by Tim Hughes | @Timothy_Hughes | LinkedIn
Social has made a massive impact to the hotel market from sales and marketing to design.
I was walking through a hotel in London thinking there was little to Instagram. Now you might think that is a vain thing to admit, but it’s a reality. Visiting a Hilton hotel in Florida last October for a sales kick off we were running a workshop in. This was a new build and it was built with many purposes but one was to make sure you shared details on-line. And like all industries, social has an impact on the way we live and work.
I can remember when websites meant you didn’t need to call reception / lobby of a hotel to book a room. That was probably 20 years ago. Then came comparison websites. Comparison websites means you are selling a commodity. Where most people will buy on price. I’m sure there are people reading this who may have never booked a hotel by calling them up and negotiating with the receptionist for a rate and a room. My partner and I have just booked our holiday for this year, the whole lot including flights was done on-line. No surprise I’m sure, but reader this is the same for all products and services from a car to a $500 Million outsourcing deal.
I admit with the outsourcing deal you will want to speak to a salesperson, but you will still do a load of research on-line and then when you talk to somebody it will be a solution expert you want rather than a “salesperson”.
The Hotel’s reaction to this was loyalty programs. I once was a Hilton platinum card holder or whatever the top band was. I wouldn’t stay anywhere else, until Airbnb came along and the value proposition changed again.
In the B2B world we moved from on premise to Cloud / SaaS, our value proposition changed, but have we changed the way we sell? Not Really?
I’m not sure all B2B companies will want an Instgramable office, but if you have been in a WeWork you will know that this is idea for sharing on social. But imagine the power of people sharing and amplifying your content without you paying them?
The point I’m making is that social media is making an impact on society, it’s making an impact to the way we live, work and think. So why does it not impact on the way we sell and market? Do we just react with a “sticking plaster” response while we wait for a new kid / disrupted to turn the market on it’s head.
Can you imagine what some of our on premise salespeople thought when they went from 18 sales cycles to find a competitor closed at the first meeting. Sales Cycles’s went from 18 to 3 months overnight to weeks. And you still sell the way you did 10 or 20 years ago, I’m sorry but either you are teflon or that bad quarter maybe more than just a bad quarter.
But Social Selling is new and unproven? Er no. The ROI was proven 3 years ago, the myth that social selling takes a long time, has been lost with the people that perpetrated it. Social selling has been to proven to more efficient and effective than legacy sales methods like cold calling. Social selling isn’t new and funky, it’s business as usual.
It’s a common sense reaction and natural reaction to the way buyers now buy in the connected economy.
So what is holding you back?
People who read this article also read these:
http://www.social-experts.net/social-selling-is-a-bacon-roll-for-your-business/
http://www.social-experts.net/could-it-be-time-to-call-a-cab/
http://www.social-experts.net/why-you-must-shift-your-marketing-to-a-millennials/
