Martech is consolidating, but why?, Tim Hughes

In this article by Scott Brinker, he talks about the fact that Martech market is consolidating, but why?

As Scott says in the article

"You might already be leaping to a conclusion. “It seems like every other week, I read about a major acquisition. Surely the 2020 martech landscape with its 8,000 solutions was Peak Martech! The only question is by how much has the 2022 landscape shrunk.”"

But if you look at this list of acquisitions by Adobe, they purchased Marketo in 2018 and we know why.

The email marketing game was up and the people at Marketo wanted to cash out.

The same with email marketing stalwart, Mailchimp, they wanted to cash out which is why they sold for $12 billion. If you are going to cash out, do it at the top, or at least as the market starts to tip.

As Scott says in his article

".. the martech industry sees a tremendous amount of M&A activity. LUMA Partners, one of the leading investment banks in martech — and the creators of the original adtech landscape that inspired us over a decade ago — publishes quarterly reports of known deals. There were 157 in 2019, 85 in 2020, and 166 in 2021."

So why is Martech consolidating? Or why are business cashing in and getting out?

Now when it comes to selling something, it stands to reason that you live and die by the sales method you are selling. Right?

A cold calling expert, will cold call you. If you see a cold calling expert using social media to sell their services, clearly cold calling does not work. I'm on the mailing lists of two cold calling experts, who have never cold called me, but use email marketing, content marketing and social media to sell their cold calling services. Clearly cold calling does not work.

I'm on the email list of two social selling experts, if they are using email marketing, clearly their social selling programs don't work.

I've been in many a meeting with a CEO where he or she says, I don't believe that social selling works and I have to remind how I got the meeting, through social. At which time they reluctantly admit, social selling does work.

In this article, I go into more detail of adtech companies who has no pipeline so they want to use social selling. Clearly, adtech does not generate anything and the fact they are a "disruptive" adtech company .... pointless being disruptive, if you cannot generate any pipe.

I also talk in that article about two email marketing companies who cannot get any pipeline, with their tool, so they have turned to social selling. The irony is not lost on me, but why have these companies have not "got" the fact email marketing does not work and sold out?

But it does seem that maybe these companies realise the emperor has no clothes and they are cashing in on the gullible.

For the record, DLA Ignite, has never advertised, we have never cold called, we don't have an email list, we deleted it in 2018 to comply with GDPR. After never send any emails to the list. We are a social selling company that has only ever used social selling to get business for all the seven years we have been in business.

Now Imagine .....

Imagine, I pick you up tomorrow in my car and drive you to a place which is full of your prospects and customers. All you have to do is go up and have a conversations with them.

Remember, social media is, social media. In the past you interrupted somebody with a cold call or an email and pitched your services. As social media is being social on media, interrupting and pitching does not work.

If I walked up to you at a social event and pitched, you would make your excuses and go and talk to somebody else.

So how about tomorrow, I pick you up in my car and we go to a place where all your prospects are hanging out. You can stay as long as you want. All you have to do is have a conversation with them. It's that simple, if you are interested, read on.

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, 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 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