Imagine, that it's Saturday and you are watching children play sports, you get your mobile phone out and decide have a look through your timeline on social. This is when you move (using social media) from the physical world to the digital world.

Or maybe you are walking the dog or feeding the cat and then you look at Twitter. Again, you are physical and then digital. 

Either way today, you move from physical to digital and social media is the conduit to do this.

Think about how your buyers all see the digital world as a way to find information to help them make purchases.  Recent report from IDC and SAP state that 67% of buyers use social media to help them make purchases.  See article here.

How digital has evolved

When the electric light was invented, (there were already gas lights) one of the selling points of electric over gas, was that you could have a switch on the wall to turn the light on and off.  Something we all get today and even take for granted.

With a gas light you went up to the light and switched it on.  The problem was that people were so used to the way that gas lights worked, they said "why would I need a switch on the wall?".

Without the light switch the argument was you can walk straight into a room and switch the light on at the bulb.  Something today we would find strange and probably think it was dangerous.

The same thing is happening in terms of the evolvement of digital.

People see the old way of doing things, for example the gas light as the way forward.  Whereas, there are new digital ways of working, like a switch on the wall and and electric light.

Is your physical world holding you back?

We all know we need to be digital, all the research says so, McKinsey, Salesforce, Gartner, etc, etc.  If you think about physical ways of sales and marketing such as cold calling, email and advertising are they the gas lights in an electric light world? 

Today we are seeing businesses that are taking their place in digital

"In America, in 1803, westward expansion began in earnest, Thomas Jefferson negotiated a treaty with France in which the United States paid France $15 million for the Louisiana Territory – 828,000 square miles of land west of the Mississippi River – effectively doubling the size of the young nation."

People rode out and staked their claim.  The same is happening in digital.

As a business you can walk into digital (through social media) and say, you are the centre of the world around human resources, or ERP, or cloud computing, etc etc.  

Big or small you company, you can stake your claim.

And thus you are able to define the narrative for that market.

Question: Who is the leading technical and commercial digital influencer in your market or vertical?

If you don't know, then there is an opportunity for you, if you know, you missed your chance.  You missed your opportunity to get that piece of land.  Am I talking about the future?  Absolutely not. 

This isn't some look into the future, this is happening right now.  In fact, in my third book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition" I have a CEO talking about how he's been doing this for 18 months.  Just think, if you are a competitor of his and you are not doing this, you are 18 months behind.

Or, of course, let the opportunity slip through your fingers, your choice. 

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.