This deck is well worth checking out, here, sorry it's over 100 slides. 

Every marketing team and leader I've met with over the last year is trying to figure out how to generate awareness and reach target buyers more effectively and efficiently. 

Every sales leader I've met is trying to create more pipeline.

The deck takes you on a journey, from the old world of demand generation, through to today. Including a number of changes that have taken place over the last few years.

Who put this together? The venture capital company, Social Capital_ if you don't know them, they were founded in 2011 by Chamath Palihapitiya. Chamath,was the head of growth at Facebook (now Meta), he was a first investor in Slack and other tech startups that have a social media technology underpinning them. 

His view is that we are moving from a world of traditional media of ads and brands to a world based around social media.  It's a view that Adam Gray and I have had for the last 10 years. So, yes we are biased when this sort of research is shared. 

What does this mean to you?

Chamath talks in the research about “influencers”.  This is not influencers with a capital “I”, like Kim Kardashian, but people like your sales people, your HR team, your marketing team, your employees, etc.  Influencers with a small “i”. 

The deck explains that the way you are going to generate awareness, reach target buyers more effectively and efficiently and generate more pipeline is to have your salespeople and employees empowered on social media. 

So what has changed?

Most companies think that the brand is the most important thing in the world and what we do is promote the brand.  You can see this with companies that still buy ads on LinkedIn or go to trade shows or post brochures on social media.  Afterall the brand is an abstract concept that nobody understands or believes in. 

That why the deck introduces Demand Generation 2.0

To quote the deck .. “We are entering a new phase of media and consumption, where (employees and salespeople) are responsible for aggregating an audience to generate demand”
 

Social Capital_ describe this happening by …

  1. Making differentiated content
  2. Acquiring an audience
  3. Building trust
  4. Sell to new customers
  5. Reinvest profits
  6. Rinse and repeat

NB: They don't actually say how people will sell to people over social, but that the piece that we have figured out. 

The deck points out that nobody listens to brands, LinkedIn own research shows that employees get 561% more enenagement than a brand and research from DSMN8 shows that a CEO post on Linkedin will get more engagement than a brand page.  Even Nike use it's employees to sell it's products. 

We know that without trust as a business we are just a commodity and we only have one thing to differentiate us. Price.  Without trust it's zero sum game.

How do sales people and employees build and maintain trust?  They do this with their audiences by leveraging personal connection, transparency and community engagement.

The report points out that, most GenZs and Millennials now learn about new products to purchase from social media. Research from Simon Kemp, shows that people under the age of 35 turn to social media for brand research first before search.  Where as people over the age of 35 turn to social media, after search. 

Why should we be activating sales people and employees?

- You're already paying them, in fact employees WANT to share about your company and what it's doing. 
- Your employees are connected with everyone you want to reach: customers, partners, prospects, hiring candidates, etc.
- Critically, your employees are TRUSTED by their networks and as the saying goes, “we buy from those we know, we like and we trust.”
- Collectively your employees networks are not only bigger than any brand profiles you have, they can be bigger than the followings of mega influencers like Kim Kardashian and Mr. Beast

It's an extremely exciting time for marketers. We're somewhere in the process of a major shift from traditional to next generation demand generation and those who jump on the trend are going to be rewarded.

Thanks to Cameron Brain of Everyone Social for bringing this to my attention, I've also nicked a few of his words. 

 

Let's look at some context about social media today

Linkedin is the world's biggest network site.

So let's take a step back for a moment. How about if I could pick you up tomorrow and I drive you to a place which is full of your prospects?  All you have to do is grab a coffee or a tea and go up and talk to them.  You can stay as long as you like.

Now, you wouldn't walk up to these prospects of yours and pitch to them.  You would have a conversation.  Maybe ask then how far they drove to get there? Had they been caught up in the traffic?  You would have a conversation.  You wouldn't pitch to them, in fact they will probably ask you at some point, “what do you do?" but more on that in a bit. 

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 on 1st January 2023 (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, the good ones are getting 25 meetings a 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 ourInstitute 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. 

Imagine you are at a conversation and. the day before the event, there is a drinks in the evening, you have a call and so you are late by 30 minutes. As you enter the bar, you see all of the conference delegates and you realise they are all your ICP (ideal customer profile).  You also see that each ICP is talking with, and laughing with a salesperson.  Now is that salesperson they are laughing with, your salesperson or is it the competitions? 

That is going on out on social media, day in and day out and if your ICPs are laughing and talking with your sales people, will be if you have trained and coached your salespeople in a sales methodology. 

 

 

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.