In this article, it explains the transformation that is taking place in sales and marketing today because of artificial intelligence (AI). 

Have you ever used ChatGPT?  Link here. 

The title for this blog was going to be

"Why AI killed SEO and your website and if your not optimizing for artificial intelligence algorithms, you're already behind"

But .... I was in an internal meeting today and was talking and was pointing out that AI has gone from nowhere to being central to a business and certainly central to informing your business plan, sales plan and marketing plan. 

The blog below is just one way where your reliance on doing things in sales and marketing like have always done, just won't get you the results you need.

And the speed of this change is not on an annual basis, it's changing by the month, the week or even by the day.

I was going to write that AI will become, but it has already become something you should be using everyday.  Because I'm 1,000 years old :) I remember when spreadsheets and word processors were introduced.  Something we now use everyday.  AI is already like this.

If you haven't used ChatGPT go and use it now.

Why?  Because this is how search is changing.

Writing a ChatGPT prompt, will be the way that search will work.

We will become more and more proficient at writing prompts, we will become more and proficient at search.

Google's A.I.-first search engine. Which is still in beta, will become the search engine of the future and companies better prepare.

Instead of simply showing results at the top of the page, Google A.I. search tries to answer your query, give you valuable context, allow you to ask follow-up questions, and otherwise provide useful results based on the A.I.'s interpretation of your search.  Just like ChatGPT. 

That, of course, creates a problem for companies that rely on search traffic or a website.  SEO as we know it is dead.  And you need to focus to algorithm optimization (AO), otherwise you're at serious risk of being left behind.

To be sure, SEO itself isn't dead. But investing substantial digital resources into optimizing your website to increase search traffic is dead.

Yes, a Google search will continue to display search results to your website in the post-A.I. world, but if Google is going to provide answers to searchers without requiring them to click through to a website to get what they want, they'll have no need to come to your website. Your search traffic will decline and you'll need to figure out how to replenish that traffic somewhere else.

Which is why you need to start understanding social media.

And I don't mean social media ads and spamming social media.  You need to understand the psychology of social media, why people use it, what motivates them to use it and how to engage and have conversations with people on social media.

Research shows that people under the age of 34 use social media now as an alternative to search, so you need to optimize your content for social media.  Research also shows that people don't like AI generated content, so empowering your people to talk authentically and create their own authentic content has become more critical.

Interesting how AI will drive brands, in fact of all of us to be more human.

Let's look at the data, cold calling vs our social selling benchmark

Here at DLA Ignite, we are always wanting to push forward the boundaries of sales, so we decided to put cold calling head to head with the DLA Ignite methodology for social selling and create a benchmark (and business case) for our version of social selling.

So we took a team of "cold callers" cross trained them in our methodology for social selling and here are the results.

It's worth shouting out the team, Alex, Jordan and Jensen and they work for a company called Supero.

Don't believe me? Please check the team out on social and ask them about the results!

The results with cold calling

When the team were cold calling, that is, before we trained them on social selling.  I'm not sure what results you get with cold calling but they did whatever they could in terms of warming up the calls with emails or webinars, etc.  And the results, they got about 2 calls a week.  

As with any cold call, your job is to take the call to a next action, which might be a demo, discovery call and they averaged 0.3 of these calls.

Anyway, you will have your own figures for cold calling in your business and you will know what they are. 

The results for social selling

What is social selling?

The DLA Ignite definition of social selling is

"Using your presence and behaviour on social media, to build influence make connections, grow relationships and trust.  Which leads to conversation and commercial interaction".

(Please note these figures are for the DLA Ignite methodology, we cannot speak for other suppliers, please check with them, before signing any contracts.)

I need to say, before I get any comments. 

There is no spam and no automation in the DLA Ignite social selling methodology!

The DLA Ignite social selling methodology does not use connect and pitch!

The DLA Ignite social selling methodology does NOT use inmails, which are spam. 

In fact the program is now back and certified by the Institute of sales professionals (ISP), the only such methodology backed by a sales professional body.

Let's get onto those results for DLA Ignite methodology of social selling

The team are getting a 9% response (on average) to social selling cold outreach, so for every 100 people they ask for a call, 9 say "yes". 

This figure is an average, so we think somebody with intermediate skills or an expert should be getting a higher figure should be getting a larger response.  In fact, our benchmark for an expert is 13%, but I want to keep figures realistic and conservative. 

As we mentioned above, with every "call" based on cold outreach, there has to be some sort of next action.  For your own company, you will know what your next action is, it will be a demo, a discovery call or something. 

We have found that with DLA Ignite social selling methodology 9% of the people (on average) that agreed to a call, 33.6% are converting to a next action.  

This is exponential growth when compared to cold calling. 

Each salesperson is averaging 10 calls / meetings per week.

Just think if you scaled that across your sales organization! 

(The most successful SDR complains he has got too many meetings, which think is a great problem to have!)

Just think about that being rolled out across your sales team(s).  

It's time to work smarter not harder. 

Let's look at this with a business case

Let's take a sales team of 10.

We know that the average person can grow their network by 3,000 people a year.  Let's assume of these 50% are going to buy, this gives you a network growth of 1,500 per person per year.

If you have 10 salespeople that gives you a total addressable market (TAM) of 15,000 new people to have conversations with.

With our, Institute of sales professionals (ISP) backed, DLA Ignite social selling methodology, (note: we cannot vouch for anybody else) based on our measured benchmark, you should be able to get, on average, meetings with 9% of this TAM of 15,000.  This means your sales team can have 1350 new conversations every year. 

(As we know, conversations create sales.)

As we discussed above, with any cold outreach the objective is to get a next action and using our social selling methodology and using our measured benchmark we can get 33.6% of 9% of our TAM to a next action, which is 454.

Let assume you win 1 in 3, that's 151 new sales a year using social selling, average order value (AOV) $100,000, that's 

$15,120,000 = $15 million

That's an additional $15 million that you are missing by cold calling rather than social selling.

or $1,26 million you miss every month you delay moving from cold calling to social selling.

Of course, if you have more than 10 sales people, you can scale the figures up. 

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, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

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