I’ve just been sent a message on LinkedIn, from somebody who I’m connected to, but never had a conversation with. 

Out of the blue I get this message 

“Happy Holidays Timothy,

As the saying goes, “Gratitude is like gravy—put it on everything!” So, we pour out our thanks to you for choosing as your go-to for enterprise software knowledge and services.

Thanks for turning up, reading our emails, giving us feedback, joining the conversation, sharing the love on social – you’ve made all of our days a little brighter this year. We appreciate you for playing such a pivotal role in our growth. 

We promise 2022 is going to be bigger and better than ever – so stay tuned for more new and exciting BlogsWebinars, Lunch and Learns, Roundtables and Newsletters! But for now, enjoy the holiday season!

Let’s do it all again next year.

Best”

This is classic CBA marketing

CBA if you didn’t know stands for “can’t be arsed”. It’s lazy marketing in the extreme, and saying “but I see a lot of marketing like this” isn’t a justification, it means you are as bad as everybody else.

So why does it show the sender cannot be arsed and he obviously thinks little of his customers.

Yes, I know you think you need to be “social” but spamming your customers isn’t being social, it’s spamming your customers. 

What’s wrong with message?

  1. By calling me Timothy, it’s clear he does not know me.
  2. I’m not a client of his.
  3. He uses jargon.
  4. I don’t read any of their emails, like most people I subscribe to few (if any) email lists. It proves a company lives in the 1990s anyway. 
  5. I doubt very much that based on this spam message there has been any “conversations” on social as spamming people and sending corporate messages like this start conversations. 
  6. I get nothing from reading it. 
  7. I could go on ….

It scares me when I see this sort of thing it truly shows how far behind this company and this person is on their digital journey, understanding the digital buyer and making anything of social in sales and marketing today.

Using social to sell is a strategy 

Business must

  1. Get a strategy on social
  2. Understand what works and what does not
  3. Train their teams in what in means to be social 
  4. Train their teams in a methodology.
  5. Ask themselves how many meetings am I getting from our social activity?
  6. For the Board to clearly understand how much revenue the business is getting from social.

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. 

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