Why social selling is completely disrupting Madison Avenue, Tim Hughes

One of the massive changed to business that Covid-19 forced on us is that now we have one desk (or one mindset).

What do I mean? Before Covid-19 we had two desks and two thought processes.

1. Our thought process at home.

2. Our thought process at work.

While we were and are the same people, these two different mindsets impacted on our thought process.

Our thought process at home is to not read ads, to avoid sales people, not take cold calls, not click on banner ads and ignore spam emails.

Where as people would go to work and pay for adverts, complain when the telesales team are not able to get through to people, send as many spam emails as we can, and buy banner ads.

Do you see the problem?

But Covid-19 sorted this, well for some of us have realised that the world has changed and we need to tune into our "home self" and ignore the "work self".

But let's look at the data.

The data is published by, Jamie Gutfreund, CMO at Whalar.

The article by adweek starts with "Consumers often jump at any opportunity to avoid ads......while digital users are increasingly flocking to ad blockers."

This does not feel like good news to me for the advertising industry.

But when a buyer sees somebody they know, like and trust talk about a brand, people stop looking away.

Now I'm not using the word "influencer" as it is overused and in many cases, influencer marketing is nothing more than advertising.

Back to the article

“When someone is watching content by choice and an ad comes on, it is viewed as an interruption and feels manipulative,” Of course it does and we all know that brands all say the same thing, "buy my product because we are great".

This study “Reaching The Unreachables,” delivers bad news for the Madison Avenue employees that refuse to embrace the need to understand the modern digital buyer.

"Whalar found that nearly half of Gen Z participants spent zero hours on ad-supported television on a given day, and 60% in the U.S. and U.K. try to skip or block ads when online.

But nearly 50% trust online content from the creators they follow."

Whaler calls this the "ad-never generation".

This backs our research that shows that people come to social to be social and they are looking for authenticity, help, guidance, insight, to be educated and entertained.

They are not looking to have their day interrupted by yet another brand pushing it's products.

It's not about advertising it's about community

The research also points out that buyers are "finding their own places in private digital communities that are centered around shared passions."

"A sense of belonging translates into a deep sense of trust, which makes communities the critical place for brands to reach an audience today."

Buyers are also "abandoning the unapologetic, mass commercialism of influencers like the Kardashians in favor of the trust, intimacy, and sense of belonging that comes with creators and their communities."

The research goes onto say.

"To succeed in these communities, brands need to change their approach. Instead of talking, they need to listen. Instead of telling people what they’re missing, they have to celebrate them for who they are."

It's time that brands stopped pushing messages and empowered their people to create content.

Placing people at the core of the digital transformation, giving them the digital skills they need to walk digital corridors and have digital conversations.

We've found this can lead to total digital dominance for the brand, pushing out the competition. Which of course has an impact through competitive advantage, market share and revenue.

Now Imagine .....

How about if I said, I can take you to a place where all your prospects hang out, would you go?

I can pick you up in the car tomorrow and you can hang out there having conversations with them.

When you arrived, what would you do?

Grab a coffee and go up to the first one and start a conversation? Of course you would.

Or would you walk in and say "buy my stuff, because we are great". Of course you wouldn't, as somebody would call security.

That's the difference. Selling on social is ...... social. You have conversations with people.

You don't go up to people and pitch to them as people will call security.

The great thing about social is that there is no "prime selling time (PST)", you can have as many conversations as you want. One of my customers, does his prospecting between putting the kids to bed and when he goes to bed.

It's time to bring your demand generation into the second decade of the 21st century and it's time to "start fishing where the fish are" ...... on social.

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". Here at DLA Ignite, engagement is important but we are about driving revenue, EBITDA, for your business using social media. This is about you winning business from the competition and having a competitive advantage.

Social is about having a strategy and there are two key drivers

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?

Posting and hoping or posting random stuff is not a strategy, in fact I doubt it's driving anything for your 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, and DLA Ignite customer, 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).

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Whalar’s recent study found that half of Gen Z spends zero hours on ad-supported television

https://www.adweek.com/agencies/the-creator-economy-can-thrive-with-audiences-that-are-over-traditional-advertising/