This article starts with a pretty powerful paragraph.

"The pre-pandemic ways of selling and closing deals are not coming back any time soon.

We’ve seen the end of most in-person events for the foreseeable future. We may not see business travel become a common practice again until the second half of 2021, or even later.

So, how do you keep hitting your numbers, from pipeline to revenue targets, without meeting customers and prospects in-person?"

I write this here in lockdown in the UK, while the vaccination program seems to be going well here, there is no sight to the end of lockdown. A Government scientist said the other day that we will probably get a Covid vaccine every year, like we do a flu jab.  Why? To combat the new variants.  

Sorry for the doom and gloom but as business leaders we do need to build strategies based on the data we have and not strategies of hope.

What as a business do we need to do?  Back to this article.

Deliver buyer-centric, personalized digital experiences

"Your focus ... should be on creating personalized prospect and customer experiences. This means engaging the buyer through a mix of the channels they use most, such as.. LinkedIn, as well as sharing content relevant to their goals, challenges, and where they are in the buyer journey."

Shifting Buyer Preferences

We have seen shifting buyer work as everybody is online, in this January (2021) report by Simon Kemp outlines the extent that social media has become part of our lives.  


Worldwide social media users: 4.2 billion - 53.6% of the world's population use social media in other words, more people use social media than don't use it.

Simon says that "two thirds of the working population in the world is now active on social media."   Your customers, the future customers, your employees, your future employees; whoever they are  ..... are online.  But is this one piece of research, what about the other business thought leaders? 

Research From All These Companies Back This up

Mckinsey say so, Gartner say so, Hootsuite and We Are Social say so, Hubspot say so, Google say so, MIT say so, Trustradius say so Twilio say so .... 

There seems to be a clear movement between analogue and digital companies. 

A CEO just said to me

He believes in a "K" shaped recovery.  That is, with the companies that absorbed and invested in digital growing in this post-pandemic world and those that didn't invest, fading into obscurity.  He said to me...

 "there is a race on.  First we need to shock people into understanding that the world has changed.  Second, we need to give them the skills to work in the changing world."  

He went onto say "By giving my team(s) “new world” skills will gives us a competitive advantage."

Interesting that he finished by saying

"The thing is there is a “burning bridge” and we need to make sure we are over that bridge."  

Who's doing this?

We talk to a lot of people who say "we are all over social" when you ask them what this means, they are actually still treating social as a tactic.  Somebody in marketing might post something from time to time, a VP might post something and an email is sent around for everybody to "like" it.  All tactical.

I always ask people "so how much business, did you get out of your last post?"

I usually get blank looks.  I clarify my question "so how many leads or meeting do you get from your posts on social?"  If you want to see how companies are accelerating by using social as a strategy, read on.

Case Study 1.

This is Eric, he's one of the team at DLA Ignite here is a post that he put up.  We have all seen posts like this, we see them everyday, but people treat social tactically.  You post, because you think you have to or somebody tells you you should and walk away.  Let's talk about this post. 

 Eric's post of his 16 year old son, Austin, on his Birthday got 18,000 views and 165 likes, which is great.

But better still, he got 6 - C-Level meetings from this post?  How?

Let's stop and think about this for a second.  

This post took 10 minutes to create and it got 6 C-Level meetings, how come?

Because, all of Eric's post are strategic.  He knows exactly why he is posting it and knows how to monetise it.

He doesn't always post "humanised" content, I'm using this as an example.  

But an example of why you need to get your employees and sales team on social, just think of the $ impact to your business.  Especially if you scaled this across your business. 

How does Eric do this?  He builds relationships with prospects and customers and because they have a relationship with a human, not a brand, people are happy to engage.  Eric is also able to cut through the myrmid of noise that brands keep putting out.  If you are a buyer, where will you spend your time?  Reading an advert that says "buy my product because it's great" or look for the insight and educational content that people like Eric is putting out?

Case Study 2

In this case study, Danielle Guzman, talks about how Mercer, empower their employees to talk on social.  The ROI (return on investment)?  Danielle explains how Mercer as a brand will develop the business a certain amount of business, because they are well known in certain markets.  She also confirms in this video how empowering people on social and giving them personal brands gives Mercer 4 times more revenue than the brand. 

In a recent article, Nick Dangles, co-founder of Kinetic, was asked for his best advice on social selling and he said

“The best advice I can give about social selling is that it’s not about selling. It’s about creating meaningful and engaging content that will resonate with your audience. Approaching social selling with the intent of providing something of value will give much better results than simply pitching your company on social media,”  

Don’t let fears or misconceptions about digitizing hold you back

Going back to this article.

"In summary, remote selling is here to stay. Hitting revenue targets now depends on investing in ... your people. If you can execute these strategies in the face of change, the winds of 2021 will be in your favor."

Where Do We Go From Here?

Just give me, or one of the DLA Ignite team and hour of your time and we can walk you through what we are doing in the form of case studies, what we are doing for other businesses to transform them to digital.  No hard sell, just practical examples.

DLA Ignite is a global business and we understand that a "cookie cutter" approach to digital does not work, we have to take into account local language and cultural sensitivities.  Which is why we have built teams across the globe, that can support you by country and industry sector. 

For more information contact me here, visit our website, or visit our Linkedin company page and contact one of the DLA Ignite team members.