This is one of the Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal or BHAG — a term coined by Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in their book, "Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies" that LinkedIn as are other social networks wrestling with right now.

How do we transform CEOs and the C-Suite into creatives?

What do I mean?

We know that buyers, job seekers, in fact everybody is on-line consuming content, from blogs on Linkedin, to videos on TikTok.  Social media is where we get our news, our financial advice, where we find the products we buy and where we find the places to work or not work.

Linkedin has an opportunity

Linkedin's opportunity is that they need to have the 840 million people on the platform, logging in more often and consuming more content on the platform.  If you look at other social networks people are logging in daily or multiple times in a day, this isn't the case with LinkedIn

Linkedin therefore started a creator program which is where it will give certain nominated people $4,000 to get them to create content.  The goal is to get more people on the platform and more people consuming the content, but the BHAG is to turn CEOs and the C-Suite into content creators.

How do we turn senior people in business into content creators?

If you think about it, most people are scared of posting and commenting on Linkedin.  We have been teaching and coaching how to create content and how to engage on LinkedIn as part of DLA Ignite's social selling and influence course for the last 7 years.  I can assure you, watching the fear in people's eyes as they are asked to comment on a post, still makes me feel strange.  After all, what's the worst that could happen?

Are there CEOs out there on social?

If you look at the CEO of BP, Bernard Looney, here you have an oil company that has a bit of net zero work, but because of Bernard's work on Linkedin, people think BP is a net zero company that dabbles in oil.  Clever eh!

Where as Shell, who are poor on social, we still think are a oil company that dabbles in net-zero.

Or of you look at Julie Sweet from Accenture, you have somebody standing up for ethics, diversity, inclusion.  All great things that will attract people to work for you. 

While these are traditional conservative companies making a go at social, which must be applauded, the problem with both these profiles is that they are transmit.  It's old school public relations (PR) on social media.  And while you have to hand it to Bernard's team at BP it does not tick many of the fundamentals in digital today.

But have you checked out Chris Fleming CEO at Cyberhawk?  

Here's a CEO, in fact the whole of the C-Suite online, providing insight, being educational, even entertaining.  Sharing content, but they are also achieving their own objectives.  The CRO is looking for leads, the CFO is looking for more backers, the CIO is sharing ideas with other CIOs, etc.

CRO https://www.linkedin.com/in/patricksaracco/

CFO https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnccyberhawk/

COO https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipbuchan/

CIO https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickstewart/

This is a business using social for what it should be used for, as well as creating content.

In fact we have worked with them to be digitally dominant, owning the share of voice and digital conversations.  What do I mean?

Let's say you are at a conference and there is a drinks in the evening, you have a call which makes you late.  When you turn up you realise that the drinks event is full of all your prospects and customers.

As you are late, all these prospects and customers are already talking to people.  In fact they are laughing and joking.

Now, would you want these prospects to be talking to your team or your competitors teams?

If you are digitally dominate the prospects and customers are talking with you, not your competition.

They are engaging on your content, turning up to your live streams, connecting with your team.

What can Linkedin learn from Cyberhawk?

The reason why Cyberhawk chose DLA Ignite's and it's Social Selling and Influence course was the fact they wanted SQLs, (sales qualified leads).  As a business they have to sell to fund all of the things they need and it was this push for sales that got the CEO to fund the project.

How do we get more CEOs and C-Suite creating content?

We have to show to CEOs and the Board of the business that there is a business reason to do it, there has to be a business case which shows a return.  There has to be a competitive advantage. 

Now there are spin offs, like Cyberhawk will IPO faster and at a higher multiple than if they hadn't been using social.  But for the board to sign off the spend, we are back to the business reason. 

And to "sell" this to a business board you need people with business acumen, people with a track record of working at board level and people who have a track record at mentoring and coaching C-Level people.

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 revenueEBITDA, 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, 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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