I’m amazed how quickly the world has changed, I’m trying to get a meeting with a friend of mine and he said he would be free, after three in the afternoon. Strange, I though, because I had a pre-covid19 mindset. Dave has children, surely he would be free, before three as the children are at school.
But of course, in the world of the Coronavirus, he is home schooling his kids, so he day is taken up schooling them and he is free after three. My point is, even in this simple example is that the world that has turned on its head and even now our mindsets (while mine anyway) still isn’t thinking with “the program”.
In the past, I worked for organisations where sales plans and marketing plans didn’t change. We just deleted 2019 of the market plans power point slides and added 2020. We upped the figures by 20%, expecting to get 10% signed off from our bosses. An annual song and dance. From a Sales prospective, apart from the usual coming and going of salespeople, there was an annual move around of sales people and accounts. But nothing really changed.
But there again, it didn’t need to.
Life was good. There was always somebody in sales that did a big deal that save the number. There was always a big event that marketing could muster around. The number was done, the bonuses were paid. Mortgages were paid, car payments made and food placed on table.
But like my friend above, things have been turned on its head.
The thing is, Covid19 means we have limited cash, the business we once closed, cannot guarantee will happen.
As a business leader, you have to look at the cost of sales. What I mean by that is that we have to look at the cost of sales and marketing. The plans that we ran in a pre-covid_19 world will not be fit for purpose and you may not realise this until you have run out of cash.
But you trust your people, right?
In times like this, people will always stick with what they know, whether this is right or wrong. It is in times like these where people won’t take risks as they are scared of losing their jobs. As leaders you have to create an environment, where risk taking is seen as OK. Why? Because the pre-covid19 plan won’t work and you need to change and that will mean you need to take risks.
As a leader you need to check every line in the marketing budget and see if, really, really, really, it will work. You have to get Marketing to justify, every line of spend.
There are somethings that in times like this you need to bin. Branding for example, pointless you having a brand, if you run out of cash. You have to switch too simple. Your salesforce needs leads and meetings, as it’s only sales that are going to generate you cash in the short and medium term. Long term does not exist.
In sales, you will make savings as you won’t have the expensive meals and travel to pay for as your sales teams won’t be entertaining clients or even meeting them. All sales is now taking place through Teams. Zoom etc and taking place on social media, Linkedin for example.
What you need in sales is your sales teams programatically making and building relationships on social media. This after all can be done in real time.
Now a number of you will be saying to me right now you already do this. Come on, be honest with me. Go and look at your Linkedin profile and look at your marketing people’s LinkedIn profile and look at your sales people’s Linkedin profile now compare them to mine. https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothyhughessocialselling/
Does it create, curiosity in your prospects? Does it create inbound? Are you connecting with people? Are you connecting with people and they actually want to connect with you? Are you using Linkedin to prospect? Are you joining conversations with your prospects and doing this at scale? Are you using content to move deals through the pipeline and close deals?
We expect each of the people we train in social selling to be able to make (if they do what we say) at least one additional meeting per week. Let’s assume that 4 of those meetings turn into proposals and you close 1 of those proposals. That means you are closing one additional deal per quarter. If your average deal size is $100,000, then each sales person is closing an additional $400,000 per year. As sales team of 10 will create $4 million additional revenue per annum. This isn’t a one off, this is every year.
Many of our customers have also realised that by empowering the sales people to use social, they are the people initiating the conversation with the customer. This reduces the sales cycle by 40%. I’ll leave you to discuss that with Marketing.
Here at DLA Ignite, we are not pivoting, we have been transforming companies to do this for four years. Exactly how I have explained above. We have the track record, we also know what when we run our social selling programs the results are repeatable and predictable. In fact, we have done this so many times that we are a low risk option.
If you want to get out of this mess, maybe it’s time to talk to us.
Related: Covid19: Why You Shouldn’t Furlough Your Sales People