70% of customer interactions are now digital and most companies are not ready, Tim Hughes

Some research from Mulesoft, a Salesforce company stated that

"70% of customer interactions are now digital and most companies are not ready

The cost of a disconnected experience means companies could lose on average $7 million by failing to complete digital transformation initiatives."

There is also a lot more technical impacts in the report, which is here.

Personally I think the issue is worse than this, Mulesoft are just taking into account the technical cost, the IT cost. This week I wrote about a company that had rebranded itself as digital, but reading this review, you can clearly see they are not digital. Here is that blog.

If you haven't heard the news but Cognizant have rebranded and they have turned their strap link to

Intuition engineered™

Why?

"Cognizant is looking to shift its brand identity, with a new logo and tagline designed to denote the company’s focus on "digital technologies and accelerating digital business."

But are they really digital as a business?

I recently did an evaluation of one of their competitor's digital in this blog

Is your business proud to be corporate spammer?

So let's do something similar with Cognizant.

So how do Cognizant compare? They tell us they are a digital business.

Cognizant have 4.809 million followers on LinkedIn and 332,548 employees on LinkedIn, which you have to admit is pretty good, they must be able to turn that into a real revenue generator for them?

As well as a real show case for proof of what a digital company they are.

Or can they?

First let's look at the employees ....

None of the employees have buyer centric profiles, most of the LinkedIn profiles are CVs (which means the people are looking for other jobs) I could go in an analyse the profiles, but you can see, this business is NOT digital.

It is highly unlikely that the employees actually have much knowledge of digital and certainly clearly don't understand how to walk digital corridors.

We know that our buyer is digital and searching from Cognizant's products and services, but there is no welcoming leadership team, there is no bunch of experts that can help. Just a bunch of suits that people will just walk by to the competition.

After all, a company that understands digital will know that the buyer is online and will be looking for experts to help them with their business issues. I bet in over 300,000 employees are are literally thousands of experts, but none of them are present in the digital world.

Let's look at the company...

The business posted on LinkedIn twice in the last 23 hours, maybe that was because of the rebranding? Before that they posted 3 weeks ago, a month ago, 2 months ago. So pretty much monthly. This is not a business that understands digital.

Let's break those posts down

21 hours ago	305 likes	5 comments
23 hours ago	2088 likes	19 comments *
1 day ago	910 likes	8 comments
3 weeks ago	649 likes	4 comments
1 month	475 likes	12 comments

* this was the rebrand announcement.

In terms of engagement, this for you and me wouldn't be bad, but for somebody with 332K employees and nearly 5 million followers, this is content that does not engage with the audience, which is a big missed revenue and competitive advantage opportunity.

The post 1 day ago with 8 comments, has has none of them answered. How many leads and meetings are being lost here?

They have blocked the ability for people to see who is commenting, but I would guess it's the existing employees. I would guess that an email is sent out internally and people are asked to like the post. This means the company is talking in an echo chamber.

Why do I know that? The ratio of likes to comments is very low. This is people dropping a like because they have been asked to. It generate nothing to a business.

Social media is social .... media. Not push brochure media. The hint is in the word social.

Where are the conversations? After all, conversations create sales.

This is what that looks like in the analog world

Imagine this, you are at a conference and are walking to the Cognizant stand because you think they can help you. On the way, you get slapped with a brochure and another brochure and another brochure. There is no welcoming, no opening to have a conversation.

No leadership team to welcome you, no experts to help you. Nothing.

So what do you, walk to the competitors stand.

Let's look at Twitter

On Twitter, Cognizant have 752K followers which is really good, they post on a daily basis, it's all corporate content, which is why they get very little engagement. Anything between 2 and 20 likes, this shows that the content does not resonate with the audience, as you would never expect corporate content, which is in fact just brochures / brochureware actually doing.

Conclusion

It's a bit like my school report, "Tim could do so much better", Cognizant have the employee levels and following but just isn't doing anything with it.

They are addicted to corporate spam and I doubt social drives them any revenue / EBITDA benefit, which is the whole point in doing it.

At least showing you are an expert or experts that can help. Sharing insight, being educational, maybe even entertaining. Showing the great culture of the business. This wouldn't just help with sales it would retain staff and make sure you are getting your fair share of talent.

Maybe even being the employer of choice in their verticals.

The employees are certainly are not digital and they will fall short of the corporate objectives regardless how much money they through at the corporate rebrand.

Imagine walking into a room which is full of your prospects and customers. The people you want to want to talk. As you walk in your realise that they are talking to somebody. These prospects and customers are talking, laughing and joking with somebody. Now, is that somebody one of your team of experts, salespeople? Or is it a competitor?

With Cognizant, I have to be honest I don't see any of their competitors on digital and here is the opportunity. Cognizant have the ability to be that business that is present on social, to have buyer centric profiles, to be having digital conversations. Better still they could be digitally dominant, taking all the oxygen out of the conversations on digital, not allowing any of the competitors to speak.

Just think what that would do for your business in terms of leads, meetings, sales, retention and new talent recruitment.

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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MuleSoft's 2022 Connectivity Benchmark Report was produced from interviews with 1,050 IT leaders across the globe. The report found that 70% of organizations do not provide completely connected user experiences. The cost of a disconnected experience means companies could lose on average $7 million by failing to complete digital transformation initiatives.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/70-percent-of-customer-interactions-are-now-digital-and-most-companies-are-not-ready/?utm_content=621d7e4b6188a500010760db