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Meet The Salesperson Using Social Media To Hit His Quota

This article is more than 8 years old.

The world of social selling has been heating up. The debate on whether it makes a difference or not is at a fever pitch. In spite of the countless studies and research, the debate shows no signs of abating. Therefore, I wanted to take an alternative tact. I thought, let's go to the source. Let's talk to a sales person using social media to sell. Let's forget the pundits, the social selling "experts," the studies, the research and the quaint meme's flying around. Let's talk to someone who does it every day, someone in the trenches who use social media every to make their quota, earn their commission check and do their job. Let's talk to a social salesperson.

Meet Jack Kosakowski from Act-On. He's a social selling advocate and social selling animal. He has used his social selling prowess to become the top rep at his company. I met Jack on social media and have admired his command of social selling for the past year.  I asked Jack if he'd be willing to share his thoughts on social selling and why it matters.

The following is Jack's unfiltered insight on social selling, why it matters and how he does it. Let's see if this helps change the debate.

Jim Keenan: As a sales person, how do you describe social selling and why does it matter?

Jack Kosakowski: Social selling to me is pretty simple.  It's sales and marketing leveraging social data and infusing it into the sales process from online conversation to offline revenue.   This data allows sales and marketing to create a buyer journey that is more efficient and creates a better buyer experience. If you can nail the buyer experience you will create more conversations, opportunities, and most importantly MORE REVENUE!  With that, it is not a one size fits all strategy.  Nothing in sales is a one size fits all strategy which means you have to be visible and valuable on all channels including the PHONE. The social selling does nothing more than enhance the traditional model to be more effective.

Why does it matter? Here is a stat from Keller Research Center, “Cold Calling, an outbound strategy only has a 2.5% success rate.”  I’d hate to have all my revenue eggs in that basket.

But it is deeper than that,  we have lost the best interest of our buyer in this selfish age.  Buyers are sick of selfish brands and sales reps.  They are sick of bad pitches out of the blue interrupting their day. They are sick of self-serving spam messages saying you are going to save them time and money.

Buyers want more value, and they deserve more value.  Social selling allows you to connect with the buyer and earn the right to their time and business.  It’s time to quit begging and start earning our buyers time and business.

Keenan: How did you start social selling in the first place?

Kosakowski: To be honest, I didn’t even know I was “social selling” when I first started.  My goal has always been to do things differently than everyone else.  My objective has always been to evolve my sales process so I could stand out.  I’m not a traditional guy in life or sales.  I hate boring. I hate average. I love a competitive advantage any way I can get it.  I wanted to be at the top and innovate the way I generate business and social allowed me to do that.  My passion is the buyer and the buyer experience. Most importantly I want to disrupt and start a revolution where the buyer and seller both WIN!

Keenan: Selling can be difficult and time-consuming as it is, how does a sales person fit it in?

Kosakowski: Sales will always be difficult and time will never be on your side.  This is where prioritizing time management on a variety of buyer channels comes in.  You have to block out time for social and make it a priority on a daily basis.  The key here is to be efficient with your time on social media. Your time must be spent on revenue generating activities like prospecting, nurturing, and engagement.  This should only take between thirty minutes and an hour a day.  Analyze your day and figure out where your inefficiencies are in your process.  If you are spending 2 hours cold calling and you find you aren’t connecting during a certain time period, replace that thirty minute block with social.  It’s important to be consistent so that social selling becomes a habit like your other tasks.

Keenan: Describe your daily social selling routine, what does your typical day look like?

Kosakowski: My routine switches daily depending on what the buyer needs.  I don’t have a structured day.  A structure is traditional, and that is boring.  Now, time management is different.  The only KPI I worry about is doing what it takes on the front end to have more meaningful conversations with my buyers offline.  Social is the tool that I use the most to get that conversation.  I’ve got a whiteboard that has my “real opportunities” on it.  Every day I work to see how I can add more value to my buyer without begging them for something.  How can I make their life easier, how can I get them more sign-ups for their webinar, how can I help them drive more traffic to their website.  My best source of leads is the ones that I create.  Content is key for me.  The more valuable content that I create for my buyers, the more conversations I have that generate opportunities.  If you have the right mindset, you do the right thing, you will get the right result “revenue.”

Keenan: How does a sales person use social selling to find and connect with their target market?

Kosakowski: In my opinion, there is no ONE way to do “social selling.”  All buyers are different.  All buyers have different scenarios.  The easiest way to structure your targets is to spend the time on the front end to break down your top accounts, contacts within those accounts, and then identify the social group vs. the non-social.  You can create a list on Twitter and LinkedIn for the social ones.  Be creative and leverage the data they give you to get into the conversation.  Think about the buyer and what’s important to them.  Look for ways you can get value from the buyers content and use it to make yourself smarter.  Consume the content and get engaged in a genuine conversation with your buyer.  Move the conversation offline and have a REAL conversation with your buyer.  Be upfront in the end and let them know if you think they would find value in taking a look at your product.  Use the conversations you have with them to personalize what value you bring to the table and how your product can fix a business problem.  If you spend all your time selling, you’ll get the same results as the 80% of the sales reps who aren’t hitting their quota.

Keenan: What mistakes do sales people want to avoid when using social?

Kosakowski: Don’t be an idiot.  Hopefully, your organization hired people that have sense enough to never put your brand in jeopardy.  My rule: If my grandma wouldn’t approve… I won’t say it.  You always keep it professional yet authentic.  Never respond about negativity publicity to your brand or comments from your competitors.  Everything you do on social has to be buyer and revenue focused adding value verse noise.  NEVER spam your message in a self-serving way.  This is where a lot of sales people go wrong on social.  Your buyers don’t want to hear about what you’ve done or how many awards your company received.  They want personalized messaging and content that will make them better at their job or that highlights their achievements.  Messaging is key in all areas of sales and social is no different.

Keenan: What social tools do you use and how do you use them?

Kosakowski: This is where I find the competitive advantage for social.  It’s all about the tools!  Now, you have to be careful that you don’t use too many tools because that can backfire on you.

You want to find the right tools for your social stack.  I’m all about simplicity when it comes to tools.  I’d say that if you don’t have a marketing automation tool you are behind the eight ball, and you better hope your competitor isn’t using it.  I need to have visibility into everything my buyer does.  Of course, I work for Act-On, and I use that daily more than any other tool.  My current stack is heavy on Buffer and Hootsuite to publish hot off the press content.  I leverage Topsy to find the hottest content that is getting the most engagement.  Crowdfire is a tool that I use to help build my targeted audience on Instagram and Twitter.  LinkedIn premium is my go to for LinkedIn to prospect and find targeted buyers.  Twitonomy and Tweetdeck are great for leveraging Twitter data to your advantage to find trends and real-time conversations.

Keenan: Social is wide open and has its downside, what's your worst experience social selling?

Kosakowski: The new trend of spamming Inmails to me is a bad experience.  LinkedIn is a great platform but spamming a  LinkedIn InMail is not effective in my opinion.  Of course, early adopters will tell you about all of their success rates.  The buyer doesn’t need another inbox flowing with spam.  They have enough of that in their email inbox.

Keenan: What's you best social selling story?

Kosakowski: I’ve got a ton of social selling success stories, but there is one that I always remember.  One of the largest marketing automation partners was heavy with a competitor, and a colleague of mine couldn’t win them over.   He passed the lead over to me and I put together a “social surround” strategy to add value and visibility leveraging content to get the CEO to engage.  The strategy was flawless and in less than two weeks I closed the partnership.  That partnership has turned out to be super valuable to the company.  Everything we do in sales has to have some social strategy involved when you get to the larger deal sizes.

Keenan: Not all sales leaders have jumped on the social selling bandwagon, what do you say to sales leadership that doesn't get social selling?

Kosakowski: First off, I read the other day, and I can’t find the resource for the life of me, that it takes 11-16 touches to get a first meeting.  If your strategy as a sales leader is email, phone, email, phone, repeat then you are in trouble.  Social allows you to add new channels and new ways of touching your client more effectively.  That should just be common sense.

With that being said, why is sales leadership the one making that call?  Why are they deciding how buyers want you to communicate with them?  That sounds crazy to me!  Your buyer should be making that decision.  Ask your buyer through surveys, or on customer success calls if they are on social.  Ask them how they like to be communicated within the sales process.  Ask them about the experience you had doing it the way you do now.  Ask them how you could improve on that experience.  It’s time to quit making decisions for your buyers. That’s a blockbuster mentality.  We all know what happened to Blockbuster.

Keenan: You've started blogging recently; you're now creating content, how has that changed your social approach?

Kosakowski: Content is the best thing that ever have to my career and quota.  I’m passionate about fixing business problems and sales problems.  My goal is to add value to other sales reps and buyers day. Content is the way that I’m able to give back and educate.  That’s my only motive.  Now, don’t get me wrong I generate a ton of inbound business because of my content.  It’s all about visibility and value, and content allows me to give both to my buyer.  I don’t’ think it’s for all sales reps, but it should be.  My time creating content is spent outside of work, but it has helped me build a network of buyers and influencers that are my audience.  The opportunities that content create are endless depending on what value that you offer.  I hate depending on my company to give me leads.  My mentality is to work harder than everyone else, add more value than everyone else, and do the things that other salespeople aren’t doing.  There is no easy way to do anything… But content is worth every second, minute, and hour that I put into it.  Social is how I’ve built an army of advocates, as Jay Baer would say, one follower/buyer at a time.

Keenan: How does someone new to social selling get started, what should they do to begin?

Kosakowski: You can't get started doing anything unless you make a commitment first.  Make a commitment to understanding social channels.  Create a Twitter profile, LinkedIn profile, and Instagram profile.  You need to understand optimization on how you can get the competitive advantage stand out through visibility.  Don’t do what everyone else is doing.  Don’t be boring. Just keep it simple and start a conversation with your buyers best interest, not yours.

More on Jack: Jack Is known as the “SaaSaNova” of marketing automation in his social networks. He is a passionate practitioner and proselytizer in the social selling space, which is apparent in all of the content he has published on LinkedIn, Business2Community, Sales Hacker, and Act-On Software’s blog. He is a Regional Sales Manager at Act-On software and a graduate of NAU.