A friend of mine is a heart surgeon, he tells me he is the best heart surgeon in the world. And I believe him. If I was to have a heart attack, it stands to reason, I would want him to operate on me.
It would be for me a nightmare scenario where I wake up on an operating theatre and a doctor learns over and says. "I'm the best brain surgeon in the world, but don't worry operating on your heart cannot be that difficult. After all I'm sure you will be OK with surgery that is " good enough ".
"Good enough?"
At this point I usually wake up; I'm in my bed and luckily not on an operating theatre table. Phew!
Last week I speaking at the B2B Marketing, Ignite conference. When I attend conferences I always throw myself into it; speaking, networking, attending sessions, tweeting etc. Over lunch, I bumped into a friend who works at a "Full Service Marketing Agency", which spun off an "interesting conversation".
My friend said that as a Marketing Agency they were often asked into companies to help with Social Selling programs. Maybe it was because, here at DLA we are so often asked to fix, failed social selling programs that he saw me raise an eyebrow in surprise.
He qualified his comment by saying that he realised he wasn't a salesperson and didn't really know much about social selling, but said his customer recognised "a Full Service Marketing Agency was good enough".
When we finished talking I had to think about that again. Here was somebody telling me that companies where parting with money, not to be the best in the world, or "move the needle" but to be "good enough". This felt that maybe people were implementing a social selling program to "tick the box" rather than actually to do more with less. Difficult to say, but you have to respect his honesty.
Is "Good Enough", Good Enough?
Here at DLA we focus totally on social, we don't do PPC, SEO, web building, logo design, etc. We know about these things but wouldn't sell you advice in these areas as there are people far better in the world that can help you. Why? Because we want (and are) to be the best in the world at social. When Adam and I set up the company, we wanted to change the world with social, and we are! (Running the business on customer referrals, means we have to get things right, first time.) We couldn't sleep at night if we were mediocre at a long shopping lists of things we hope you might buy.
Do you want the best heart surgeon in the world or will you make do?
Social can be used to transform companies creating new / incremental revenues, turning many processes outside of sales from push to pull and proving your business with a competitive advantage.
After all if you were going to have heart surgery (and I hope you never have to) you would want the best surgeon in the world, wouldn't you?