When your manager says "Look, just go and do social media" you won't get results!, Tim Hughes

We often have sales people come to us and say, my boss has said "just go and do social media".

The latest person who told us his leadership told him this, has been posting on social media for 3 years and was getting nothing. He recently attended a presentation by one of the DLA Ignite team in Scotland and he put up a post and got 60 likes.

Now a post with 60 likes by itself is pretty useless unless there is a methodology behind it to capitalize on it, but it's proof to the sales guy that this social selling works.

The digital hope strategy

We see it time after time, where businesses "just go and do social media", the usual start place is spamming people on social, often with a tool.

I had a CEO spam me with a tool just the other day. I asked him did he really understand what he was doing and that it LinkedIn will ban him if they catch him. Never to have his account open again.

(The Linkedin terms and conditions are here and you need to read clause 8.2.)

After all, "a fool with a tool is still a fool"

The next step is the LinkedIn trainer. Of course, all you need to know is about the tool, right? No.

Social selling, is like planting a garden, there are things you need to know, but just learning to use a spade isn't going to help you have an amazing garden.

We got a guy on the phone the other day who had taken the LinkedIn trainer route and we showed him a few things of what he was doing versus, what we do and there was a "penny drop" moment, or as my colleague Eric Doyle says "a thunk moment".

Come on, we all know hope isn't a strategy.

Your team won't work out social selling in terms of a process, it does not matter how many "hints and tips" sessions and LinkedIn trainers you hire.

Social selling is a process, it's a methodology.

How do I get my CEO who isn't even on LinkedIn to pay for a social selling course?

Very simple, get us to come and present to your management team.

No sales pitches, no opinions, just research and case study after case study.

Obviously if your CEO won't listen to case studies from in your industry and from your competitors, you probably need to leave.

But we can help you, just like we helped the sales guy above.

Remember you have to ask yourself two questions about social.

1. How much of my social activity is generating meetings / leads / conversations .... because we know conversations create sales and

2. How much revenue are we generating with our activity on social?

Because, if our activity on social is not a profit, it's a loss!

So who's social selling?

In case you missed it, the Bank of America’s Merrill Lynch have banned cold calling and have moved all their people to social selling. This isn't some trendy tech company that might have decided to do this on a whim, this is a very conservative financial services company that has made a decision based on data.

But surely cold calling has a better ROI than social selling? Not according to Merrill Lynch.

"They will also be encouraged to contact prospects over LinkedIn, which has a higher hit rate than cold calling"

The CRO (chief revenue officer), Richard Eltham of Namos Solutions, of one of clients posted a comment on LinkedIn about social selling. See here.

“Social selling is not an option now it is the way of the world and you either learn and execute it or fear getting left behind”

Kevin Murray who is the Head of Sales at MacArtney Underwater Technology recently posted about his success with social selling here and wrote an article about the transformation that has happened in sales here.

I don't believe you Tim!

If you check out this video of Chris Mason CEO at Oracle reseller Namos, fast forward to 19 minutes 55 seconds. Chris talks about a $2.6 million win from being on social, after completing the DLA Ignite social selling and influence course.

Here at DLA Ignite we don't do "hints and tips sessions" we don't want you to waste your money. Our social selling and influence methodology will provide your sales team with the stable platform for growth. It is also the only social selling program based on 70:20:10 change management principles which gives your business the mindset change and habit change they need in this digital world.

Other articles you might be interested in ....

Would you buy social selling training course from somebody that doesn't use social selling?

How to create budget and build a business case for your social selling project