As this article, by Entrepreneur states 

"It's no secret, that planning and running effective board meetings takes a lot of time and research. But how much do meetings these accomplish?"

Here are 6 questions your leadership team needs to be asking at the next board meeting.

1. How much revenue can you attribute to your activity on social media?

We all know that the world has changed with digital, you have people posting on social media about the conferences you are attending, new starters are posting on social media they have joined your business, etc. With all of this activity, what revenue is it driving for the business?  A modern business will know exactly how many leads and meetings and how much revenue can be attributed to social media activity.

I'm sure people in your business business will be saying "we are killing it on social", OK and how much revenue does this create? As a leadership team you need to be hearing "we are killing it on social and social media contributes $6.5 million (or whatever it is) to our top line" 

2. Who is the leading technical and commercial digital influencer in your market or vertical?

With the world transitioning to digital, there is a clear difference between the physical space and the digital space.  The physical space is you walking the dog or feeding the cat.  The digital space is Linkedin, Twitter, etc.  In the physical world, you may know who the leading technical and commercial influencer is.  But who is it in the digital world?

The digital world isn't as populated as the physical world, any company, large or small can claim that space and if your board don't have a plan for this, then your competition will.  Owning the space, means you own the digital narrative, you set the agenda for that market or vertical. 

We know that buyers are coming to social media to find information, insight, to be entertained, we also know that buyers start to know, like and trust people.

Take one of our partners, Eric Doyle, he has created a live stream, every Thursday morning in the sector that he works in, Oil and gas.  It's called The Big Live Breakfast Burrito..! this weeks had 107 people attend and 347 comments, this is somebody defining a market.

Eric also runs a live stream for OGV Energy, the session on digital transformation is on 29th September, you can access it here.  It already has 118 people who have said they will attend and it's only the 15th September.

OK, that isn't 1,000s of people, but how many people are actually in your vertical or sector?

Here are people that are stopping what they are doing and watching this.  They are being influenced by what is said and I bet they tell other people.  This is influence! This is how influence in B2B is done.

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

So who is, in oil and gas, the position is already taken, Eric and OGV energy took first mover advantage.  Just think how their competitors feel?

Here are businesses that are placing a stake in the ground, defining the market and defining the narrative for that market. 

Now how would you feel if your competition started doing this and you realised you had been left behind? 

3. What are you doing with digital to strip out cost from your business and make you business more efficient?

Digital isn't about shiny new IT systems, digital is about your people and process. 

Many businesses have gone down a digital transformation dead end.  They have been sold the notion that IT systems replacement is digital transformation.  For example a new cloud based ERP system for example and of course this isn't the case.

Digital transformation is about your people being empowered with digital and having digital processes.

Take one of our clients, they have stripped out the cost of job adverts and striped out the cost of recruitment consultants by being social.  Think about the cost savings that would give your business and why it would make your company more efficient.  Just what you want if we enter a downturn or a recession.  Just think if you rolled that out right across your business, that is the cost reductions, play your cards right and you should be returning these savings as additional margin.

This could also make you the employer of choice in your market.

4. What processes do have in place to retain and recruit the best employees?

Regardless of the economic conditions many companies are struggling retaining and recruiting the best employees.  As mentioned above in 3., businesses should be today positioning themselves as the employer of choice in their market or vertical.  Afterall the means and the mechanism is there.  This can be driven from a social / digital strategy from the board to human resources. 

5. How can you be digitally dominate?

Being digitally dominant is how you as a business can own the market, you can starve the competition of digital oxygen.  This is how you gain market share and competitive advantage.  This will of course contribute to the five measures such as. 

• 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

6. When marketing tell you they are killing it on social, do you know what that actually means?

We are often invited into business where marketing are saying they are "killing it" on social, but are you?

We had one professional services company that pitched to us how different they were.  So just by doing some simple searching we found they had 35 competitors in the same area and 6 of those said they same thing.  They had just spent a load of money on a website that positioned them the same as the competition. 

Yesterday, I sitting in a meeting with an individual who talked about what a social media expert they were, just by looking at their Linkedin profile, you can see they haven't posted on Linkedin for two year.  That person isn't a social media expert and we can all see that.

Social media is totally transparent, this isn't like the 1990s where you could make things up, on social there is no hiding place and leadership teams should and must be doing their own due diligence.  Or get a business in, that can advise them. 

Want to know more about social selling, check out my new book

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders who use social selling every day.  

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, Crux Consulting, DLA Ignite and more.

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.