraging your social network to find the right prospects, build trusted relationships, and ultimately, achieve your sales goals. Businesses have been doing this for ever."

"Helps others make good decisions so they get what they need and want."

"Social Selling is about adding value, sharing insights, building rapport, trust and credibility… ultimately starting meaningful conversations with the understanding that the sale will happen when the time is right."

"Social selling implies communicating with potential clients on prominent social media sites to stay competitive"

"We are crushing social selling because we are driving people to our web content."

All of these are lovely, and I know the people had their heart in the right place but do they enable us to pay the rent?

Which is why I come back to the two headline questions.

1. From your social activities, how many conversations / meetings do you get?

2. How much revenue do you get, (directly linked) to your social activities?

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.

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project