The proof of the pudding…

It is amazing how many people buy social transformation from organisations that are literally one step ahead…or less!

As we continue to grow and engage with more organisations we are finding time and again that we are following-in behind well-meaning consultancies that have “methodologies” which seem to yield no benefit whatsoever for the client (or so the client tells us anyway).

Social selling is a great example of that. We seem increasingly to be bumping in to “the usual suspects” where the client has been through the entirety of the programme but nothing has happened as a result of this. Sales teams have been taken off the road, webinars have been sat through, platitudes have been spoken and accreditations have been earned. But then. Nothing.

Sales teams go back to doing what they have always done.

I know that in a training situation it is impossible to legislate for whether everyone improves, but sometimes these off-the-shelf programmes make perfect sense in the office of the company putting them together but they fail to communicate what they need to to the client. Or perhaps they communicate perfectly but fail to elicit that behavioural change that they need to in order to be deemed a success.

One such company we have been working with recently has been engaging with a social selling vendor who has been fortunate enough to win a global contract with the client, but we are currently working with a team that have been through the entire process and even got their “certificates” at the end. The problem is that a certificate with attendee's name on really doesn’t add much value to the company. You know what does? Sales!

So this company has commissioned us to run a three month pilot with a group of hardened business development and sales leaders. People who have "been there and done that".

Week one as we delivered our first “personal branding” session there were a few raised eyebrows and comments like “I don’t believe that this is going to make a difference to me” or “this is not what the others told us to do” however we cajoled and bullied them in to doing what we said. 

The next classroom session was “how to grow your network” covering how to identify people you should connect to and how to connect so that you will get the result you want. This once again had a few raised eyebrows…but they new the form, we weren't going to let them not do what we said. So they suspended their disbelief and got on with it.

One particularly “cheeky” individual sat at the back typing (and listening) for the entire session and by the time I got home I had received an email from him saying “during the session I sent 10 connection requests, 50% accepted immediately and 4 out of those 5 proactively asked me for a meeting.” We are led to believe subsequently that 3 of those are now deals in the pipeline.

The amazing thing is that one of those new connections and meetings had been someone that they had been trying to get in touch with through “traditional” channels for nearly a year.

In fairness this is not always the case. It doesn't always work as quickly and as well as this. Not often is a company able to add over $1,000,000 of deals to their pipeline within a couple of weeks of starting on our social selling programme. But what is aways the case is that there will be a benefit...and a significant one at that.

We know that when you're trying to create a behavioural and cultural change amongst sales teams or across organisations simply running a webinar (or reading a book, or going to a conference) isn’t going to move the needle.

To make a difference there need to be a number of cornerstones in place:

• Credibility; if the person delivering the strategy, training or insight has read it, rather than done it, nobody will be listening.
• Passion; if I as the person delivering the message don’t really care, then why should you, the person listening
• Expertise; giving a well rehearsed keynote proves nothing (other than you can deliver from a script) facing questions does, and only an expert can do this
• Empowerment; be it the stage or the seminar room, this is NOT platform for me to show how much I know, it is a platform for me to show how much YOU know and empower you to use it
• Process; Tim always jokes about how I say to people “he’s not great but he works hard”…in fact he IS great, but he works hard. The lesson is that there is no substitute for hard work and diligence, but we have some processes developed by Tim that can make the “I don’t have time” argument less relevant
• Habits; to do something different tomorrow than you’ve been doing for months/years requires a change of habit not a two day training seminar…we understand this and make sure that you are a different person at the end of the programme
• Objectives; the deliverables need to be clearly articulated and they need to be reasonable. We NEVER fail to overachieve…but others make claims about how little will need to be done to revolutionise your business.

So, I guess what I’m trying to say is that before you commission any organisation to help with your social selling, social media marketing, social strategy or any other part of the social transformation within your organisation ask them about each of those points and make sure they give you a good answer. And, ultimately, know that if anyone tells you it’s going to be easy…they’re lying.

But don’t let that put you off because there’s a pot of gold at the end of this rainbow…and it’s a big one!

About the Author

Adam Gray is co-founder of Digital Leadership Associates a company that provides support and guidance in all areas of Social media. Adam can be contacted on Twitter @agsocialmedia or [email protected].

Digital Leadership Associates 

Digital Leadership Associates is a consultancy to help companies move to digital and social. Set up by Social Selling guru and bestselling author, Tim Hughes @timothy_hughes and myself. DLA provides advice and guidance to companies, given by actual Social practitioners, that is people with experience in social media, social and digital transformations.  Check out our website or contact me at [email protected]