Today is our (DLA Ignite) 6th Birthday, so our 7th year in business.

Our anniversary should have been the 1st September, which is when we celebrate it ourselves, but I registered the name wrong and had to do it again, so if you look on companies house, the date is the 16th.  Well, we all make mistakes!

In the last 6 years we have seen so many changes, thought I would list them.

Cold calling isn't dead but it's clearly not fit for purpose

When we first started out, cold calling and spam email was the major use of prospecting, now LinkedIn research shows that cold calling has a 98% failure rate.  And if you go by the cold calling experts in the "sales" Reddit group, unless you are using an auto-dialer and making 1,000 calls per agent, you won't get very far.  I'm not going to argue with the experts.  Clearly cold calling isn't dead, but it's not fit for purpose. Check out the article from salesforce, which quotes the research here.

In his book, "Sales management that works - how to sell in a world that never stops changing", Harvard Business School senior lecturer, Frank V. Cespedes says, 

"Selling is changing, but much current conventional wisdom about the impact on sales of e-commerce, big data, Al, and other megatrends is misleading and not supported by empirical data. If you as a manager fail to separate fact from hype, you will make decisions based on bad assumptions and, in a competitive market, eventually fall victim to those who can understand cause-and-effect links between buying and selling."

Digital fluency

"First and foremost, employees need to possess a basic level of digital fluency in order to successfully implement digital transformation."  Depending on the industry, digital fluency is the ability to use social media, externally and and internally.  Internally is the use of Slack, Teams, etc for collaboration and sharing information as people get used to moving away from email and using direct messaging, which has been known to increase efficiency in business.

Employees also need to be proficient at using social media externally.  Regardless of if they work in sales, human resources (HR), procurement, Finance, customer service, etc, they need to be able to "walk digital corridor and have digital conversations".  We know our employees, future employees, prospects and customers are on social media, we need to meet them, where they feel comfortable. 

"This necessity of this skill is company-wide; Harvard Business School Professor Tsedel Neeley points out that digital fluency adheres to a basic tenet of linguistics. "I often reference the 30% rule; borrowed from the study of languages, when applied to digital fluency, it dictates that the entire company needs to be, at least, at a 30% fluency baseline in order to move in a new digital direction effectively."

Of course, the necessity of digital fluency only increases at executive levels. The impetus lies with company leaders to possess and encourage digital fluency. Leaders who are digitally literate will be better equipped to address the gap between executives and employees – be it regarding perception of digital changes or simply the reality of data architecture caliber – which so often contributes to the failure of digital transformation."

The move to working remotely

Back when I was in corporate so this will be some 8 years ago, our company said they was cutting travel and we should all use technology to have meetings.  Of course we all complained, but we still did the number and the business made 15% more margin that quarter. When Covid struck in 2020, that business was ready, and we all work remotely now.  Importantly our buyers do.

Business must now lead with digital first, in terms of sales, recruitment, etc, etc.  More on this below.

In the past we got employees to come into the office so we could check they are working, now we need to be able to lead "through screens". 

"It has been noted multiple times that the largest barrier to digital transformation is company culture. Company culture can heavily impact employees' perception of change, and an unresponsive culture can result in the expenditure of millions of dollars to achieve a transformation that will be circumvented."

60% of the world's population is active on social media

When we first started in business, people would say "my clients are not on social".  Now everybody is and Covid has accelerated that.  In fact we now have two lives, our analogue lives and our digital life, for example when we log into LinkedIn.  You can find this research on Simon Kemps Linkedin profile or here.

Our buyers are on social and know more than the seller

Adam and I started the business because we had spotted the move of buyers to be present and to do research on social some 8 years ago.  It was why Kogan Page (my publisher) asked me to write "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers" back in 2015.  (If you didn't know a second edition is out, available on Amazon worldwide.) 

The ability for buyers to do research online is been available for years, it's the norm.  I remember sitting in the office some 8 years ago and one of the HR (Human Resources) consultants coming back to the office and saying "just been to see a customer and they knew more than I did".  Of course they did.  Our client, BMW confirm this.  When somebody walks into a showroom, they know more than the salesperson.  It's the same for any B2B business.

It's critical more than ever to empower the sales team to be able to have digital conversations, walk digital corridors.  In the past sales people could go to a clients office and "pop-in" and see people.  Now they need to be able to do this digitally.  This is about knowing social, how to use it in a modern way.

Business is now digital

When we first started the business, we worked hard with our first customers, they are still friends of ours for putting faith in us.  They transformed their business and we made the methodology, repeatable and predictable.  We can raise your revenue by 30% and reduce the sales cycle by 40%.

But that was 6 years ago, things in digital have moved on.

Now we are transforming businesses to digital, The second edition of "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and change makers" has an article from a CEO that runs a digital business.

Having a digital business isn't some future state, it's a current reality. 

I've just been asked to be a judge for the Fast Company magazine (Turkey) Digital CMO award and what is interesting (compared to previous years) is the move business have made online, onto digital and social.  Digital is the normal.  

Business are now redefining their business to be digital 

In this post from DLA Ignite, Partner, Eric Doyle, he talks about businesses that are doing a business process re-engineering (BPR) and re-building their sales and marketing processes as they know they are currently not fit for purpose.

Just think this isn't tinkering around the edges by doing some Linkedin training for two hours, or employing somebody in sales enablement and hoping something will happen, or posting on social and hoping something will happen.  These are businesses that are re-defining their business in digital. 

Who is the leading technical and commercial influencer in your market and vertical?

In the past there would be trade magazines that defined a market, now businesses are doing this themsleves.  They are creating an anchor for that market and defining the narrative, small or larger businesses are doing this and by doing this they setting the centre of the market.  All of the other competitors then have to dance to their tune.  Check out OGV Energy and the next event which is on the 29th September.  They are defining the energy market and their competition have no idea how to counteract this. 

Digital dominance

While this is part of being the technical and commercial influencer.  Let's think about what would happen if you empowered your sales team with social, then empowered you HR team with social, then carried on empowering your team(s).  This is not "employee advocacy" which has little return for the business.  I'm talking about empowerment.  Just think about how your business would be positioned in front of your prospects, clients, employees, future employees, your investors, your future investors.

You would own the digital narrative, you would push all your competitors out.  Just think of the competitive advantage and market share you would take.  One client when they underwent their digital business change, came up with these three measures. 

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

The social selling qualification

Earlier this year we launched a social selling qualification.  What you will find is that people will give you a certificate of attendance, which means you attended a course.  It's not a certificate of social selling competence.  Here at DLA Ignite, we worked with the Institute of sales Professionals (ISP), a actual sales trade body to certify our social selling program.  This means it is a qualification, just like you would get from school or college.  This is the only social selling qualification in the world and sets the high-watermark for sales today. 

Social Procurement

Back in 2017, we launched #socialprocurement and it's great to see the baton on this being picked up and lead by the Procurement industry.  Mario Bruggmann has lead some real innovation in this area.  Especially with the #Iambuying hashtag and the changes to the LinkedIn photo, to support #Iambuying 

It's been 6 great years

In the last 6 years we have been able to out innovate our competition, one of our competitors have just pivoted away from social selling.  As I've always said, if you are not innovating you are not moving forward in business.

And finally a thank you

I want to thank all of our clients, all of our associates and all of our partners, for their constant support, advice and counsel.

"Remember, digital transformation is a process that is extensive, expensive and all-encompassing – so, it will require strong leadership presence and investment to implement."