From ‘doing digital’ to ‘becoming digital’: Setting a North Star to guide your journey

We often see that people are doing digital.  Often disguised as a systems refresh, moving from "legacy" to "cloud".  There is a good business case for this as it will probably cut costs and can always be implemented quicker than those legacy systems.  Often this is driven by IT or somebody "technical".  We also see companies that drive into the latest shiny object, IOT, IOE or whatever the latest three letter abbreviation (TLA) is.

There are more pressing problems, that people don't seem to be sorting something that is broken; sales and marketing.

The fact of the matter is that Marketing no longer works and they don't know what to do.  Well the answer is spend more money, because if you spend more money you will keep getting the same results.  Problem is, we know that nobody looks at adverts, GDPR killed email marketing, cold calling died a long time ago and events no longer work.  We also know as individuals that doing those things are a sign of a desperate company.  I was speaking at a conference today and there were sales people standing on booths, really?  I thought one might have a fax!

We were talking to a tech company the other day and they told us about there cold calling campaign.  We said "really?"  You tell people you are cutting edge by cold calling them?  Bizarre. 

But there is a solution and it's already being used.  Social Media.

The difference is that you currently use it tactically, but in all departments; Marketing, Sales, Customer Service, Human Resources, Procurement, Supply Chain.  But you are using it.  And you team will have already voted with their feet to use it.  Social media is natural, it's friction free and to a certain extent free.

First you need a strategy, so you get the leadership together and get them to understand the strategic imperative, revenue opportunity, competitive advantage and how you can strip out cost through the use of social.  This is not about teaching the CEO how to use twitter.

Second, empower the sales team to sell through social, after all in 2019, social selling will be just selling, as it has pretty much come business as usual.

Third, activate and empower the employees to talk on social.

The program should be self financing as the additional revenue you will get through salesm can be reinvested socially enabling all of the business; Marketing, HR, Customer service, Procurement, Supply Chain etc.

With a guiding light, a strategy that will work in the modern day, 2019 could just be your year!