Social Selling and The Power of Content

Jack Kosakowski, global head of B2B sales execution at Creation Agency, joins Jen Spencer to discuss social selling, relationship development and the power of content in this episode of The Allbound Podcast. 

How do you define social selling?

Social selling is leveraging the communication channels where your buyers are living versus just communicating with them via phone and email. You're providing value and communicating on multiple channels to influence the sale along the way from online conversation to offline revenue close.

Should social sellers separate business from their personal life?

We live in the most digital age ever. If you're scared of someone seeing your lifestyle through your social channels, you should be careful how you share or how you live your life. You should inspire and motivate people on a personal and professional level, because hiding isn't going to get you anywhere in sales.

How can today's B2B account exec or business development rep use social networking to strengthen their phone and email strategies?

If you really want to get to that next level, you've got to understand who the individuals are in the accounts you want to sell. Everyone thinks it's all about business value, but really you've got to have some personal value, too. Nobody wants to be sold, but everybody wants to have a conversation, especially if they have something to talk about with somebody. But how do you know that if you're not leveraging the information you're given?

What challenges have you identified while working on digital strategies?

One challenge is that marketing is not tied to the revenue numbers, from a dollar amount. I think that marketers should get a base salary, but they should live and die on what kind of business comes in like salespeople do. Most marketers aren't in the weeds sitting with the customers –– they're sitting back and creating content based off articles the industry says they should be writing about. A lot of their content may be great but isn't going to help move the needle. When you're disconnected from the buyer, you are disconnected from sales.

What is an example of a tactic you used on a recent social selling success?

I’d been having some very preliminary conversations with a customer that I really, really wanted. I knew through one of our conversations that we could fix a major pain point for him. So I wrote a blog post on LinkedIn on the whole process of how this could be fixed then sent the link to him and said, “Hey, I wrote a blog post and I was thinking about you and our conversation, and how this might help.” He came back and said, “Jack, we need to take this conversation more seriously. That was brilliant. How can you do this for us?”

Most sales leaders don't understand the power of content, but here I leveraged my insight, created the content, and I sent it to the customer in a way that made it look like I wasn't selling. I was adding value to my audience, and content was the way that I got into that conversation. It’s called leading with value.

Speed Round Questions:

Favorite city? London.

Animal lover? Yes.

Mac or PC? PC all day.

Uber or Lyft? Uber.

All expenses paid trip to? Thailand.