Why social media is nothing about going viral and all about revenue, Tim Hughes

"Make my video go viral" ...... we often hear this and to be honest who cares?

Does it pay the salaries of your team? No.

Does it pay the office rent? No.

"Make my business grow by 20% with social media" ..... now we are talking!

Our ideal client is one that wants to see business change, they want to see a revenue and EBITDA impact with social media.

The objective of social media has got lost

If we think about business, every company has to have a strategy. A strategy is a "north star" that the business can aim for. If I can use a sailing metaphor, we need to get from A to B, that is the strategy. The tactics define how we get there, taking into account the tide, the depth of the sea and the wind. We then tack across the sea to get to our destination.

We all know in our heart of hearts that posting brochures and "posting and hoping" just isn't going to make any impact to the business. There is a better way!

As a leadership team we need to create that strategy, we also need to create a culture

What is culture? You are on a bus or a train and the ride starts to get rough, the culture is there for you to grab hold of to steady you. It's you anchor point.

Which is why we run social media strategy sessions with clients.

It creates the strategy for the business, but it also creates the culture.

Social media isn't about "going viral" or "visibility" or "liking a post" it should be part of the fabric of your business. Your leadership team and employees need to understand what is good and bad behaviour and the consequences.

A new client of ours has just undertaken their strategy session with us. This is where we coach the C-Suite to create their own social media strategy. The CEO's feedback was "We have tried many social media initiatives but none of them have worked, but this feels, like something different."

It is!

It's during this strategy session that we set the framework.

This is how we lay out, as a leadership team that you will get

Visibility – recognition in the marketplace
Trusted advisor status
Recruit and retain the best talent
Employee engagement & shared sense of purpose
Pipeline, growth and get new logos

Social isn't just about social selling. (One of our clients will be using social to recruit his next 4 salespeople saving 4 x $40,000 = $160,000 in recruitment fees).

But none of this comes for free

We set guardrails with the C-suite so they have an expectation as to what their role is in getting the 5 measures above. We all know from change initiatives that unless the leadership are actively involved it will be just another initiative.

What is social selling?

Here at DLA Ignite, we define social selling as

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

It's not witchcraft, it's enabling your salespeople to work from home, (or the office) and create conversations with prospects and customers. Conversations on social media and conversations that convert.

The problem with the name "social selling" is that people think that this is selling on social. All these pitches that you get on social are not social selling, they are spam.

The other thing you need to know about social selling is that this isn't about "putting out some videos" or "putting flowers on your profile" or "going viral" this is about revenue, EBITDA, you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.

With anything you do on social there are two questions you need to ask

1. How many leads / meetings / conversations will I get from this post / blog / activity?

2. How much revenue / EBITDA am I getting as a business?

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.

Andrew Ferrier who is the CEO of Display Technology Ltd and in this article it talks about why Display Technology have adopted social selling. His team have also created a social media strategy with help from our partner, Crux.

Their social media mission statement is

“We want to position ourselves as a forward-thinking, knowledgeable team of individuals who are all experts in our own right, therefore, collectively awesome!”

Andrew also says in that post

"Adopting this (social selling) strategy has taken all of us well outside of our comfort zones but the rewards we have seen in a short period of time have created an excitement within the business development team (new term for sales team).

Because of the nature of social media, quite often you can get instant results. Even if that is just a comment left on your post, or a like, or someone taking the time to want to connect with you.

The excitement around the sales team is infectious, it’s no longer a chore to reach out to the market place because the results can be instant and are there, right in front of you."

What sort of results can you expect?

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 work with our partners such as Crux, Little Bird Marketing, Funnel Amplified, Accelery, EDPE Consultants, etc. We are the only social selling and influence company in the world to offer a certificate provided by an independent qualification body (OfQual) and sponsored by the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP).

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