Social Selling is the 2014 challenge for the Enterprise Company

Happy social selling in 2014
Among large companies top management, it is a common misconception that all involved in social media and selling is either placed in marketing and or sales department. It is extremely important that top management is fully committed to communicating with customers and helps to bring value and Content into the dialogue with customers. The first step in this process is to have a social strategy, where working with social strategies are clearly defined and formulated so everyone knows what to do to ensure a successful social media/selling engagement. 

The traditional sales cycle process changes due to a number of factors.

·      First the decission makers in the B2B market changes, where it was the It-manager taking the decission when IT had to be purchased it is now the CFO who take the decission on recomandation of the It-manager.

·      When it in the past was mainly price and features which was the overall decission factors it is now the value creation towards the purchasing company which is top of the decission line.

·      When it was the marketing messages and the product catalougees that decided what the company should purchase it is now the experience of  other customers and their rating of the selling company value creation model which makes the customer take a purchase decission.

Enterprise Companies must fundamentally alter their marketing strategies and quickly adapt to the social selling ecosystem. To be able to take advantage of the new social dynamic environment the enterprise management must start to:

·      Gain real time knowledge of the customer decision behavior.

·      Understand the customer’s individual needs and engage in relevant communities creating valuable useful information.

Social Media has reached a new level

Social Media has reached a level where all the target-buying groups (prospects and customers) are freely offering information about themselves, their buying behavior and their communication with other potential customers. The customers are giving free feedback on their opinion of the products and services they want to buy or just have bought from any enterprise company in the same target group as your company are working in.  It is time for the enterprise company to be able to collect all the data being produced every minute of the day (Big Data) and process the data so it can be used to support the social selling.

Social selling has created a world where even B2B buying decisions start , progress and reach the closing point with little or non face-to-face collaboration. The Pre-Social Media selling where the B2B buying was governed by the face-to-face sale, the product catalough and the marketing communication sent out from the enterprise company is now beeing deminished and is under presiour from the social communication going on among customers.

The B2B sales force are feeling the presiour and know if they should keep their specialist position they need to participate in the conversation going on in the Social Media univers. The sales departments are seeing that a real shift in communication is taking place, and therefore they must urge their B2B sales people to take advantage of the power that social media content offer as a sales tool to create new prospects and keep into the collaboration with their customers.

This is where 2014 will force enterprise companies to adopt social selling in greater numbers.

Happy social New Year

Social Media trends for 2014 – What should enterprises expect?

Social media as a communication form has changed completely the interaction between people and organizations.  Social media has lifted the communication from the few –to- many over to the many-to-many.  The communication has moved from “we tell you” to  “Tell each other” and we as enterprise will listen to your conversation. Enterprises will collect the Big data to “paint” a picture of your purchase behaviour and your “Likes” in your conversation to be able to sell you what you need. Having a social media strategy has suddenly become a necessity if the enterprise wants to succeed.

But being social continues to mature and the various buying segments will change and mature – you will properly see that target groups will be younger and demand more from you as an enterprise both in terms of price and performance and ethics.

“A picture says more than thousand words”

The famous phrase “One picture is worth a thousand words” is quit actual as the younger generation are requesting a more visual experience on the Social Media. The Social Media App Instagram.com is a brilliant example of how you use pictures to show your world of food, clothing and travel among other things. You can choose to follow a magazine a designer who will show his or her world in a visual stile using pictures when it is on Instagram.com. Another possibility is, you can ad your own video on YouTube and upload your own mobile phone video production in a few minutes.  This visual way of expressing one self is true of younger generations who are the future customers, which put a pressure on enterprise organizations to change their practices and embrace the visual experience. According to Apu Gupta the co-founder of Curalate.com; Enterprises need to find tools, which can measure and understand imagery and visual cues are most likely to be successful in leveraging Social.

“You need to be quick in responding to your customers and witty as well”

Social is often a live interaction between customers and enterprises, where the enterprise company need to be quick in responding to comments on their products and actions with knowledge and witty, using Twitter to do it short and precise. It is a must but can be a challenge for an enterprise company to respond to costumers and events in real time and herby use this concept to their competitive advantage.  Brands known for using this strategy is Old Spice with the witty and Caricature Old Spice man. This brand story went into a communication between the actor and brand been asked by costumers everything from wedding to when the next video will appear. The case of Old Spice tells us that enterprises need to be constantly monitoring social channels to respond to any customer or make the most out of a given situation. 

“Quality over quantity and an ethic touch”

It is important in all communication to have a high quality instead of a big quantity – WHY!! – obvious you need to send a clear and simple message to costumers which spot on in a collaborative way state the message in a clear context and content. Look at the most successful enterprises in modern time all with out any doubt have had a clear and relevant message to their costumers. Relevant messages addressed to me with a clear content and context will have my doled attention, and a higher possible rate of purchase. The social web needs to be a platform for sharing quality content and context to engage interested users.  And then you can not as an enterprise start cheating with your quality to increase your quantity. On top of your quality you need to be able to appear as an ethical correct thinking and acting enterprise company - this is an expectation from costumers.

Collaboration is everything

Collaboration is everything when we are talking Social Media. Collaboration is both the nightmare for the enterprise and a Hugh advantage. The nightmare appears when and if the conversations among costumers turn into a negative dialog where the offering from the enterprise is scowled instead of being praised for the value created to costumers. The Hugh advantage for the enterprise comes when social collaboration turns into the praising and positive conversation among costumers and their friends and herby is marketing and driving sales for the enterprise. There is a trend in social collaboration where costumers are interested in asking trusted “friends” for advice about products and services before purchasing anything. The strategy for the enterprise is to create value into the collaboration to secure a praising of the enterprise products and services among costumers “trusted friends”.

User generated content is the soul of Social media

Social Media has the ability to bring different people together often because a user has generated content, which appears to have the interest of another person. User generated content is the soul of Social Media, and enterprise should embrace it and provide customers with the space to interact with each other. For the enterprise company it is about listening to your customers and make sure that you will host the forum where the conversation takes place. It is a matter of grapping the conversation and be able to apply the knowledge of the conversation into the brand of the enterprise. This will give you as an enterprise a competitive advantage. An example where an enterprise company could use their costumers input and conversation is the chocolate producer Tom´s. In December they produce a Christmas chocolate calendar for children. Apparently a lot of parents have experience that when the children opened December 4^th there was no chocolate inside the box – some parents was very angry in their social media communication towards Tom´s chocolate due to sad children who did not have their expectations fulfilled. The Marketing director from Tom´s had to answer the angry parents. He had the possibility to send the costumers some chocolate and whish them a merry Christmas and herby show how Tom´s protect their brand towards mistakes in production. Tom´s are living of having happy costumers. User generated content suddenly have a power addressing several other of the enterprise costumers. Enterprises have to react and respond and use the content to secure future mistakes.

The conclusion of the above trends for 2014 keep the pressure for the enterprise organizations to continually addressing the issue of Social care and expand the delivery of customer service over the social channels. Customers expect enterprise companies to use the social media as an extension of service delivery.

Merry Christmas and happy Social Media year

Will the use of Social media be jeopardized by NSA surveillance?

During the latest month NSA has been exposed in systematic surveillance of conversation on Social Media and other cloud based forums. A former NSA analytic Mr Snowden has exposed this systematic surveillance. This exposure has given Enterprises a wake up-call that US surveillance is not about national security for the United States, but in general of industrial espionage on enterprise companies outside USA. 
The most embarrassing case is without any doubt the interception of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's phone. But significant companies with an interest in the U.S. domestic market has undoubtedly not been listed in the systematic monitoring by the NSA. How do we as nations, individuals and companies relate us to systematically monitoring of our social media footprint. Or, are there, far more important issues that we as individuals need still in this new monitoring reality to take care of?  The relevant questions to ask here is perhaps:
Are we creating an information society, in which every Social Media conversation, cell phone photograph or other record of personal behaviour is transmitted not to police but to the world at large?
Do we want to jepodize our democraticaly right to speak and express our opinion with-out beeing afraid of some organizations will monitorize us ?

Do we want to chill behavior and spech with the fear that an unpopular comment or embarassing slip will call forth vituperative criticism and perhaps even adversely affect careers or reputations?

Do we need to constantly monitor what we say or do in restaurants, at sporting events, on public sidewalks or even private parties ?

This is worth to have a national and global debate about to secure that our new social independence – the conversation many to many  - will be able to continue freely. Everybody who are using the social media must start introducing a self-criticism, which does not create limitations in our use of social media but ensure that we become more worthwhile in the use of the medium. This debate of how we are using social media needs to be as much about our culture as of our law.


There are no doubt, that a constant surveillance will jeopardize how enterprise organizations will use Social Media in the future. The competitive advantage of beeing an american company,with an inteligence services, who are producing vital information which could be used by homeland industry, could develop the competitive advantage for the americans knowing what their European and Asian competitor are doing in the same field of work. As a privat person we must be aware of how we behave on the social media platform to secure our intrigity and independence to have the ability of free speech on the www.

From Social Media to Social profitability

During my many blogs addressing the collaborative social media tool of communicating from many to many, and giving enterprises the possibility to enter new markets and having new information of their costumers, it should be quite obvious that using social media is all about creating profitability in the enterprise.

Marketing has owned Social Media.

Social Media has been owned by the marketing department, who has used it to justify their increased value on revenue generating in the enterprise.  In fact Social Media is not a tool to justify the marketing department’s value towards the enterprise organization, social media is all about driving revenue, EBITDA, earnings per share and competitive advantage – it is a strategic element which should have the CEO´s and the top management’s top priority.  

CEO should take charge of Social profitability

The CEO´s has to take charge of the social media / social profitability to be able to control the profit of the enterprise company. The strategic value of social media/Social profitability is to gain increased revenue, competitive advantage and profit, all key performance indicators which should be in the top management’s highest priority. Another advantage of a social profitability strategy is a change in the information flow between departments in the enterprise company. Social profitability re-defines the flows of information and decision making between departments in the enterprise company. Changing focus from Social Media to social profitability you will have the entire enterprise organization from HR, Marketing, and Finance to production in the group as stakeholders. The CEO as the main stakeholder in the Social profitability should start asking the questions such as:

• How can social profitability affect the enterprise competitive advantage?
• What is the role of Social profitability within the enterprise branded business system, both internally and externally?
• What are the associated resource and capability implications?
• How are we applying social profitability outside of the marketing department?

When the CEO takes charge of social profitability – the marketing department can operate again.

With the CEO as the main lead of social profitability, the CEO will relief the Marketing Department from the burden of seeing the cross-enterprise potential of Social profitability and not having the authority to make it happen on their own. Functionally speaking, Marketing could very well continue to press the buttons on social profitability, with the difference that it now will be fully supported with the authority of the CEO.

The outcome of this change in lead and responsibility of your social profitability strategy will be embedded throughout the enterprise organization. The advantage for the Marketing Department is that the social profitability strategy is not seen as a marketing tool but instead as a means of driving profitability throughout the entire value chain.

Can social software help reducing youth unemployment in Europe?

There is no doubt that Europe faces three major challenges;

1. The growing unemployment among European youth
2. The increase of old people getting older
3. The structural and economic difference between north, south and east, west Europe

We have to face these challenges and find solutions in order to save our democracy, or we could have the same situation with social unrest they have in North Africa and Middle East. We in Western Europe have used a lot of means to save banks from collapsing – this has been wise to a certain point – now we need to solve the underlying problems. In the following I will try to look into how the new social culture and use of social media can help the European youth.

The growing unemployment among European youth!

 One of these problems is youth unemployment, which is a derivative of the banks' lack of lending to businesses who want to increase their business, compare also to potential entrepreneurs. Banks' reluctance has caused problems for society's growth and thus indirectly contributes to increasing youth unemployment. When a country as Spain reaches an unemployment rate among youth on 

56, 1 %[1] we are starting to loose a generation.

Europe needs to have some quick solutions and start to think out of the box to be able to recover from such a crisis situation of loosing a generation. The south European countries – Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal are in a massive danger zone where unrest and instability are causing trouble for democracy and creating possibility for extremist political fractions.

How can Social Media help to create new jobs?

Social Media and the social software used by the enterprises generate new opportunities of where a person should be situated and make it possible to have young people working in teams on a virtual basis. The Social Software market generally supports people working in teams, communities or networks which is ideal for cross boarder working and even with different cultures. The Social Software is not product or market specific, it is used to support a variety of collaborative activities within the enterprises, used by their employees and also by external costumers and suppliers and partners to create value for the enterprise.

With the collaborative social software it is possible to have employees present in various regions as the software is designed to be shared among teams and groups who are not forced to be situated in the same office or even region. The purpose of this virtual environment is to engage participants across the whole organization to create, organize and share information, as well as find, connect and interact with each other. This will in the long term secure that enterprises will be able to engage employees where the costumers are without creating expenses that can not be covered by the revenue that the social software creates. Social software includes both applications, which deliver specific functionality out of the box (functionality such as shared workspaces or communities) or platforms, with capabilities that can be used as a basis for contextual collaborative applications.  Where it is most interesting for the enterprise companies is when the social software are used in communication and information sharing and project  coordination within small teams or homogeneous groups. The social software gives the enterprise companies the possibility to the sharing of best practices within a business unit as well as the encouragement of communication, networking and information exchange among employees across the whole organization or with external participants in other organizations. These possibilities make it possible to engage people in other time zones and abolish physical borders which can prevent youth from getting a job in an enterprise company in another country. The social software gives the enterprise the freedom to engage people where the market is or where the most qualified people are. This new social world creates possibilities for creative enterprises to secure a highly qualified workforce without having any boundaries and helps in general the enterprise and their users to:

• Mine their networks of contacts and acquaintances for advice, references and referrals.
• Form teams, communities or informal groups and invite external participants from other organizations.
• Work together on the same work objects – could be engineers working on an new construction – time zone and borders would not have any importance
• Discuss and comment, sharing their work.
• Organize work from their perspective
• Identify relevant work – this will be of Hugh importance for the many unemployed in southern Europe.
• Discover other people with common interests.
• Alert users to information or events that might be relevant to them and can help them in getting their next assignment
• And last but not least be able to learn from other expertise which can help in the specific region

It is important that we start getting this new social software in use to prevent a whole generation from getting a work and be part of the society both in own country but also abroad. We need this to happen fast to stop this evil circle of youth unemployment.

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[1] The Guardian
September 2, 2013

How to run Social Blogs with your enterprise costumers

One of the most important things to do for an enterprise organization or an interest association is to facilitate the dialog with their costumers and make them interact on their behalf and be the facilitator for the dialog. What is important for an organization or an association is to make the communication interactive among their costumers or members to make them share information and create many-to-many conversations. These conversations can be applied in the enterprise organizations production or in the interest association member creation structure, generating mutual ideas creating new products or services with a new revenue for the organizations.

How you should NOT communicate with your members or customers

An example of what you should not do when you want to create a many-to-many conversation among your members/costumers is what the Danish Diabetes Association did to a member with a good idea.

A member of the association has created a blog: http://newwithdiabetes.blogspot.com/  for new members with diabetes.

The blog is a virtual tool box for new discovered diabetes type 1 members, who need to be properly regulated in their blood glucose level. The interest for this topic creates a lot of frustrations and anxiety for the ones who need to be properly regulated. This makes the blog a super tool of content which should be distributed to newly discovered members of diabetes 1 by the Diabetes Association.

What is in it for the association/enterprise?

The Diabetes Association has an interest in helping their members in this topic and generating more members in this category of members to expand the association. Apparently the Danish Diabetes Association’s communication department did not grab the dialog and did not want to facilitate this dialog. The Danish Diabetes Association used the first escape road – “we don’t refer to blogs but we do find your content interesting”. This escape will over time be costly and less rewarding to the Danish Diabetes Association. The value creation from the Diabetes Association is to secure that members of the association will continue to get information and discuss this information among the members to have the conversation. The problem for the association is that they will not create a dialog among their members and herby loose the grip of the members interest over time. In our Social world discussions many-to-many generates advantages and also disadvantages for enterprise companies and interest associations.

Advantages and disadvantages of social dialog

An advantage is that the associations and enterprises can generate new ideas and concepts by just listening and facilitating the dialog and herby benefit from the outcome. Most of the content developers will be proud and happy to create this content which can be used to help others and will not notice that an enterprise or an association can benefit economically on their idea.

The disadvantage for the enterprise or the association is if they reject the content from the costumer or member and then force them to create their own communication strategy towards the members or costumers the association or enterprise will not know what their members or costumers discusses and that could be fatal. When an association denies their members to have a dialog between each other by using a social blog, the association has created a negative dialog with their own members who will spoil the confidence in the association or enterprise product or cause. The outcome from such a decision can have fatal consequences for the association. One consequence could be lack of interest from the members in the associations dialog and events; another could be simple member getaway as the member community will be watched by the association rather than being facilitated. The importance of the many-to-many communication has to be recognized by enterprise and associations to get a sustainable success ahead.