Are your companies "experts", visible and having conversations in the digital world?, Tim Hughes

I'm doing some prospecting, which requires me to look up companies that might be interested in transforming their sales and marketing to be digital.

One of the things I do is to see how a company is performing in the digital world.

One such company I was researching has a number of people, I guess they are seen by that company as "experts" as they are highlighted on their website.

There is a photo of the person, a video of the person and a long bio which details, of course, how great they are. There is also a description about the value proposition that they own.

You may have something similar on your website.

There is a Linkedin button for that person, so I click through to their Linkedin page.

This is where we cross from the analogue to the digital world

... just like your buyers do, every day.

Are you an expert in the digital world?

Now we know that she's an "expert", that the firm has taken the time and the trouble to highlight her on their website.

Let's look at her LinkedIn page.

There is a photo, but no background image.

Her summary is a great long shopping list of her achievements, which I have to be honest reads like a CV, so I'm guessing she is looking for a job. I get get no idea of who she is, what she stands for or anything about her as a human, therefore there is nothing to bond with.

There is no way I can start getting to know her, like her and trust her.

It's very "corporate robot", I don't see how she can help me, so I can only assume she cannot.

One of the things we teach and coach in on social selling and influence course is how to position yourself so that buyers walk towards you. How do I mean? If I was a buyer of what this person was selling and I had a load of business issues that you could solve. Wouldn't you want me to look at your profile and think "this person looks interesting, I really feel I could work with them, it looks like they could solve these issues, they are just like me, I'm going to contact them."

She has a network of 1,000 which is small for somebody in such a leadership position and somebody this business sees as an expert. If you are looking to influence people that you would have a wide and varied network. You needed to be connected to and influence people in the accounts you are trying to sell to.

So I'm looking forward to the expertise (content) she is sharing in the digital space.

After all, she's an expert highlighted on the company's website.

She posted the same post twice 11 hours ago, (a mistake maybe) it's not about the subject she is an expert on.

All she has done is flip contact, she does not write any context on why it's of important to her and she's added two hashtags. This feels like a machine is doing this.

Unsurprisingly she has no engagement. Nobody is interested. Not even the people who work in her company.

The previous content posted was a month ago, this is a reshare of a corporate post and got one like.

There then looks like there is a pattern, she shared content from the company, two months ago and three months ago.

There are no articles that demonstrate her expertise, there are no articles that show who she is.

Picture this:

You are at a conference or exhibition and you walk in and you see the company stand from a business you want to buy from.

As you walk over to the stand, one of the salespeople, walks up to you and slaps a brochure on your chest and walks off.

Then another sales person does the same, then another does the same ..... and all you do is take the brochures and put them in the bin.

That's what you and your company is doing right now by posting brochures on social media!

Now, think what would happen if you walked up to the stand a salesperson said "hi, can I help you?" then sat down with you and they talked about their business issues.

That's the difference with just posting on social, corporate spam and social selling.

This isn't an expert in the digital world.

This is somebody who doesn't understand digital .... now she may understand digital, but when you don't walk in digital corridors, all I can assume is, you don't understand digital.

If you have people like this in your organization you have a massive problem.

Why? It's clear these people maybe experts but they are invisible in the digital world.

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