Legacy companies with strong digital capabilities are catching up with digital natives, Tim Hughes

In this article by Boston Consulting Group (BCG), called, "The Rise of the Digital Incumbent" they say

"Legacy companies with strong digital capabilities are catching up with digital natives"

It's certainly something we have seen

1. The first wave of digital - This is where companies perceived that digital = IT and they went through a wave of systems change. Driven by Cloud and SaaS, business could see that they could get "more" or "better" functionality by moving to newer cloud based products.

This was also driven by Y2K (year 2000 problem), if you think about it, there was massive systems change leading up to the year 2000 and those systems are now being replaced. But systems change does not bring digital.

2. The second wave of digital is where business realized they needed to be digital but have done this with analogue processes. Take the process of "employee advocacy", business have spent $ Billions on software to spam out brochures or brochureware. Only for many of those business to get little or no business benefit. In my corporate role, the company invested in such a tool, but all the employees, apart from the marketing leaders "got" the fact that nobody in their network wanted to see these brochures. After all, nobody believes a company and a brochure, because they all say the same "buy my product because we are great".

I cover that in more detail in this blog

Is your business proud to be corporate spammer?

3. The third wave of digital is where the people and the process within an organization are empowered to be, social. In the past this was called the social organisation or the "social org" but more and more this is called the digital organization.

One of our clients summarised it nicely as....

What we found that when a business transforms to using social, not only in its sales team about across the business, this is where real digital transformation takes place. What do I mean by that? It's the Nirvana of digital transformation. Being more effcient and more effcetive and striping out cost ofdoing business and by doing this gaining competitive advantage.

I do a recent analysis of how one of our customers transformed the market.

Analysis: Let's look at how companies that are social selling are disrupting their markets and their competitors

BCG say

"Digital incumbents enjoy multiple advantages. They outperform their less digital competitors, delivering more value to shareholders, customers, employees, and partners."

I must admit that in business is today a little old fashioned, in our experience a business would get

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

In 2022, a business wants to hear that digital is going to create a great culture and not about shareholder value.

Back to the BCG report, where they say

"Digital capabilities build resilience—the ability to adapt to adversity and changing market conditions."

Being digital gives the company the ability to change quickly, afterall, being social is at the centre of the business. Employees love to share and help each other. None of this "knowledge is power", in a social business we know that "sharing and helping is power".

As BCG state

"Winners will thrive by adapting their companies to a model of continuous innovation rather than sticking with static business models."

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.

What happened? They buyer was on social media looking for a solution to their problem, spotted one of the Namos salespeople, who had a buyer-centric profile and asked if the salesperson could help them. That turned into a $2.6 million deal.

Contact any of the DLA Ignite team, Eric, Adam, Nick, Vanessa, Lorena, Brentney, Priscilla, Lenwood, Alex and they will be more than happy to help.

Go and look at their LinkedIn profiles .... look how they can have digital conversations, create insightful content. This could be your company!

We are the only social selling and influence company in the world to offer a certificate in social selling provided by an independent qualification body (OfQual) and sponsored by the Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP).

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There’s a new player on the digital landscape. Digital (or digitalized) incumbents in traditional industries are joining digital natives and a small group of so-called digital hyperscalers in the congregation of companies that have developed the capabilities to disrupt existing business models and deliver the innovation and revenue growth that are rewarded by investors.

https://www.bcg.com/publications/2022/rise-of-digital-incumbents-building-digital-capabilities