It’s time to play catch-up or better yet, leap frog some internal challenges. For the past year, I’ve been speaking to business audiences about the importance of seeing the enterprise as a single social entity that knows enough about about customer/client behavior to change competitive landscapes. The challenge for many businesses is that they still direct and manage their organizations in a way that re-enforces a culture of silos. Silos as it turns out, fear the sharing of information and this is the exact opposite of what customers and clients have outside the business.

What starts on the outside finds its way in

Did your organization once block email? The Internet? Is it blocking social tools? I’m not talking about facebook, I’m talking about information sharing platforms that make it easier to understand, market to, sell to, and support clients or customers? Like most of the tools businesses once thought were evil, internal social platforms have the ability to transform the inside of a business from a culture of walled competition to cooperative success. IMHO, ignoring these platforms is a sign that some organizations reward building fiefdoms over satisfying customers.

Remember that customers and clients use social technologies to simplify their lives everyday and they come to expect the businesses they buy from to do the same.

What are your thoughts on tools that are banned from business and the reasons why?

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For start ups and new ideas there is something intoxicating about the word disruptive. It many cases, the organization looks at the competitive landscape and concludes their idea to be disruptive and to a certain degree they may be right. Disrupt a competitor and they might take their eye of the ball. But it is not the competitor a smart company looks to disrupt, it is the competitor’s consumer. A true disruptive idea has taken into consideration the nature of the buyer, their habits and behaviors in the same way a well thought out sales and marketing strategy has thought through the Ideal Market and Client Profiles to the point where certain needs can be directly addressed in a disruptive way. In other words – Our messages directly address known and or unknown pains and open the door to a discussion about solutions that are directly beneficial to the buyer’s top or bottom line. To displace a current method or idea, we listen more than talk to uncover more opportunities where we can add value. This is very much the same way social media works for companies floating new ideas.Talking too much is a sign that a sales representative is interested in his or herself is more interested in how great their product or service is, not the pain the buyer is experiencing.

Here are a few points to consider:

• Disruption in sales and marketing requires a complete understanding of the buyers environment, motivators and assumptions
• In order to be disruptive, communications must displace something that is important enough to the buyer to motivate them to take action
• Unless the pain is grater than other buyer considerations, the sale will not close
• Pushing the buyer (not listening) will increase resistance
• Manipulating the buyer will cause eventual backlash and with social media as a tool, the buyer may damage to the brand

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Is the Concept Disruptive?

Lets say that we want to disrupt the home delivery of bottled water. We create a filtration system. On the surface this idea could save a consumer hundreds of dollars a year. It is cheaper than delivery and takes up less space, or does it? In reality, a device has to be attached to a faucet or take up room in the refrigerator rather than occupy space on the floor. From the consumer’s point of view, until the cost of bottled water rises, other methods of filtering water become more friendly, or they understand the cost offset, the inconvenience factor is not enough to disrupt their current behavior.

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