What Is Digital Dominance and Why This Has To Be a Strategy for Your Business

Imagine this.

You are at a conference and there are a drinks event that evening where all the people from the conference are invited. 

You have a conference call which makes you late for the drinks.

You arrive and everybody is there.

As you look around the room, you realise that the people in the room are your prospects and customers. Which is great news. Each of these prospects and customers are talking to somebody, they have a drink in hand and they are laughing and joking.

The question is this, these prospects and customers, are they talking to people from your business or are they talking to the competition?

If they are talking to your people, that's going to be great and make you feel great, if they are all talking to the competition, you are going to feel a sickness in the stomach. 

Now think about this in a digital landscape, LinkedInTwitter, all the research shows that your customers are hanging out on digital somewhere. Where these prospects and customers hangout, are they talking to people from your business or a competitor? 

It's no different from the drinks event.

This is your challenge and also your opportunity.

It's time to stop hiding behind the phones and the brochures and be the business that is out there having conversations with your prospects and customers on digital. 

Your job is to do this, before the competition does it and owns the space.

Owning your market sector or vertical, is digital dominance. 

Now picture this

Tomorrow, you and I are going to meet at the lobby of your target customer. 

Imagine that I have a key card to get into the building, we wave to security and I let you through the security barriers. Impressive eh!

We walk over to the elevators and I press the button to go up to the relevant floors where we can meet with the people you need to sell to. Now you have never met these people before so i will introduce you. That will mean you will get to meet the people you need to meet in this target customer of yours.

Pick whatever department you want, I will take you there and introduce you. 

For example, say you sell accounting systems, ERP systems, then I can take you and introduce you to the people in Finance. Or maybe you sell human resources (HR) software and I take you to meet the HR people. Or maybe you sell CRM, customer experience (CX) and I can take you to meet all the people in marketing and sales.

Now if I walked you into finance, (or any of the other departments) and I started to introduce you to the people there one-by-one. Now, you wouldn't hand everybody a brochure and walk away, would you? 

This is your chance to get into the business, meet the people, build relationships. Kinda cool! 

As I introduce you to the people in your target department, you would hand them your business card. You might get people to scan the QR code on LinkedIn so you are connected. 

Either way you would also want to be remembered. So you might ask them a question about themsleves, maybe you spot that Manchester United mug on their desk, the Nick Saban bobblehead (doll). The photo of their family on their desk, you would start a conversation about them. You might crack a joke. You would start building trust. Maybe you would ask them about the business, be curious about them and the company?

As I walk you around the department, and introduce you to more and more people, you would get to know more and more people and the department would get to know you. In fact the whole department will know you, just think of the competitive advantage you now have.

We haven't needed to talk about product, we are connecting as humans, we are having conversations. We are being social. 

Just through this simple way of showing you around and introducing you to people, you are front of mind and your competition is not. This is so powerful!

I've now walked you around the whole department, they know you, you know them. It's time to see the big boss and I take you in and introduce you. 

You look around the office and see the photos of her fly fishing, you talk about when you had a fly fishing lesson in Scotland when you visited there last. You connect, you have a conversation. 

One of the things we do in life is find commonality with each other, because when we do that we start to know, like and trust each other.  

You then ask her some of the business related issues you picked these pointers up from her staff you have been talking to.  

If it's finance you might ask her about how long it takes to close the month end books, if it's human resources it might be about sourcing internal talent, if it's CRM you might ask about onboarding sales people.

I could go on, but you should get the picture now. 

It does not matter if you know nobody in this company, they could even be using a competitive solution. But by the time I've walked you around, they know you, they know you as a human, they are aware that you work for a company and you didn't even need to pitch to them. Now it's time to start moving some of those conversations to commercial interaction.

This is social selling

Now you can stop imagining, what I've described to you is social selling.

This is so powerful, so natural and is the killer blow you need today. 

Related: It’s Not Visibility You Want, Today You Need Qualified Relevance