By Eric Le Gendre
Tribune. Are you on LinkedIn? That’s good, but why? What are you doing there? Even more important: what are your people doing and what are they doing there? What about other social networks like Twitter or Facebook? … And in real networks and cocktails? The subject is so essential that… you probably don’t know how to answer precisely.
Gold networking
is not only a subject of the field of marketing or communication, it also concerns all the sectors of the company: HR, Business Development, dissatisfied customers and CRM, relations with the suppliers…
You will tell me that you hardly have time to worry about it, which I can easily understand. But for what risks? and did you know that you could save money by reallocating budgets
Observations and findings
What do we see in fact? The basic finding is a pretty big mess in many businesses. Most of the time, there is no established or structured networking policy, few skills identified, no leadership, no direction …
We also observe a rather erratic and at least uncoordinated use of employees on social networks, and employees who can speak up indiscriminately. The profiles of your employees on LinkedIn are certainly very variable, and their levels of activity random and different. In addition, I often find that various entities preempt this area without any collaboration or coordination with other departments. In short, disorder or chaos.
Worse, for companies with multiple establishments or subsidiaries, an additional layer of chaos is induced by the scattering of teams, ideas, maturities, etc. Not to mention real networks, where there is hardly any policy of Corporate networking, and where everyone in the company goes where they want, in the networks they want,… without any coordination, let alone follow-up.
This situation hides a lack of knowledge, or even a lack of knowledge, of the real potential of effective networking, in business matters, that is to say a skill to be mastered. Hence an underutilization of the potential of virtual social networks like real networks. Without complacency, I underline that the executives are (quite) often lagging behind (cultural as technical), that the absence of internal leadership on the subject is almost general, because considered as absolutely not a priority. The proof: how long has the subject not been addressed in your CoDir?
Worse, the last avatar of this ubiquitous situation, the last “bad-good discovery” of marketing: disorderly social-selling. That is to say, sales forces that “overflow” and start bombarding and harassing prospects via social networks. With what damage … we all suffer daily.
After the observation, the analysis
This situation is after all fairly normal. It results from several very distinct phenomena and trends, but which often overlap. First of all, networking is not “a taught practice” per se, and is therefore neither popularized nor demonstrated, nor explained or structured in this sense. Few of us have learned to network. Most of us are “networking autodidacts”. It is therefore most often poorly controlled, underestimated or even badly perceived, wrongly.
Then, networking is often misunderstood by leaders who have other priorities, and who have very little maturity on the subject. This is a double mistake, because it is a source of savings and sales and marketing progress. This phenomenon is doubled by the total absence of leadership from most of the leaders and managers on the networking issue. Added to this is the relative “youth” of the subject, at least as far as virtual social networks are concerned. It helps to move it away from the concerns of the CoDirs: “This is not a serious subject”, I have already heard.
The solution is there.
The solution exists and is simple: it is to practice the BNS (c), or Business Networking Strategy (c), a concept that I have been developing for several years. You just need to put all of this in order: vision, strategy, means, attitudes, application of the SEQLA principle,… It’s rather easy and nice, it goes all in all faster than a lot of business programs,… and that quickly delivers tangible results of all kinds, and in many areas, including finance. Did you know that good corporate networking facilitates hiring, finding suppliers …
COVID et confinements
To close, we will note that this real disorder has also been increased by the current pandemic, such as the various isolation effects due to successive confinements. In need of socialization and communication, many employees have started to “express themselves more”, but often in disorder, without general architecture or content policy, … Normal, nothing is framed on this subject in a overwhelming majority of businesses. And their hierarchy was “elsewhere” (!) …
-Eric LE GENDRE
ericlg.com
