Instead of endless explanations that 400 Million people are engaged, that Facebook is growing with more than a million per month and that this is a more effective way to improve customer relationships besides a dozen other arguments, we need to ask a very different set of questions:
• What do you know about your customers in the social web?
• Do you really know what customers say about you and your brand?
• Do you know how accessible your customer base is and therefore how vulnerable you are?
• How do you identify and work with key influencer?
• Are you ready if your competitors go after your customers in the social web?
• Is your team available if customers are asking questions publicly - or you don't even know?
• How do you embed your sales organization into the social web of customers?
• Do you know how to leverage the social web for your support organization?
• Do you have an idea about ROI and effectiveness of social media?
• Do you know how to measure improvements and success in the social web?
• Have you ever thought about empowering your team to engage?
• Did you ever consider involving and leveraging your partners?
• Did it occur to you that the social web may be ideal to compete for mindshare?
• Are you able to create a social media strategy?
• Do you have enough information to decide whether to ignore or engage?
My friend was silent after I explained to him that I can identify the majority of his customers simply by scanning the web and see what they say, what they like and what they don't. He recognized that if I am able to do that his competitors can do that too. He said: "Axel, we talked about that quite often but you had asked me the wrong questions. Today I feel I'm completely naked. I will have an executive meeting this afternoon. What changed my thinking was not that I have some "potential" gain if I engage in social media, which even you couldn't convince me so far - but today I understood that I'm facing quite a risk if we don't..."
I had to promise to change the title and adjust the content of our webinars to "You don't know what you don't know". In turn he will sign up on Twitter right away :-).
Maybe this helps others to change the conversation when discussing social media with executives - I surely will.
@AxelS