With a grateful nod to Heinz Marketing, Lifehacker, Inc. Magazine and others who regularly publish “This is How I Work” articles, which I love to read …. welcome to “How I Work It – Social Selling”.
I try to watch and emulate others and you probably do the same. There is a lot of confusion, particularly with B2B, regarding how to implement social selling. Our hope is that these folks will inspire those of you are still on the fence and our goal is to share with you some of the best proven selling practices that you might wish to emulate!
Today we are joined by Eric Quanstrom of KiteDesk. Eric takes the mystery out of social selling by consistently demonstrating key elements including …
- Authenticity
- Personalization
- Uniqueness
- A desire to share, educate, and to promote others
Welcome, Eric!
Could you please tell our readers a little about you?
I’m a good-humored, career-long marketer who plies his trade in the sales tech space – a fun area you are intimately familiar with Craig![Tweet “Learn how Eric Quanstrom of KiteDesk works social selling!”]
How about telling them a little bit about your business?
KiteDesk helps sales people overcome the #1 and #2 problems at the top of the funnel – 1. lack of qualified leads and 2. effective outreach to turn prospects into opportunities.
We make sales development software with on-demand lead data and the best ways to work those prospects. Adopting KiteDesk is a giant step towards creating predictable pipeline.
How did you get started in selling and when did you begin adding social selling to your business?
I’ve been in sales tech since nearly the start of this decade and social selling nearly as long. The importance of the social graph to sales cannot be overstated, nor ignored.
What are your social selling goals, objectives, and strategies?
With some of the marketing color I bring to social selling, most of our goals are in building brand at a largely individual level. The credentialing of the salesperson, as well as our corporate brand, are critical. They set the conditions for sales to occur. One of the biggest strategies we adhere to are the social channels we choose to engage in as well as those we leave alone.
Do you have regular routines?
Yes, in fact our newest product, KiteDesk FLOW goes a long way towards ensuring the best recipes (# of touches, frequency) are adhered to. Consistency in approach matters. It’s proven time and again that follow-up and follow-through matter. And this is only growing more true in a distracted, multi-channel world.
How do you integrate social selling with traditional selling methodologies?
Understanding the benefits of raising awareness and opening conversations via social channels is the most appropriate social selling integration. For the most part, core parts of the sales cycle happen off the social graph.
How do you manage to stand out from the noise?
I’m not convinced anyone really stands out from the noise. In the brave new world we live in, one person’s noise is another’s signal. A better way to frame this may well be – How well can you connect and engage with those of similar affinities or interests?
Could you please share with us a few of your favorite social selling tools?
We regularly use Buffer for Business. We have most of our team up on the platform. Curating content and scheduling social shares across multiple networks for multiple people is easier in this tool than most we’ve tried.
We also obviously use the full breadth of social capabilities in our own software (KiteDesk). One of our partners supplying accurate social data is FullContact. They have been great to work with and offer an abundance of social functionality via their API.
How do you track your results?
For social contributions, we have analytics in each of the tools mentioned above. We also utilize Google Analytics and regularly see 10% of the traffic to our site + blog via Social Media.
What do you feel are the biggest challenges facing salespeople as it pertains to social selling?
I see salespeople struggle trying to figure out non-intuitive ways to bolt the social graph into core parts of the sales cycle where it may seem strange – buy-in, negotiation, and close phases of a cycle, to name a few.
What about their biggest mistake that salespeople make when trying to implement social selling?
I see a dramatic split between people who have had success intentionally putting themselves out on social media and those who still don’t see the point. To make an over generalization, you get out of social selling efforts what you put in, and many mistakes are made when shortcuts are sought.
What is your “social selling superpower”?
Keeping it real.
How can our readers get in touch with you to learn more?
Google my name – Eric Quanstrom – there aren’t many others out there. @EQuanstrom or @KiteDesk also work.
Please nominate somebody to answer these same questions!
I’d like to hear how Tracy Eiler, CMO of InsideView works it!
Eric Quanstrom
Latest posts by Eric Quanstrom (see all)
- How I Work It – Social Selling with Eric Quanstrom - November 2, 2016