What was your first exposure to Sales, Marketing or Business Development...?

Perhaps you did a degree and went to work for a large corporate organisation.  Or maybe you worked your way through an organisation and ‘ended up’ in Sales. 

Its amazing how many people we meet who ‘ended up’ in sales or business development and can’t remember why or how…!

My first exposure to this world was interesting.  

I worked for a large company that had an efficient and effective set up that worked well at the time.  Departmental focus on Sales, Marketing, Business Development, Key Accounts, and Marketing / Communications…all set up well and working in harmony.

It was a slick machine that was well honed and set up to allow people to focus in on their specialisms, then bring them together to create a powerful commercial mix.

An example of how it all worked...

Market analysts

Amazingly talented people constantly scanning all the available channels and newswires for data and insight on relevant regional and sector specific project information. They would the curate all this data and insight into leads for the Sales team.

Sales (1)

Taking the leads from the analysts and qualifying. Tracking down people, gathering information and having conversations with those in the target organisations who could validate and share vital information. Then taking all of that output and logging it in the CRM, all contributing to a clear view and timeline of activity leading towards the proposal or tender. 

Technical Sales

Taking the information from CRM and working with Sales and Operations/Technical to prep the proposal or tender. Performing some engineering work and engaging with suppliers for prices of materials and services.

Sales (2)

Making sure to keep in touch with the prospect from proposal or tender. Checking in with Technical Sales to input and adjust the proposal or tender for delivery.  Organising presentations and eventually into negotiation.

Business Development

Highly occupied, working to expand the company’s reach and offering. Joining industry dots with new customers, suppliers, and partners to ease our way into new markets and new sectors. Feeding back to the analysts who created new leads for the Sales team.

Marketing & Communications

Creating and publishing well worded press and trade articles that flew the flag for our specialisms and project successes. Receiving leads and passing these to Sales to follow up. Staying tight with Sales and Business Development to tune the message around events, tenders, or industry trends.

Sales (3)

Closing...

Key Accounts

Working closely with key clients. Making sure that every need was met and addressed whilst picking up on additional scopes. Feeding back to the analysts, BD, Sales and Operations.

This was a well-oiled system that allowed each area of what we needed to do to win work, to be done efficiently and effectively. Each role fed into the next but, gave breathing space for each to do what they needed to do.  

The analysts were generating leads, the Business Developers were looking to the future and making valuable ‘out of the box’ geographic and sector connections, Marketing and Communications were making us look good in the press and Sales were closing deals.

……and then I left to start working with small service companies.

No Market Analysts, no Technical Sales, a small Marketing & Communications team (perhaps 1 person), and a few Sales professionals (who had been branded as Business Developers but who’s main job was to sell and close deals (?))

Fundamentally, this small group have the same overarching responsibility as the large team: 

Create demand - Find leads - Win work... 

The large organisations had departments, technology, the environment, and architecture to exceed in each of these areas. In the small company, there was overlap and each element crossed over in to the next. 

In the small team, when Sales were on BD type activity, they were not meeting or closing.  When Marketing was organising an event, they were not communicating information about the company…and so on. And, when that big tender hit, it was all hands to the pumps. 

When the small team was knee deep in tender preparation, the foot was off the gas on market info, prospecting and other important Sales activity.

These teams work hard trying to juggle a dozen different plates, but something must give. There are only so many hours in the day.

With the added pressure of Covid, lockdowns, working from home and restricted travel, how does the modern-day small business commercial team keep on top of what they need to be doing, at the rate they need to be doing it..?

How do we make these smaller commercial teams more efficient and effective…?

We start by completing a root and branch analysis of how we create demand, how we find leads and how we convert them - we must be driven by data.

And then we overlay Social Selling & Influence.

In many cases we find that the desire to stay rooted in historic models and adhere to a traditional ‘shape’ that’s at the root of many problems. 

The world has changed, how buyers buy has changed...how we create demand, create leads and sell must change. 

Be directed by the data - redesign the process, the model and the structure for Digital and Social.

How do you get into a new organisation in 2022, if you don’t know anyone and don’t have a referral to open the door for you...?

What if we tuned our team to be able to network and prospect online? Not just Sales and Marketing, a much wider team.

In 2022, we must grab at the opportunity to be better at employing Social Media than our competitors – and that means taking it seriously. Working to a clear strategy and creating the right internal environment. 

This new environment’ requires some serious habit and behaviour change, it might not sit well with what you have learned and experienced to date but, when we are thinking about the business, nothing is more important than the business…. right?

So, what do we need to be doing?

Prospecting:

We need to be connecting and communicating with the right people on that ‘new’ target clients list. These are the companies we have never worked with before.

In the past we would be calling and emailing, we know that this is losing or has lost its effectiveness in these digital times.

But the target list still exists, and it’s important we keep on top of them – being there, being present. Understanding issues and timelines, formulating responses. Making connections and having conversation, even more than we did BC (Before Covid).

So, this is where thinking differently comes in – We train the Management Teams, the Technical, The Operational teams and the Sales, Marketing and BD people in strategic Social Media.

We optimise their Social Media profiles and put a plan in place for targeting the right connections…. everyone, working as a team.  We start to produce thought leadership content that inspires and educates your network. 

Before long you are dominating the share of voice in your chosen sectors, receiving inbound and getting on those video calls you would have never had by using the old methods.

This year has shown us that many management teams are stuck to working with historic methods. It could be that they haven’t noticed the world has changed or that the don’t think their clients are on Social…or they just don’t get it.

You may not understand or like the idea of Social Selling & Influence but I’m sure you like ebitda and growth.

Marketing:

The last thing you want to do is stop Marketing – but the first thing you need to do is stop useless Marketing activity.

Run a pipeline attribution study and work out exactly what each element of your plan in delivering in cold, hard pipeline. If it costs and doesn’t produce results, cut it out.   

Save the money you are throwing away on paid adverts, save the money you are paying for PR, save the time and money you are wasting on email campaigns.

Turn off The Salestech and Martech apps and programmes that people are not using. We are forever being called into companies and being told "we have purchased this app and it doesn't work". It probably does work, it is just that your team have not been trained and you didn’t create a strategy. 

Buying tools to do this for you means overhead and when you stop paying the monthly bill, the tool is switched off and nobody is any further forward…

If you cancel subscriptions, many Salestech and Martech companies give you 3 months for free. This will save you money. You can then tell the people that are "using" it that either they get a return in three months, or you will turn it off for good.

It's clear to all of us that the days of advertising are over. It was invented in the 1930s and it's amazing that people are still seeing as a necessary part of the marketing mix. 

When Procter & Gamble cut $200 Million in Digital Ad Spend, It Increased Its Reach 10% 

Chase Manhattan began limiting its display ads to pre-approved websites to avoid proximity to content like fake news and offensive videos. Chase had Ads on 400,000 Sites. Then on Just 5,000. Same Results.

Uber was paying an agency $10 for each app install, they did an 80% reduction in this spend and it made no difference. Why? Because of the fraud in the system.

So while people are arguing that you shouldn't switch off advertising because you will be invisible. There is a clear argument that you were never visible in the first place.

We know that ad spend is collapsing report after report  is showing, this. To quote the marketingprofs report, which is a stalwart of the marketing sector.

"Engagement with social media advertising has also declined ... because audiences are turning to more organic content than paid."

"The researchers found the average global CTR (click through rate) across the 18 industries examined was down 17.2% in mid-March compared with the start of the year."

Historic Marketing was predicated on waste: Wasted time, wasted effort wasted money. A lot of ignored noise and messages trying and interrupt someone into paying you attention – It’s all ‘hit and hope’.

We have to measure our success in Marketing in £, $, or € - If we spend 1 we want to know we are getting 2 back and we need to know when.

With Strategic Social Media we run on data and turn this model on its head. 

We get your team creating rich and diverse content around the subjects and issues you want to be known for and their Network rally round - the people who are interested react and engage and give you the opportunity to have conversations (see prospecting above). 

The average LinkedIn user today has around 1000 connections – do the maths. If 10 of your team created 3 pieces of good, optimised content per week….and then add the connections of the connections and their connections….

We have trained technical teams in this who’ve never considered Social media before, and they bring in the results. In many cases more than other groups because their content usually hits home with the Technical Buyer, so we make sure their content is biased towards that group.

We usually find that this alarms people who know and work in ‘traditional’ Marketing circles – but there is no need. The Marketing role evolves and becomes crucial in this new way of working. The central figure in curating and corralling all the new activity. 

The same with Sales, someone must take this inbound and convert it to Purchase orders. We need your skills more than ever, because we have a hell of a lot more activity than we did.

Lets get back to the new model I spoke about earlier…. 

All your team can and should be trained in Social Media. They should have optimised profiles, be active in conversations and have a connection plan. They should be creating good quality content and interacting with responders.

Marketing is running all of this – Programming and scheduling, helping, and guiding, taking info from the Market, and tuning the internal activity to suit.

Sales are following up with all these new leads and inbound and doing what they always should have been doing, closing deals.

Your customers are not waiting for you to interrupt them and for you to broadcast at them with advertising, email and cold calling.

It annoys them, just as it annoys you and me, so why do it.

But your customers are on Social. So, connect to them and build relationships with them.

Social Selling & Influence enables your WFH sales force, in fact all your employees to prospect (sometimes called social marketing), to take employees through the sales process and for you to close them. This does not mean you don't have phone conversations or zoom calls, but social can be used all the way through the sales process to support the sales from opening to closing. 

Your small, remote working team are more efficient than they have ever been.

The Social Selling & Influence Business Case:

We expect each of the people we train in Social Selling & Influence to be able to make (if they follow the programme) at least one additional meeting per week (minimum). 

Let’s assume that 4 of those meetings turn into proposals and you close 1 of those proposals. 

That means you are closing one additional deal per quarter. If your average deal size is £100,000, then each salesperson is closing an additional £400,000 per year. 

As sales team of 10 will create £4 million additional revenue per annum. This isn’t a one off, this is every year.

You save money, maximise your exposure in the right areas and see your company transform.

As we move into a New Year, its important that your team have all the digital skills they need to network, prospect and close business online.

Live Social '22 

Eric Doyle

Crux / DLA Ignite