Why does digital maturity matter in the social selling age?

Why does Digital maturity matter?

The importance of automating processes, gaining efficiencies, and reducing cost within an organisation becomes more and more important. This is combined with the need to develop ever-increasing revenue streams and generating healthy profit margins. These requirements put substantial pressure on companies irrespective of whether they are small, large or global multinationals.

During the LinkedIn Social Selling event in Paris on the 5th of April 2016, all the speakers on the panel highlighted the importance of one specific trend that supports the requirements laid out above: the concept of Social Selling. This is defined as “the process of developing relationships as part of the sales process. Today this often takes place via social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, but can take place either online or offline” (Wikipedia, 2016). 

LinkedIn has made social selling more intuitive and effective with Sales Navigator

LinkedIn has made social selling more intuitive and effective with Sales Navigator: a solution that enables your organisation to expand its reach well into the global network of 414 million LinkedIn users.

During the #SocialSelling16 event in Paris, all the speakers agreed on the impact that LinkedIn has had on their organisation. The key differences between the companies represented during the event were on how social selling is enabled, and how it can become part of the corporate culture.

Top Down approach

One approach can be defined as Top Down, where the company leverages executive sponsorship to generate content to share, as well as drive adoption and give a voice to the organisation. Some examples of this: 

Jeff Weiner

Jeff Weiner is the CEO of LinkedIn, and he has more than 3 million LinkedInfollowers, and 300,000+ Twitter followers. The effect this omnipresent social media presence has will enable his strategy to be very widely shared in a very effective way.  

Marc Benioff

Marc Benioff, Salesforce’s CEO, has more than 200,000 Twitter followers, more than 17,000 LinkedIn followers and a very strong presence on Facebook. He leverages these social media platforms to 1) share his corporate vision,  2) his philanthropic work and finally 3) his  views on topics that impact him, and can shape the culture of Salesforce.  

Keith Krach

Keith Krach, the CEO of DocuSign leverages his social media presence to share his experience as an entrepreneur (having founded Ariba in the past), as well publishing exciting content about DocuSign's strategy and direction.  

The fact that the leadership of these organisations is very active on social media will have a direct positive impact on the companies they represent. A recent Harvard Business Review article states: "Digital leaders stand out from their competitors in two ways: how they put digital to work, especially in engaging with clients and suppliers, and how intensively their employees use digital tools in every aspect of their daily activities." (HBR.org, 2016) 

This digital CEO presence gives confidence into the market, and has an additional benefit in regards to the confidence employees have in their leadership  to execute on the company's digital strategy. The graph below from a recent MIT / Sloan research shows a very interesting correlation relating to the connection between confidence and digital maturity of an organisation: The full research can be found in this article: Strategy, not Technology, drives Digital Transformation

Bottom Up Approach

It needs to be said that having the leadership be present on social media is not enough. As Myriam Nessali, Directrice du Lab Innovation Business de La Poste Solutions Business, explained: the influence of a small group of very engaged individuals can have an equally strong impact on the performance of an organisation. This Bottom-up approach will work with LinkedIn Sales Navigator as this solution allows results to be tracked and will demonstrate a very rapid return on investment. 

The full research can be found in this article: Strategy, not Technology, drives Digital Transformation

What really sets the leaders apart, however, is (...): the degree to which they put digital tools in the hands of their employees to ramp up productivity" (HBR.org)

In my current role working for DocuSign (in the Dublin office), the performance of my sales team is  paramount to the success of the EMEA organisation. This means that on the one hand we need to work on excellent qualified sales leads, and on the other, we need to execute on this pipeline. As we are currently entering new markets on a very regular basis we don't always have the marketing and PR resources to support us everywhere and in every language. As a consequence, we often rely on LinkedIn / Sales Navigator to assist us in building out strategic accounts we would like to work with, as well identifying the key decision makers that the DocuSign team can work with to help develop their digital transformation agenda.

Company Wide Adoption

At DocuSign we are giving the majority of the commercial sales & sales development teams  access to the LinkedIn platform. HBR.org once more supports this perspective: "What really sets the leaders apart, however, is (...): the degree to which they put digital tools in the hands of their employees to ramp up productivity". (HBR.org, 2016) 

Giving our employees the tools for them to become "digitally enabled" will have a long term competitive advantage for the company. This is even more important considering that DocuSign works with our customers to enable their digital transformation.

We are fortunate to count LinkedIn as one of our customers, and we have worked with them to streamline their offer letter process, accelerating the recruitment process for their ever expanding sales force in Dublin and elsewhere! 

This path to Digital Maturity, supported by Social Selling, will have very strong economic / financial benefits for companies. Take, for example, a recent survey conducted by Deloitte of the most digitally mature companies in the world. The research shows that organisations that rank high on digital maturity were found to enjoy:

• 13% more revenue
• are declaring to be 50% more profitable,
• and perhaps most impressively show a 19% higher valuation than companies with a lesser digital maturity. 

Based on my experience over the last number of years combining solutions like LinkedIn and DocuSign will enable customers to become more efficient, generate more revenue and reduce costs. 

The most digital companies see outsized growth in productivity and profit margins. (HBR.org)

As per the HBR article, "The most digital companies see outsized growth in productivity and profit margins". This is something I strongly believe in. I therefore encourage every business leader to look at solutions that suit your respective organisation to facilitate the journey towards Digital maturity.

DocuSign will help  transform every business critical business process your company relies on.

From our perspective, combining LinkedIn with our own DocuSign solution has enabled us to grow the company 125% year over year the last 12 months. Why? DocuSign will help transform your critical business processes that you have come to rely on. This  could mean getting sales contracts back faster, streamlining procurement processes, or even getting your new employees recruited faster than your competitor. 

As Roger Kay says in his article on Forbes.com: "The benefits of all-digital transactions are now well understood. Such dealings are faster, easier, more pleasant, less fallible, more accurate, more secure, and more auditable (...). So, digital transaction management?  We’re going there.  It’s better, and everybody knows it. "

If you are interested in learning more, feel free to reach out, or follow me on twitter @charlieweijer. 

How DocuSign helps you improve your Digital Maturity? DocuSign Rooms: 

 Thank you,

Charlie