New Decade, Time to change!

So, it’s here, 2020 that is.

And what will you change to ensure your success for this new year?

If you’re like most executive management teams you have relied on a budgetary process to provide the revenue targets for you and your teams and are now working feverishly to convert this into the activities required.

Or worse, maybe you’ve simply taken the total revenue targets and broken it out among your team based on last year’s results assuming the same average performance levels with required growth?

Either way, this is a make-work process that will yield poor results. Let’s be honest, this is what you did last year and the year before that! Was there really a significant and lasting improvement?

Your organization and your team need to plan out all activities in the upcoming year down to individual KPI's (key performance indicators) to ensure results.

What are these activities and should they be the same as last year? OR, Should you be including activities as related to reaching and engaging customers and key contacts online? 

This is what we most commonly hear from many companies today;

“That’s a big change and sounds like a lot of work when we are doing ok now. We have many higher priority projects to complete first"

Here is a common planning view we see from many companies today:

So, what’s wrong with this plan? 

Where to start...well as common as this is, it’s also what’s wrong with executive management today as it neglects to look at any other potential activities that could be considered. 

Further, rather than understanding why any one category of activities is providing less results it simply puts less emphasis on some while increasing others. Sadly this kind of shallow planning is very common especially when overall sales results have still grown year over year for the last 5+ years or more. Even though growth is lower than target, it's "GOOD ENOUGH"!

Let’s face it, the economy remains strong and for most organizations, they have been able to hold on to low levels of growth lulling them into a false sense of security. 

Because of this, they have failed to notice how their customers and prospects are actually buying. They assume that what worked 10 years ago or 5 years ago must still be working today we just need to adjust our spend on those areas that are stronger than others. Even worse, when it comes to paid advertising, most companies have been doubling down or even tripling down.

This has led to a spiraling of higher costs per click across almost every industry, with far fewer results based on much higher competition.

In fact while results have grown slightly or remained static, costs have significantly increased

The answer is, don't throw even more money on those areas with a deteriorating return, but we need to understand why?

1. Why are cold calls less effective?
2. Why are trade shows less effective?
3. Why are email campaigns less effective?
4. Why is paid advertising less effective? 

Customers do not answer calls from those numbers they don’t know and Apple along with Android now have software built-in so they don’t even have to!!

Trade shows have been slowly losing their impact for years like a slow leak in a tire...putting more air in the tire won’t fix the problem! 

Email campaigns unless authorized are either spam and blocked accordingly or worse are in some areas, illegal. 

Paid advertising such as pay per click are simply not as effective as people actually ignore the paid result instead they are opting for the organic results. 

So what’s going on? 

Think about this. Customers are doing exactly what you are doing! They are researching absolutely everything they are interested in.

This means they don’t need to roam trade shows or scan emails looking for your amazing solutions.

Simply put, they can find exactly what they want, when they want it, on their smartphone.

The only question you need to answer is this.... “Do you or your organization come up when they search for what they need on google or any platform they may be looking on? “

If the answer is NO than you need to throw out all the planning you have done and start again. 

Let’s start again. 

Below you will see a chart that lays out a planning guide we use for those activities that do work. 

*If you would like a copy of this planning tool, just DM me at any of the links below

Now while putting these activities in place will make a huge impact, just recreating this for yourself and your team will not work.

Why is that? 

Because let’s be honest, you don’t believe in social selling !!

Further, you don't know how it works, yet.

So what to do.

Firstly, you need to understand not only how it works and how to use it, but also that it is critical to your future no matter what your current role is. From there you can learn what the steps are and begin to plan out how to move forward as a complete organization, not just sales & marketing.

This is going to require not just yourself but all the amazing people in your marketing and HR department as well. This is another seismic shift. Sales and marketing are no longer separate, they are one... RESISTANCE IS FUTILE, YOU NEED TO ASSIMILATE! 

In the many articles and blogs I have written you will find many of the answers you seek. Further, there are many other leaders in the industry you can also read on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc.

From there the next step is to reach out directly and find out how to really change your results for 2020 and beyond!

Change may be hard, but it's the one constant we can all agree on, look forward to hearing from you!

Thomas Ross

Co-Founder Social Selling HQ

Twitter

** An overwhelming number of companies are still stuck in the mindset that social media is the domain of marketing rather than sales. As buying patterns continue to evolve this is an increasingly dangerous position to take. More and more every day, buyers are reaching out via social channels rather than phone or email, and your sales team needs to be equipped to properly follow-up with these leads. **

Want to read more? Follow me on twitter, take a look at our Webpage, or just send me a message!

Want to read more? Follow me on twitter, take a look at our blog, or just send me a message! @TRsocialselling || @ExpoSalesLtd