Your market sees one company: Part 3 of 6

Your market sees one company: Part 3 of 6 - Insight

Description

The third article in Eric Doyle’s (F.ISP, Consult Crux) Modern Commercial Leadership series, covering the pillar of
Cross-Functional Influence. It argues that organisations once communicated externally through a very small
number of people, marketing, PR and occasional leadership appearances, with engineers, project teams and
operations staff “behind the curtain,” because channels were scarce and communication was centralised and
filtered through the brand. Social media removed that constraint, giving specialists direct access to their market,
yet many organisations have not adapted to the opportunity.

The article stresses that visibility must follow clarity, proposing four questions to answer before anyone posts: who
the organisation wants to speak to, which parts of its expertise matter most, which conversations it wants to be
associated with, and what meaningful commercial impact would look like in twelve months. A worked example
follows a group of engineers who initially dismissed social media as vanity and self-promotion: the approach began
with profiles explaining who they were and what they did, deliberately built networks of clients, peers and
decision-makers, and content consisting of small project observations, technical perspectives and lessons learned
rather than polished corporate messaging. Client engineers began reaching out, clients referenced posts in
meetings, and conversations progressed to calls, proposals and work, after which project teams, leadership and
other functions followed.

It critiques organisations that celebrate large company-page follower counts while almost no one inside the
business has a visible presence, asking where the resulting conversations, relationships, inbound opportunity and
trust actually are. A second example describes a company that had pursued an overseas prospect unsuccessfully
for four years through website, company page, exhibitions, PR, cold calling and email; a connection initiated by
one of its engineers with the prospect’s engineering team led to calls, an overseas visit, a pitch day, a tender
invitation and a contract. The article also records continuing leadership resistance, quoting a senior figure who
preferred the work be outsourced rather than have staff spend time on it. Signposts Episode 4 on Digital Credibility.
Aimed at senior sales and commercial leaders.

Summary

Availability:

On-Demand

Cost:

FREE

Credit Offered:

1 ISP CPD Credit