Episode #029: Does Social Media Work in the World of Sales? With Jack Kosakowski

Jeff: Hey, let me ask you a question. Are you leveraging social media in your sales strategy? Or maybe the more important question, is that even possible? Stay tuned. We’ll show you how.

Announcer: Welcome to The Buyer’s Mind, where we take a closer look deep inside your customer’s decision-making mechanism to reverse engineer the perfect sales presentation. Now, please welcome your host, Jeff Shore.

Jeff: Hey, welcome everyone once again to The Buyers Mind, the show where we investigate what’s going on in the brains of your prospects that they’re considering a purchase decision. We always feel here at The Buyers Mind that if I can really understand the way that a customer makes a decision that I can reverse engineer my sales presentation accordingly. We wanna know our customers so well that that sale begins to roll out in front of you. I’m your host, Jeff Shore. You can read the full bio on the show notes. You can also hop over to jeffshore.com for all of the resources, our blog posts, our newsletter, and a link to all of the books that we have that might be able to help you on your sales journey. As always, welcome too our show producer, Paul Murphy. Murph, how are you doing today?

Paul: Hey Jeff. It’s going great.

Jeff: Let me ask you a question, Murph. What do you think? Social media, is that a legit sales and marketing strategy? And I want you to think about this as a consumer for just a moment. You’re looking at your Facebook feeds, you’re looking at your Twitter feed, whatever it is, and you see somebody who wants to sell you something. What are you thinking?

Paul: Well, I actually have a friend who has her own business selling a product, but it gets overwhelming after a while. It’s like, “Where’s my friend? I thought was connecting with my friend.” Instead, it becomes just this really big sales pitch from her. And then I’m wondering, “Okay, why am I friends with you?”

Jeff: So, after a while, it’s just “Buy this, buy this, buy this.” Is that the idea?

Jeff: Yeah, that’s the idea. It’s like, “I’m selling this, buy this, buy this, buy this.” It gets to be a little annoying.

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. Now what we’re gonna get into that today with our special guest, Jack Kosakowski who’s the number one sales guru right now in the world of Social Selling. We’ll pick his brain on that very topic and try and prevent exactly what you’re talking about there, Murph. Let me give you our quote of the day, it’s from Kami Hoyse, who says, “The first rule of social media is that everything changes all the time. What won’t change is that communities’ desire to network.” You see, social media is popular because we have this innate desire to be connected, right? We are created to connect. And I think we are at our best when we are relational when we are in community with others.

So yes, there’s a place for social media in our lives and in our business. The question is whether there is a place in sales. And I think there is, but we have to stay with the overriding principle that the primary goal is to connect, not to sell. The goal is engagement, not to pitch. If we get that right everything else will follow.

Well, we want to let you know that this podcast is brought to you in part by our good friends at HomeStreet Bank, not just our show sponsor, this is my lender. I’ve used HomeStreet Bank and I have to tell you just a fantastic experience. Everybody that I’ve ever talked to at HomeStret Bank, professional, dependable, they have great rates, great service. If you’re a real estate professional listening and you’re looking for somebody who will take great care of your clients, you absolutely wanna call the good folks at HomeStreet Bank. Go to homestreetbank.com to learn more, that’s homestreetbank.com.

So, let me give you our tip of the day, and it’s consistent with our theme on Social Selling, post something useful but without the “ask.” See, when I see sales people post, it’s typically, “Here’s my product, ain’t it beautiful? Would you like to buy it?” And this is what Murph was talking about just a moment ago. Instead, post something helpful: a link to an informative article, an announcement about a community event, something that will actually help. And then, don’t ask for anything, just give. I think you’re gonna find your best use of Social Selling is when you are offering useful, helpful, relevant information and then engaging in the comments, without looking at it and saying, “Here it is, I’m gonna put my product on the wall of your Facebook and see if I can get you to buy it.” If you wanna use social media in your sales strategy, use it as a connection tool, as an engagement tool. And we’ll see what Jack Kosakowski has to say about that.

Well, let’s get to our interview. I’m excited to have Jack Kosakowski on with us. Jack is a…you know, the term guru gets thrown around a lot, but when it comes to the area of Social Selling, I think it’s fair to say that Jack has achieved that status. He is an international speaker, writer, consultant. He’s also a straight shooter and a really good guy. I’m proud to call him a friend. Welcome Jack, how are you doing today?

Jack: I am doing amazing, after that. Can we redo the intro, please?

Jeff: You didn’t like it? You wanna sell me something?

Jack: No, I’m saying I loved it I wanna hear it again.

Jeff: Oh, I see, I see. Maybe your family on the phone first, then we’ll try it that way. Jack’s calling in today, actually, from a resort, but not by his choice. What’s the story, Jack?

Jack: Yeah, you know, living in the desert, when it’s 120 out, and your air conditioning goes, you know, you really just can’t be inside. I was just telling you that I went home and I looked at the temperature gauge and it was 96 degrees in my place. So, we had to get out. And you know, some people will say living in a resort of great. Well, it is you know, when it’s your choice but not so much when it’s not.

Jeff: Absolutely, absolutely. So, Jack, your specialty is Social Selling, which is really interesting to me because the very term, “Social Selling” didn’t really even exist not that long ago, and so, here you are as one of the most prominent voices in the area of Social Selling. So let’s just start by a little bit of definition. My guess is that like many things that are new, it’s also grossly misunderstood. So just give us a list of a little…I’ll start by a little definition. What do you mean by Social Selling?

Jack: You know, it’s really tough to actually answer this question because there are so many different ways that you can interpret Social Selling, but I always tell people it’s like this, right? We’ve had Agile Selling, we’ve got all kind of different you know, selling methodologies, right? And they all kind of fit in their place in a little piece of the pie of the sales process or how you sell to your buyers. But you know, Agile Selling is not a full strategy, right? You’ve got to do other things that…and you’ve got to incorporate other things. And Social Selling is kind of the same, right? I just look at it as you know, using social in your sales process, integrating it into your process of getting your business to help you, you know, create, strengthen, and influence one to one conversations just using your communication channels. You know, at the end of the day to drive more opportunities and more revenue.

Jeff: Some would argue that you can’t really truly sell socially. Do you agree with that?

Jack: Well, I can tell you that 80% of my business comes to me through social without me asking for anything. So, I mean, I don’t know if you can interpret that as you can’t sell through social. I mean, I pretty much get all of my business through social. So I guess, I am selling your social, right?

Jeff: You tend to use the term, “A multi-communication experience.” Would you define that, please?

Jack: Yeah, multi-channel communication experience. So, you know, I’m gonna use a couple of stats here and I don’t wanna use any fluffy stats. So, we all kind of know this. So, on average, you know, Salesforce gave out this stat, they said, “It takes six to eight touches before you get somebody into a sales conversation or they become a sales-qualified lead.” You know, there’s other channels that have said, “Hey, it takes up to 13 touches.” So what happened is in the traditional model of selling, even in the consumer space, what you see is that it’s been phone-email, phone-email, traditionally or going to a conference.

But the thing is now that you have open communication and people are living on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, they’re using all these different communication tools, Whatsapp. Now you have so many different mediums to actually communicate with people, and you can communicate with them in a place that they actually feel comfortable and that they live, versus, you know, calling and interrupting their day. You know, if you send somebody a message in Messenger, and that’s where they live…like me, I’m that type of guy, then, you know, you’re not interrupting my day because I can get back to you at any time.

And there’s just new ways to communicate with people. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, the word that your podcast has, it’s about an experience. And the only way that you build trust and you close a deal is you have to give somebody a good communication experience. If you’re calling them and you’re trying to talk to people on the mediums where they don’t feel comfortable or they don’t live, you’re automatically putting them in a bad experience. So this is understanding your buyer in the digital age. Where do they live? Where do they communicate? Where do they actually want to have a conversation with you at?

Jeff: We know that consumers do a ton of research online before making a purchase these days. How much of that research is done through social channels? Do we see social stepping up as not just a communication tool but also a research tool?

Jack: You know, there’s all kind of stats. What I always try to tell people is you know, think about how you buy. If you wanna understand how you should be selling, you have to understand you know, how you buy. And if you understand that you’re in a really good spot.

Jeff: Yeah, it’s interesting. I was just recently listening to an interview with Daniel Pink, he was interviewing Seth Godin. And this is one of the points that Seth Godin made, was that most sales people are told to sell in a way that’s vastly different from the way that they want to buy. And we could probably apply that on social because the way that we interact with social media as individuals is often times, different than the way that we’re told to “sell or market or draw attention to ourselves on social.” And I’m guessing that you’re gonna suggest a more holistic, cohesive, unified approach to our online presence.

Jack: Yeah, I mean, you know, one of the things I do is I work with sales teams to help them integrate social into their traditional sales process. So, what does that mean? It doesn’t mean you’re changing much, right? You’re just infusing it because most VPs of sales if I ask them, “Hey, are you selling the way you never buy?” That’s a pretty powerful question. So, in the digital age, we have to ask ourselves that question. And if we’re giving an experience that is an experience that we wouldn’t buy from, why would we be doing that to our customers?

Jeff: So then, let me ask you this then. What are some of the biggest mistakes that sales practitioners make when they’re using social media? Or I may even put it another way, what makes you go, “Are you kidding me?

Jack: I think there’s you know, value versus ask. It’s kind of a plague in sales, right? So, most sales people wanna ask for something before they actually deserve it. And you know, social, unfortunately, the one downfall is that it’s you know, people, they kind of guard their social networks to a certain extent. And if you use social to just go out and ask people for something you don’t deserve and you’re not doing any value on the front end, it could actually hurt you more than it can help you.

Jeff: I would assume the flip side to that on the best practice is, don’t even think about the “ask,” think about the value. Think about what I can bring to them that’s gonna be of a benefit. Is there a time to ask or is it all just, “Provide value, provide value”?

Jack: It’s just like anything in sales. You know, good sales people, they know when to you know, put on the hard pitch. Other sales people you know, they know when to consult. At one time, you know, you have to give enough value where you feel that you’ve kind of earned the right to ask somebody for something. And most sales people, not only just in their sales process of the traditional way they sell they have no real value in it, sales people aren’t trained what value is. They’re not trained. They don’t understand it because it doesn’t get you instant gratification. So, in the digital age, the term, “value,” which can mean different things to different people, there’s not really a way that you could define value, which is the tough part. And sales people have to understand that, and if they don’t understand that then social is gonna be really, really tough for them because you know, there is a long term strategy involved. It’s not something you just get a short term fix from.

Jeff: What social channels should be used and how do you determine that? We see different people you know, are gonna espouse different things and they might look at and say, “Well, you know, my product over here is pharmaceuticals and my people hang out on LinkedIn, and my product is automobiles and those people hang out on Facebook.” Is it that simple or are we sort of oversimplifying it to say I should use one channel over…how do you do it? How do you know which channel you should be using?

Jack: Well, you have to look at data. I think the one thing that social gives us that we’ve never had in sales is visibility into data. So we can actually go in and use tools like LinkedIn Sales Navigator to identify our target buyer persona and how many of those are active on LinkedIn, for example. The other thing is we can go in and we can go into Twitter Advanced Search, and we can look and see how many of our target buyers fit that persona, how many of them are there. Facebook, you can do the same exact things through the Facebook Ad platform. It will tell you exactly how many target buyers you have to engage with. And you have to leverage that data to determine where you spend your time.

Jeff: Is it truly Social Selling or would it be better labeled Social Marketing?

Jack: No, so, the difference between Social Marketing and Social Selling is Social Selling is a strategic one-to-one outbound process. So if you’re in sales, you have to strategically understand how to have the conversation. It’s the new cold call, in other words. Engagement is the new cold call when you think about social media, but it’s got to be outbound one to one…you know, you’ve got to be looking at targeted accounts, targeted buyers, who am I trying to approach? You know, here’s the problem though, is that there is a marketing function or a component to Social Selling.

And traditionally, you know, sales has always said that marketing is marketing and sales is sales. Well, unfortunately, there is a tad bit of marketing going on in sales today and sales people just have to be, you know, they have to be armed with the right information, they have to understand how to use insights, they have to understand how to use content, because at the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is we’re trying to proactively get engaged with people. I like to say, “Get visible, valuable, and connected to them before they even know they’re ready to buy, in most cases.” And you have to understand marketing to a certain extent to be able to do that you know, and maximize your success.

Jeff: You mentioned that Social Selling becomes sort of the new version of cold calling and a replacement if you will of cold calling. It’s very interesting. As you know I’m a part of this tribe of sales thinkers that are out there. And there’s a huge debate even amongst some of the thought leaders in the area of sales as to the role of cold calling and whether it even has a place anymore. I actually, I’ve gotten into a very thorough and actually kind of fun argument with somebody on this. I think cold calling in the traditional way is dead and it should be dead. The idea of simply just handing somebody a list and saying, “Here, call all these people they might have money and they might be interested.” I think that this is a waste of time simply because there are so many ways to be able to connect with people without blindly picking up the phone and calling somebody that you don’t know. I’m gonna guess that you and I are in the same boat on that idea.

Jack: Yeah, so I think that there’s just a very big semantics game going on with that. You know, defining what is a cold call. If you define a cold call as “I’m gonna call somebody who doesn’t know I’m calling.” Well then, you know, maybe that’s a cold call. But I think, you know, it’s just plain lazy anymore not to use the different channels and the insights, the data from buyers to kind of at least warm them up and get at what I like to say is get visible, valuable. And then when you do get connected, if that’s a phone call out of the blue, at least give them something to be prepared for or at least know a little bit about who you are. They might not know what you do., but I think it’s just a big semantics game at the end of the day.

Jeff: I think you are right. There is the question of whether you’re willing to really do what it takes to find the easy answers that are out there. We’re talking to a company right now, a potential client. And it’s very interesting, just this morning, I was online and I was researching and not just researching their website, although that was very interesting for me to be able to chase some of the links and figure out what was going on, but to look at a couple of the principals and the company, and to learn their story, and to read their LinkedIn profile, and to figure out, okay well, this is really interesting that you know, their son is a part of the business and they’ve got another family member who’s part of the business. I’m gonna figure that connection over here. They’re actually in the Pacific Northwest and their offices are not far at all from where my daughter lives, there is a point of connection over there. They’re a faith-based organization, we have this in common. And I’m just connecting all of these dots, all before we have our first sit-down conversation here in a couple of weeks. And I think, the think about it is that I don’t see that as manipulation. I see that is just doing my homework and respecting them enough to be well prepared for the conversation so that when we sit down we can talk the same language, rather than just saying “So, now, who are you?”

And you know, it drives me a little nuts…I mean, you may probably tell by the tone of my voice here Jack, but it drives a little nuts when sales people are just waiting for somebody to come to them and say, “May I buy your product?” And that’s not selling.

Jack: No, absolutely not, and I think that’s the difference between Social Marketing and Social Selling, right? Social Marketing is you’re gonna put something out there and you’re gonna wait for somebody to come to it, right? Social Selling is I’m gonna strategically one-to-one use it as an outbound tool for communication. Just you know, create, strengthen, and sales conversations. I think a lot of people go wrong is, you know, whether you’re a real estate agent or you know, any type of B2C play is how do you stay in front of people you know, during the sales process? Whether that’s for an up sell…and let’s say if you’re in real estate and you know, you’ve sold somebody a house, for example. Well, what do you do? Are you getting connected to them? And moving forward, are you staying in front of them? Because when their family member needs to buy a house, do they…so you know, don’t let them forget about you.

You’ve got to stay in front of people, you know, leveraging that one to one outbound engagement. You know, you can use Social Marketing in there. I think it should be you know, a well thought out strategy because we just don’t have the time to keep doing the one-to-one stuff, right? But at the same aspect, when you’re social marketing, you’re trying to go to a whole group of people and you have to start staying in front of people before, during, and after the sales process. It’s just as effective, and I hate when people say, “Well, it’s just for prospecting.” Well, you know, no, it’s not, actually, it’s you know, for leveraging those insights of somebody you’ve already sold to see that they’re engaged with somebody else that could use your product and then calling them and saying, “Hey, I saw you guys have this conversation. Is there any way you could introduce me?”

There’s so many different ways that you can leverage data and insights from the actual individual that you’re trying to sell now, and you could proactively use those insights to personalize your messaging, to personalize your emails, to personalize your phone calls. And if you’re not doing that you’re not selling the way that people wanna be sold, you’re selling the way that you wanna sell. And that’s just selfish and that’s a bad experience right off the bat.

Jeff: Is it safe to say that if I wanted to take a look at Social Marketing it might just be that awareness. Here’s great content that as I have designed perhaps, the generic avatar of my potential buyer that I wanna reach and I’ve got this content that I think would be very valuable to them. It’s advice, it’s something that I sell over here online, it’s my own blog, whatever it is. But here’s content that’s out there and I wanna push it out there but I wanna make kind of the mass customization that is and I’m designing it for my avatar. But then, when somebody engages in a conversation and say, “Hey, that’s really good and I think we’re gonna share it,” and I jump in and say, “Oh, thanks for sharing that. Was there anything that really struck you?” And now we start a conversation that we understand a little bit more about the needs. The conversation than morphs into more of a Social Selling rather than a Social Marketing. Am I close, Jack?

Jack: Yeah, I mean, the engagement piece that comes to you, you have to go to the conversation. I think you see a lot of people that use social, they post something, and I always say you know, if you watch how I do social media I’m very strategic about it. What I’m trying to do is I’m always trying to start a conversation. Now, I keep the conversation going, but I only spend a lot of time on those people that I see that could be a potential business.

So, you know, being strategic about that engagement is great but you know, there’s other ways you’ve got to think about this. If you’re in sales today, let’s say that you know, you’re selling plumbing equipment or you’re selling plumbing products. Well, you know, it’s not that hard to think about, “Okay, I’m going in and I’ve got all these rebuttals that every time I talk to somebody they have the same issue. So what I’m gonna do is I’m gonna write about this 400 to 600 words. I’m gonna write about it because you know what? I’m sick of explaining it.” So, when I said that meeting, before I go actually have that call, I’m gonna post this on my LinkedIn…this 400 to 600-word post that I came up with that’s gonna fix the buyer’s problem I hear over and over, and then I’m gonna send them that LinkedIn in email and say, “Hey, you know, I’m sending you the calendar invite, but I want you to check out this article, it’s something that I’m very passionate about, I know a lot of customers have this problem. This is something I wanna talk about when I get there.”

So what you’re doing is you’re driving people to your LinkedIn profile. Even if they’re not social, that’s great, you don’t need a social buyer to get them into your social profile to build that credibility before you get there, but also now you’re proactively doing outbound selling using content that you know is a common theme. So, there’s so many different ways that you can use it one-to-one, that Social Marketing you write a piece of content and you know, you want a lot of engagement on it you want it to you know, affects a lot of people or it solves a lot of people’s problems. In Social Selling, you write content to fix the one-to-one problem, and you use that to drive people to you know, your profiles to gain credibility, give them a little bit of wisdom, and kind of prep them for the call.

Jeff: May I ask you one last question, Jack? We’re just about out of time. This is somehow managing brand and our brand identity through social, you have a different take on this in the sense that you’ve got some rebel in you. I read some of your stuff and follow you or we’ve had one-on-one conversations where you’re not afraid to call it like it is. You and I have a mutual thorough disgust for manipulative selling and for that sort of old-school you know, “Do whatever it takes to get the sale” type of thing. As we think through your brand identity, you’re not afraid to put it out there and say, “You know what? This is what I think. If you don’t like it you’re probably not my customer anyway.” Is it that that plain? How much should be people be thinking about their online brand because I’m worried that people are just getting overly safe such that we’re losing the humanity of our online presence?

Jack: I think you really have to thoroughly think about yourself as a brand no matter what company you’re at anymore because everything that you do on social media is public. So, you know, when you’re talking about politics you know, and you’ve sold somebody a house or you’re about to sell them a house and they’re on the opposite side of what you believe, you better believe that you can easily lose you know, $10,000 commission because you’re so passionate about saying something that’s never gonna change somebody’s mind. So, I do believe that you have to, in the digital age, it’s more important now than ever. You know, whether you wanna build a personal brand or not that’s fine, you know, I think everybody should, you’d be an idiot not to, but at the same aspect, what I say is if you’re not gonna build a personal brand, think about yourself as the band because everything that you say is going to affect your business one way or the other. And I always wanna think strategically about what I’m saying and what I’m doing on social media because I know that it represents me, not only that it represents my company. But you’re gonna make or break your business…and you probably won’t even know you’re losing business because you’re making those bad decisions.

So, I think, you have to look at yourself as a personal brand and that’s just because we have no…you know, you can make your social profiles private, you can do all these things, but I’ll tell you right now that there’s not a lot of safety in that.

Jeff: Give us one person that everyone should follow online.

Jack: Simon Sinek.

Jeff: Can’t go wrong there. And one great book that has affected your career.

Jack: I think everybody should read, “Not Taught,” by Jim Keenan. My mom is a real estate agent, so I’ve been trying to get her to do some blogging and listen to some of the things I’ve said for a long time. She’s finally catching on, she’s started doing some live tunes on Facebook. But the one thing that got her to hire her content marketer for her social media was I sent her Jim Keenan’s book and she said it opened her eyes a whole different way to what’s really going on in the world of digital buying and selling. And I think anybody at the B2C level should read that book.

Jeff: That’s awesome, that’s awesome. We’ll put that in the show notes as well. His name is Jack Kosakowski, you can find him @jackkosakowski.com. Jack K-O-S-A-K-O-W-K-I .com. We’ll put that in the show notes. Follow him on social, it is well worth your time, always insightful, always thoughtful stuff. There’s not a lot of kitten videos that are gonna show up on Jack’s feed. He is worth listening to because he’s one of the great thinkers in this space today. He’s gonna challenge you. And as I said earlier, he’s a good guy, I’m proud to call him a friend. Jack, thanks for joining us today.

Jack: Thank you, Jeff, I appreciate it.

Jeff: Well, there you have it, the number one sales guru on social media right now and Social Selling right now. A couple of key takeaways, from my perspective, and the first is the idea of think about how you buy, that’s how you should sell. Those are Jack’s words directly. Think about how you buy, and that’s how you should sell. And we talk about that at Shore Consulting all the time. The idea of reverse engineering your sales presentation according to the way that a buyer buys.

And Murph, I know that’s something you and I have talked about as well, you would much prefer if a sales person would sell to you the way that they would want to be sold to.

Murphy: Absolutely, I mean, when you think about it, it’s all about not being intrusive, not being obnoxious. It’s actually meeting somebody’s need where they’re at. That’s what a sale should be.

Jeff: And I loved how Jack took that to another level when he said, “Just provide value and then provide more value.” If we can look at it from that side everything else is gonna follow suit. He said something interesting, he said, “The only way you build trust and get attention is to give a good communication experience.” And if we can start thinking about social media and Social Selling as the opportunity to provide an experience rather than just simply pitch something on a wall and hope that it sticks, I think we’ll be better off.

So, one key takeaway that I wanna offer to you here is when you are online, when you are using social media, my suggestion here is to think relationship not sales. Contribute to a relational engagement, not an “ask.”

And if I could look at that by way of wrap up I’d say that this is not a lot different from other relationships. You give without the expectation to receive and it changes everything. So I want to just gonna challenge you right now, are you approaching social media palms up or palms down? Palms up says, “Give, give, give, give, give me, gimme, gimme, gimme. I want you to put something in my hand right now, a sale.” Or you’re going in palms down, prepared to place something in somebody else’s hands? This is the mindset, “When I go into that social space, I wanna go in palms down. I wanna provide information, I wanna provide content, I wanna provide assistance, I wanna provide engagement, I wanna provide connection. And if I can go in with that palms down way of thinking, everything else will follow.”

Well, that’s another episode of The Buyers Mind, thank you so much for subscribing, we really appreciate that a great deal. And for those of you who are now considering yourselves to be long-term fans of The Buyers Mind, boy, if you would just pause where you are, go to jeffshore.com/podcast, grab that link and post it on your Facebook page or on your Twitter feed right now, that would mean the world to us.

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So, there you go, another episode of The Buyers Mind. You can find everything you need @jeffshore.com. But until next time, go out there, my friends, and change someone’s work.