I need to start this blog by saying, I've been laid off. It's why I run my own company now, DLA Ignite.

I understand the pain and the anguish, I understand the not knowing.  From where I sit, it worked well for me, but right now I can understand it might feel rubbish. 

But what's my point?

Back in December I wrote this blog

Is there a connection between layoffs and the use of legacy sales and marketing techniques? 

Looking at Salesforce, Slack, Mulesoft people on LinkedIn, I don't see employees with digital skills, I don't see a company that can walk digital corridors and have digital conversations.

In December I also wrote this article.

Your prospects are digital, but your sales team are analog?  Can you see the mismatch? 

This isn't my opinion it's based on data, so facts.

So if you are still playing sales and marketing in the physical / analog world, you are not fishing where the fish are, which is in digital.  Simple as.

No wonder so many companies are laying off and not getting the revenue they need. 

I've just been left this awesome book review on Amazon for my third book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changenmakers - 2nd edition".

"The days when B2B sales or marketing people could overtly refute the importance of social media are thankfully long gone, but that doesn’t mean how to use it successfully in B2B revenue generating activities is universally understood.

Far from it, in fact. And that’s the case that Tim Hughes makes in this second edition of his substantial, thorough and powerfully argued case on social selling. But the key and most compelling point that he makes is that great social selling is far more than simply selling stuff, socially… in fact, he argues that it’s not even that at all, because the minute that you start overtly selling on social channels, your audience will literally switch off, disengage or disconnect. 

Utilising the full power of social media in B2B markets (as in B2C, but different as ever) requires a comprehensive business-wide approach, touching every aspect of how the organisation operates and engages with the wider world, customers, prospects, stakeholders, influencers, advocates, etc. etc.

So this is not a tactical book, although it does include many practical tactics – it’s a profound treatise on how businesses should operate. Even for businesses who have been proactive and progress in using social media (for sales or otherwise), Tim accepts that this will require no small amount of transformation, and that that inevitably won’t be easy.

Thankfully, this book provides lots of guidance on how to make that journey, from beginning to end, and how to determine success. Wherever you are in your B2B social media revenue journey, there’s something for you in this book.

For the uninitiated, the intro provides a detailed walk through about what’s changed and changing in B2B, and why old methods of sales and marketing are becoming increasingly redundant.

That was relevant before Covid, but obviously far more so now, and it’s a useful reminder of why we need to keep challenging our latent assumptions. 

Whether you’re in B2B sales or marketing, and interested in the future of digital and social channels, you’ll learn lots from this book – both inspirational and practical."

Salesforce is a classic, they have used tactics around the edges, some employees post on social, but those that do, don't know why, there is no methodology behind it.  The fast majority don't and miss the opportunity that social provies.  There are internal "experts" that are supposed to teach social, but again, you can see these people don't have a methodology behind them.  It's post and hope.

This isn't how first class companies behave in 2023, first calls companies have a digital strategy driven from the board downwards.  There is a clear methodology that everybody, even the bosses follow.  There is accountability for digital across the business.  Not in the mode of pushing brochures like employee advocacy, but in a way that will drive pipeline and revenue.  It will also strip out cost of your current business and create efficiencies.  The irony being that Slack will generate you 25% efficiency, if used properly. 

I'll leave you with this recent article. 

6 Questions to prepare your leaders for their next board meeting 

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.

http://digital-leadership-associates.passle.net/post/102hz7n/6-questions-to-prepare-your-leaders-for-their-next-board-meeting