Straight to Business: Recent Episodes
Lisa Davidson & Monika Ruzicka
The Straight to Business podcast is for marketing decision-makers who want to leverage social media together with their sales organization in order to maximize their business success. Your host Lisa Davidson and expert Monika Ruzicka, together with selected guests, will help you enhance your social selling competency during their show and explain how to organize social selling at scale in your company.
In this episode, we give specific tips on how to set goals for your social selling activities or program. In a social selling world that is increasingly busy and full of distractions, how do you stay focused and keep your team on track to achieve results?
Our guest is Pete Hinojosa, President of Quest Leadership Dynamics - a sales and leadership development consultancy. Previously, Pete was Director of Thought Leadership, Director of Human Capital Development, and Director of Sales Development at Insperity. a multi-billion dollar HR technology company.
We give insights into:
- How our purpose, beliefs and identity influence social selling success
- Key components of effective goal setting for individuals and teams
- Why it is important to establish long- and short-term goals in social selling
- How to drive real social selling results through goal-setting
- How a social selling pilot can help set and fine-tune the right goals for your organization
- How data analytics help you stay on track with your social selling goals
About Pete:
Pete’s newest book is just released:
“A Walk with My Father”
www.awwmf.com
AWWMF Virtual Bundle - Quest Leadership Dynamics (questld.com)
Pete Hinojosa is the President of Quest Leadership Dynamics, a boutique consulting firm with a focus on sales and leadership development. Pete travels
internationally as a keynote speaker and leadership expert for countless companies, including start-ups through Fortune 500.
Previously, he held positions of Director of Thought Leadership and Director of Sales Leadership Development at Insperity, a multi-billion dollar HR technology company where he developed and delivered leadership training to all sales managers throughout 65 offices in North America.
Pete lives and works in Houston, Texas, and next to his work is passionate about watercolor painting.
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
In many companies, social selling remains an initiative of individual marketers or salespeople, rather than a systematic, structured approach for the organization.
In this episode we discuss with social selling, sales and LinkedIn expert Susanne Hillmer how companies can leverage the power of digital conversations for their sales teams.
We cover:
- The role of the professional network LinkedIn in 2024 and the importance of social selling for B2B sales
- How do you get your team to be active on the platform and to use it for business?
- Do you know what your clients are talking about on LinkedIn?
- Your salespeople are already ambassadors for your company - how do they present themselves on LinkedIn? How can they combine their personal profile with their role in sales?
- Why is it important for sales leaders to be role models for their team
- Why conversation about LinkedIn should be part of sales meetings
- What steps does a structured social selling approach entail and how do you get there?
Listen in and get your sales team(s) to the next level!
About Susanne:
Susanne Hillmer is a LinkedIn expert and trainer. She has been active in virtual networks since 2003. Before that, she worked in sales in the tourism industry for 15 years. Susanne has been training people to use online business networks as acquisition tools since 2010 and focuses on Linkedin training and consulting, social selling and referral marketing. Susanne has been living and working as a digital nomad in various places around the world since 2015, where she recharges and finds inspiration. Thanks to digital technology, she is able to professionally support her clients worldwide and work internationally.
Follow Susanne on LinkedIn.
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
In order to achieve sustainable revenue growth, "senior leaders must enable their sales team to effectively build relationships one conversation at a time", says Jason Smith, Founder of business development consulting firm Sales Syngergistics, in this episode.
We talk with him how you achieve this. This is what we cover in the episode:
- What are the main pain points of modern B2B sales?
- Thanks for breaking down and explaining these pain points in so much detail. Let’s talk a little about the role of social selling in this context.
- Why is authenticity and personalization so critical in modern sales?
- How do you feel about using modern sales enablement tools and what trends do you see these days?
- How do modern sales enablement tools impact revenue growth?
- What are the most important factors in achieving sustainable revenue growth in today’s world of modern sales?
About Jason:
Jason brings a wealth of experience and expertise to our discussion. As a Sales-Focused Business Consultant with a background in complex enterprise sales, he has worked with renowned organizations such as IBM, HP, American Airlines, and Solar Winds. His commitment to infusing empathy into sales and business processes sets Jason apart. Through his years of consulting, he has witnessed firsthand the pitfalls that businesses of all sizes encounter when they lose sight of their customer's perspectives.
Drawing upon these experiences, Jason has developed the Sales Synergistics methodologies—a revolutionary framework designed to help senior business leaders capture The Sellers' Perspective. By fostering connections between sales, marketing, and operations teams, this approach prioritizes the customer experience, paving the way for recurring organic revenue and lasting relationships.
Jason lives in Atlanta. The former Air Force is also very involved in the city's veteran community as a mentor and coach for students and entrepreneurs.
Connect with Jason or follow him on LinkedIn.
Would you like to learn more about Jason's sales approach and his business Sales Synergistics? Visit their website here.
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
As businesses continue to embrace digital transformation, the role of social media in sales strategies has become increasingly importance. However, recent research by ReadyForSocial has shown that less than 10% of sales professionals worldwide actively engage in regular content posting on LinkedIn.
This raises a critical question: with the growing investment in social selling programs and tools, why are salespeople not leveraging these platforms more effectively to drive business outcomes?
In this episode, we discuss with B2B expert and ReadyForSocial Co-Founder and COO Milan Ruzicka about:
- Why it is so important to have a platform that supports your social selling program?
- What are the key success factors of a social selling platform - from ease of use to features to analytics
- What role does AI play in the context of social selling platforms?
- How does ReadyForSocial leverage AI to make social selling more effective - from a marketing and a sales perspective
Whether you already have a social selling program or are considering launching one, this episode will give you valuable insights to make your program more successful. Listen in!
About Milan:
Milan is the Co-Founder, COO Global, and CEO Europe of ReadyForSocial. He has over 20 years of B2B enterprise marketing experience, focusing on turnarounds and business growth, telco, and tech. Milan considers the B2B sector "his world" because it's the place where he can make an impact.
In his past position as VP of B2B Marketing at T-Mobile US, Milan successfully piloted a B2B social selling program in 2013. This positive experience and seeing the business results of social selling firsthand ultimately led him to co-found his social selling SaaS company in 2014.
Originally from the Czech Republic, Milan currently lives in Seattle with his wife and son. He has lived and worked in four different countries throughout his career and is a start-up investor and advisor – both in Europe and the US.
Connect with Milan or follow him on LinkedIn.
About ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
In this episode, we take a closer look at sales and marketing alignment, an essential factor in making any social selling program successful.
Together with our guest speaker, Josh Sweeney, we discuss these questions:
- Should Sales and Marketing be one department or two? And why?
- Goal alignment: how to make sure Sales and Marketing really work together in the same direction? How do you balance the long-term goals (brand-building and market-presence, marketing agenda) vs. filling the quota this quarter (sales agenda)
- Leads: Quality of leads, how to make sure what marketing hands over to sales is actually sales-ready; from a marketing perspective: how to make sure the leads produced and handed over to sales are valued and followed-up upon
- Technology stack: What are the tools that should be used in common
- What can established companies learn from businesses that are just scaling up, having a chance to design their processes from scratch?
Listen in!
About Josh:
Josh Sweeney is a seasoned entrepreneur whose mission is to help founders go from founder revenue to scalable revenue. He is also the founder of software consulting firm Atcore, which was acquired in 2016 by a leading partner in the CRM industry.
Having experienced the impact of various sales and marketing challenges over his career, Josh has channeled his passion for sales and marketing into the creation of educational content. He has recorded over 100 content pieces about B2B sales and marketing.
Josh lives and works in Atlanta, Georgia, in the United States.
Follow Josh or connect with him on:
LinkedIn or Instagram
To learn more about his company, FounderScale, visit their website
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
In this episode, we look into what social selling can learn from the performing arts. That might sound like an unusual and unique way for many social sellers, but the insights and answers our expert has to give will truly amaze you.
If you have ever visited a show or performance, you will understand that art connects people and delivers a feeling of community. Almost everyone has a deep curiosity to create or consume art. Depending on your preference, this can include music, dance, visuals, or the written word.
While social media certainly helps deliver art and behind-the-scene looks to an audience, it can also be seen as art itself. Yet, it's not always easy to manage the art of social media, even less so in our daily social selling routine.
Connecting some key components and specific aspects of art and social selling can give you an immense advantage in your field. We discuss with performer and content specialist Kimberly Van Laningham:
- Top 3 things that social selling can learn from the performing arts
- The entertainment factor: do you need to entertain to be heard?
- How to add entertainment to your business content
- Humor: what place does it have in social selling, and how to do it without offending
- Voice confidence: How to find and get comfortable with your own voice in written content and videos
- How can you connect improv with everyday business life?
About Kimberly:
Kimberly Van Laningham is a writer, performer, and professionally funny person. She combines these skills into her work as Entertainment Writer at Screen Rant, a leading movie and TV news site established in 2003, and as a Copywriter at digital media and internet company Ziff Davis.
With nearly a decade of professional experience, her work has generated high-level ROI in the business, theatre, television, and film worlds.
After completing a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre and Performance Studies at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, Kimberly has held various entertainment industry positions. She has focused on written content since 2020.
Kimberly lives and works in Chicago and enjoys performing and entertaining in her free time. Recently, she has also focused on comedy writing and improv. She is about to graduate from the Second City’s Conservatory program, which trains performers to create sketch comedy through improvisational techniques.
Follow Kimberly or connect with her on LinkedIn.
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
We talk with B2B marketing expert Sarah Noel Block about improving your content marketing ROI. Sarah's current focus is on maximizing the impact of marketing budgets. She also has introduced a complete digital marketing program including social selling and tech stack for a US-based manufacturing company.
Drawing on her rich experience, we discuss with her:
- Why content marketing is so important in B2B
- Challenges of today’s marketing teams with content marketing - from execution, system & processes for content marketing, content ideation to the need of a clear content & messaging strategy
- How to 10X your content marketing (without adding to your headcount)
- Repurposing strategies, best practices and tools for smart, time- and money-saving content repurposing across channels
- Why repurposing should be part of your distribution strategy and address different ways of learning
- New content marketing trends we should be watching out for
- How social selling helps get more reach for your content, and why and how to involve your sales team into your content strategy and content creation
- How to involve people from your target accounts in your content creation; marrying ABM and content marketing
About Sarah:
Sarah Noel Block is CEO & Founder of Tiny Marketing, a company that helps marketers scale their impact. She is a writer, editor, and a content marketing strategist for facilities services, construction, medical and real estate products, and SaaS companies. She works with time-strapped marketers in mid-sized B2B industries to build high-impact marketing without increasing headcount.
Before starting her own business, she was the first Digital Marketing Manager at The Chicago Faucet Company, America’s leading manufacturer of commercial faucets, where she implemented the marketing tech stack, grew the companies following and impact on social media and built a successful blog. She grew the media balance from 10% digital to 80% digital.
Sarah lives and works in Hoffmann Estates, Illinois, which is in the Greater Chicago area. Next to content marketing, Sarah has a passion for indie folk music.
Follow Sarah or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Learn more about Sarah's company Tiny Marketing.
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
This episode is an enlightening exploration of a new book about social selling. Author Gunnar Habitz, talks about the importance of Social Selling in helping buyers make the right choice.
Social selling is used in the business-to-business context to leverage social media and digital tools for more effective sales. It involves targeted prospecting, engaging with potential clients, sharing valuable content, personalizing interactions, maintaining consistent communication, analyzing data, and integrating these efforts into the overall sales process. By systematically using social platforms, sales professionals can build relationships, establish credibility, and nurture leads, ultimately driving conversions and business growth.
We discuss with Gunnar and give you insights into:
o How can social selling enhance business conversations?
o Today's buyers only invite providers into their buying journey when they are already 80% done with their decision-process. How can social selling help you be relevant?
o What is the "bricks" approach of social selling and how does it compare to building with legos?
o What is the “Density approach” of social selling?
o What are some of the biggest challenges for marketing managers running a social selling program
o Top 3 tips for marketing managers implementing or scaling a social selling program?
About Gunnar:
Gunnar Habitz is working as Senior Partner Manager in the Australian Software-as-a-Service industry in companies such as GoTo (formerly LogMeIn), Hootsuite (social media management) or Noggin (risk management software).
Born in Germany with a Swedish name and married to his wife from Czech Republic, he moved after graduation to Zürich which he declared his hometown after fully emigrating to Switzerland. After spending 16 years at HP in senior marketing and sales roles, he moved to Sydney in 2016 enjoying the South Pacific lifestyle and growth opportunities.
Over his career, Gunnar has developed his own approach to Social Selling which he shares in his recent book "Connect and Act", and in his social media content. Next to Social Selling, Gunnar is also passionate about travel, theatre and opera and has published multiple books, blogs, and articles on these topics.
Follow Gunnar or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Interested in Gunnar's book "Connect & Act: Systematic Social Selling" - get it here on amazon!
About our sponsor ReadyForSocial:
ReadyForSocial is a leading social selling company and sponsor of this podcast. Since 2014, ReadyForSocial has supported large companies in the DACH region, Europe, and the USA by introducing, managing, and expanding their social selling programs.
Learn more about their solution and services here.
Lisa and Monika both work for ReadyForSocial. Feel free to contact them about this podcast or about ReadyForSocial's services: Lisa Davidson and Monika Ruzicka.
Standing out with your content - this is one of the biggest challenges marketers are facing today. Generative AI helps many marketers by more efficient in content production. But that doesn't solve the problem: how do you get noticed and how do you create content that gets your audience to take action?
We've had a conversation with psychology-driven content writer and creative consultant Jill Pavlov to shed some light on these questions. Specifically, we discuss:
- How to stand out with content in B2B in today’s world of abundance – top tips
- Difference between B2B and B2C content / Making B2B content engaging
- Content formats in B2B
- Paid vs. organic content
- Role of content along the sales funnel – content that converts
Listen in now!
About Jill:
Jill Pavlov is a creative copywriter and content specialist, dividing her time between her own business “Creative Concierge” and the social selling company ReadyForSocial.
With in-depth experience in the marketing, public relations and communications industry, Jill’s ambition is to use her words to help businesses tell their story to further sales and business.
Jill’s skillset includes Marketing Strategy, Content Developement, Copywriting, Social Media, Advertising, and Creative Writing. Out-of-the-box ideas are her specialty, and her extensive background in theater ensures that everything she brings to the table has a bit of flair.
Next to her writing career, Jill has a passion for comedy and just landed an engagement with The Second City, one of the most influential comedy theatres in the English-speaking world. Jill lives and works in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Follow Jill or connect with her on LinkedIn.
Visit Jill's website Creative Concierge.
Visit social selling management company ReadyForSocial.
In this episode we talk about social selling across different countries and regions of the world. Any business operating internationally faces this challenge: How do you leverage social media platforms and digital communication channels in a global context?
We discuss with our guest speaker Sebastian Förster from Henkel. In this episode you will learn:
- How to create an international social selling strategy for your company
- How to navigate cultural differences between difference social media platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram, WeChat, Threads, TikTok etc.) and between countries, and keep your presence authentic
- Why it is important to maintain the 'red thread' of your overall brand and marketing communication and how to make the necessarily local, regional and cultural adjustments
- What are possible strategies for language adaption across various regions or countries and why simply translating content might not be the best way to go
- What appeal TikTok might have for B2B
About Sebastian:
Sebastian is a Customer Experience Manager and marketing expert with over ten years of experience. Throughout his career, he has advised all levels of companies on social media, branding, marketing strategies, social selling, and active sourcing at the senior management level, successfully implementing these strategies with the assistance of global teams.
Sebastian is also passionate about technology, consumer electronics, and digital art forms.
Follow Sebastian or connect with him on LinkedIn.
Learn more about Henkel's Inspiration Center.
In this episode, we're diving deep into some of the unique challenges that especially large companies face when scaling their social selling program across their sales organization and beyond.
You all know that social selling has become a powerful force in the B2B world, revolutionizing how organizations connect with their target audience and drive meaningful engagement. But when we talk about rolling out and scaling a program across multiple divisions and / or geographies, what strategies and techniques can you use? How do you steer and control your program? Or is the actual art to learn how to control less?
Join us as we explore these crucial topics with our fascinating expert and guest speaker Nader Ali-Hassan and uncover the secrets to creating a thriving social selling culture.
We cover:
- How do you scale from individual evangelists to social selling across an entire organization?
- Is motivation of salespeople enough? What’s the journey from an organization perspective?
- Role of social selling in an overall B2B Marketing Communications strategy and how can you measure the results?
- How do you balance authenticity with a given communication framework and strategy?
About Nader:
Nader Ali-Hassan is a digital, social and experiential marketing leader who has most recently held the position of Executive Director, Marketing Communications at Comcast Business. Comcast is the largest American multinational telecommunications and media company. Comcast Business is their B2B brand, offering technology solutions – from connectivity and security to unified communications - to businesses of all sizes.
In his recent role, Nader directed the overall communications strategies across all above and below the line marketing tactics. As part of this role, he led the initiative to centralize social selling across the entire organization and thousands of sales people.
Nader is a true transformational leader in the marketing and digital space and has won multiple awards including the Webby Awards, D&AD Awards, Cannes Lions and OMMA Awards.
He lives in Philadelphia with his family and next to his work, he is also a passionate musician.
Connect with him or follow him on LinkedIn.
Social selling can provide your business with incremental revenue - or, more broadly speaking - an incremental value opportunity and help you increase the ROI of your marketing activities.
But how do you tackle social selling? Where do you start? In this 2nd part of our ROI special, we help you decide what kind of program your organization needs, based on your objectives, and how to put such a program together:
- How do you decide what kind of program your organization needs?
- Depending on what kind of program makes sense for you, what do you need to make it successful?
If you want social selling to contribute to your marketing & sales success, listen in!
If you have any questions, contact Monika Ruzicka or Lisa Davidson on LinkedIn.
There is a LOT of content out there these days. Just look at your LinkedIn feed alone. It’s tough for everyone to stay on top. The same is true for your target audience. They are OVERWHELMED with content. So, how do you get their attention? How do you get through to them and move them to take action toward you and what you have to offer, step by step?
This is what we're discussing in this episode with content expert Shondell Varcianna.
These are our topics:
o How to writing compelling content for a particular group of people (niche)
o How to manage more than one target audience / niche
o The importance of having a strategy on how you’ll promote your content
o How to be consistent with publishing content
o Making sure that your content speaks to your customers and your target audience
o LinkedIn strategy for finding your target audience and getting business from them
o Bonus: Shondell's LinkedIn messaging strategy that drives conversion
Listen in!
About Shondell:
Shondell Varcianna has turned her 16 years of experience in the financial services industry and her passion for writing into a successful own business that helps financial institutions make an impact with their content.
Shondell started working in banking in 1998, right out of high school. Over the next 8 years she worked in several positions, including being a mortgage loan originator, where she underwrote million dollar mortgages per week and exceeded weekly targets by 130%.
In 2006, she joined Canada Mortgage & Housing Corporation (CMHC), an insurance company that insures mortgages for banks. While at CMHC, she managed an account of over 150 bank branches, 80 mortgage specialists and 25 underwriters by developing and improving relationships with banks, credit unions, mortgage companies, mortgage brokers, and real estate agents.
Today, she owns and operates Varci Media, a content writing company that helps financial institutions save time by writing content that speaks to their target customers. With her help, her clients have transformed their blog into a solution provider for their customers.
Originally from Toronto, Canada, Shondell now lives in Atlanta, GA with her husband and 2 children.
Connect with Shondell or follow her on LinkedIn or visit her company website Varci Media.
Did you know that between 81 and 92% of New Year's resolutions fail? Changing behavior and establishing new habits is hard! To set you up for success in 2023, we're talking with Anna Bejgrowicz, Learning & Development expert, about habits and how understanding they can make you more successful in social selling and beyond.
Topics we cover:
- Three elements of habits: action, regularity, behavior pattern.
- How you can use habits to grow personally and professionally.
- Simple and effective tools like habit scorecard, implementation plan and habit stacking that can help you succeed.
- How small actions can lead to incremental change and big results over time.
- Habits that can help you with social selling and reaching your sales and/or other goals.
- Content creation habits that you can establish for yourself or in your team.
- How tools & technology can help organizations establish habits at scale, such as social selling in a larger sales team.
About Anna:
Anna Bejgrowicz is a Learning & Development professional with 8 years experience in the IT & telecommunications industry, working for Atos and Deutsche Telekom Group. In her current role at Deutsche Telekom B2B Europe she is the Lead for Learning and Development within the Digital & Cloud Services group, serving the sales & technical communities across 8 countries in the CEE region and in India.
Before entering the ICT world, Anna was on the path to a career in international relations and diplomacy, when she decided she’d rather use her talents in business. Ever since, she’s enjoyed using her competencies in stakeholder management as well as her leadership and interpersonal skills to affecting lasting change in corporation.
Most recently, she successfully implemented a social selling program in her organization – in partnership with her marketing team.
Connect with Anna or follow her on LinkedIn
Anna's favorite L&D group on LinkedIn: L&D SHAKERS | Groups | LinkedIn
Anna's favorite books on establishing successful habits:
- Atomic Habits by James Clear
- The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
Podcast recommendation:
- Brené Brown and James Clear talking about Atomic Habits
Furthermore, on Anna's reading list:
- The Now Habit by Neil Fiore, Ph.D.
- Habits of a Happy Brain by Amanda Carlin
Whether your goal is to build trust and authority, explore new business opportunities or start new sales conversations, social selling is the way to go. While social is undoubtedly a current buzzword, it’s also one that many remain skeptical about, especially when the planning process starts to include budget talk.
Be honest! Haven’t you wondered if social selling is genuinely worth investing money in?
That's what we are looking at in this first episode of our ROI special. You will get an overview of:
- Building a successful social selling program
- Measuring the results
- KPI benchmarks from the experts: what kind of activity rate of your social sellers can you expect? How many relevant engagements from your target audience are good?
- How to track relevant engagements: From CRM integration to seller surveys
If you want to build a successful social selling program, listen in!
We're excited to tell you that we will feature an ROI special with insights from our sponsor ReadyForSocial over the next few weeks.
This unique feature will deliver all the knowledge you need to successfully get the return on investment you envision for your social selling program and could be an inspiration for how you plan the marketing and sales activities for your business.
The ReadyForSocial team has been creating and managing enterprise social selling programs since 2014. And, over time, has developed a methodology on how to measure social selling results and ROI.
This is the trailer for our ROI special and gives you an overview what to expect.
We’re taking a holistic view of the experience customers have with a company or brand, and the role social selling can play in shaping this experience. We talk with Marcy Fluitt, Marketing Strategy Consultant with 17+ years experience in enterprise marketing.
We cover:
- Why social is the channel where brands can make an impact.
- The opportunity of social to connect with the audience on an emotional level and proactively participate in conversations.
- How to craft the strategy across the entire sales cycle: from awareness to post-sale & NPS, and why journey mapping is so important.
- Why multiple touchpoints matter in building strong bonds with your audience and why each salesperson should have their unique voice on social.
- Why you can’t afford to not listen to your customers on social media anymore.
About Marcy:
Marcy Fluitt is a seasoned marketing professional with 17 years’ experience in enterprise marketing across industries, from construction engineering and machinery manufactured product lines to telecommunications and technology solutions. While Marcy has worked across the entire spectrum of marketing functions, her sweet spots are marketing strategy, go-to-market, new product introductions and customer experience.
What sets her apart is her passion to think about marketing holistically, advancing opportunity for impact. Simply put, Marcy always keeps the overall customer experience front and center while selling the brand’s solution value.
In her most recent position as Global Marketing Director at Spectralink Corporation, Marcy focused on digital marketing and introduced a social selling program to the sales organization.
Marcy lives and works in New Orleans, Louisiana, and enjoys food & music festivals!
Connect with Marcy or follow her on LinkedIn.
In this episode, we talk podcasting! Our guest is Daniel Fuller, host of the "Plants Grow Here" podcast,
Our conversation centers on:
o the role & importance of podcasts in today's marketing and business
o how to start your podcast and why it should be very targeted
o secrets to a successful podcast
o how to market your podcast and grow your community
o how can you as marketer get help in starting with your own podcast
In this episode, we take a step back from social selling and look at the broader spectrum of business communication. We talk with Business Communication & Corporate Writing expert Natalie Francis, Founder at ReWrite LLC, about:
- the role of language in business and marketing today
- what kind of problems do organizations and business leaders face today?
- what are the main considerations when creating business communication?
- does the medium matter?
- top 3 tips for marketers in using language to connect with their audience
If you're in business and want to learn how to use language and communication to improve your messaging, this episode is for you! Listen in.
Learning plays an important role in getting your organization ready for the digital world and for social selling. To effect lasting change of habits in your sales team and beyond, Marketing should cooperate with the Learning & Development (L&D) team. In this episode, we talk with L&D expert Anna Bejgrowicz from Deutsche Telekom about how she and her Marketing team successfully established a social selling program across 9 countries. We cover:
- Social selling as part of go-to-market strategy
- L&D cooperation with marketing
- Trainings: what was important / what questions came up?
- Stakeholder management: how the pandemic disrupted (offline) relationships and how to leverage social selling in the post-Covid world
- How to make learning sustainable: 1) embed learning in the flow of work, 2) microlearning, 3) thoughts on change / behavior management
- Learning & Development as marketers, learners’ personas
- Tips on how to stay motivated for learning
Listen in!
About Anna:
Anna Bejgrowicz is a Learning & Development professional with 8 years experience in the IT & telecommunications industry, working for Atos and Deutsche Telekom Group. In her current role at Deutsche Telekom B2B Europe she is the Lead for Learning and Development within the Digital & Cloud Services group, serving the sales & technical communities across 8 countries in the CEE region and in India.
Before entering the ICT world, Anna was on the path to a career in international relations and diplomacy, when she decided she’d rather use her talents in business. Ever since, she’s enjoyed using her competencies in stakeholder management as well as her leadership and interpersonal skills to affecting lasting change in corporation.
Most recently, she successfully implemented a social selling program in her organization – in partnership with her marketing team.
Anna believes in an approach where learning is effective when linked to personal and business objectives while bringing the learners joy. She lives & works in Toruń, Poland, the birthplace of world-renowned astronomer and mathematician Nicolaus Copernicus.
Connect with her or follow her on LinkedIn
Anna's favorite L&D group on LinkedIn: L&D SHAKERS | Groups | LinkedIn
Anna's favorite book on establishing successful habits: Atomic Habits by James Clear
We talk B2B content with Jeff Epstein, career B2B marketer and storyteller, and Vice President Marketing at Tryten Technologies, a company driving innovation in the healthcare industry.
Jeff's 'mantra': 'If your content doesn't generate awareness, inspire action or help the sales team close deals, it isn't worth creating.' In this episode, he shares his best practices on:
- learning what your customers care about
- 3 ways how to create effective content
- measuring the impact of your content along the sales cycle (attribution, CRM)
And we zoom in on the role that social media plays in listening to your audience and getting visibility for your content.
About Jeff:
Jeff's specialties include Product Marketing, Sales Enablement, Analyst Relations, Competitive Intel, Business Development, and Partner Enablement.
His extensive B2B Marketing career extends across industries focusing on tech. He is currently the Vice President of Marketing at Tryten Technologies. This Seattle-based healthcare company leads the revolution in Telehealth and medical device carts with designs, capabilities, and services built for today's evolving healthcare industry.
A native of Montreal, Jeff lives and works on the other side of Canada in Vancouver.
Follow Jeff on LinkedIn or learn more about Tryten Technologies.
One of the hardest things to do in social selling (on LinkedIn): social listening. There are so many relevant pieces of information out there and potential signals to be leveraged - but how do you do that at scale? We're exploring this with Jamie Shanks, one of THE authorities on social and digital selling. Jamie has pioneered and developed social selling for over 10 years and has been named as one of the 50 B2B sales expert by LinkedIn.
We're talking about:
- why does social listening matter
- what info can you leverage in B2B sales & marketing
- how can you go about it in a structured way, at scale
- what tools can help you
- what are pipeline signals and why you are missing out if you're not paying attention to them
Jamie Shanks is the CEO of Sales for Life, the world’s largest Digital Selling training program for mid-market and enterprise companies. Jamie has authored 2 best-selling sales books – Social Selling Mastery, and SPEAR Selling. Sales for Life has trained over 200,000 sales and marketing professionals, in dozens of industries. Jamie’s speaking engagements & workshops have been delivered across 6 continents, for brands such as Microsoft, Thomson Reuters, Oracle, American Airlines & Intel.
Over the past 10 years, Jamie has evolved his Sales for Life community from Social Selling to Modern/Digital Selling, to attacking what he calls ‘the most pervasive problem in sales’: sales-generated pipeline at scale. In 2021, Jamie co-founded his new company Pipeline Signals, offering a complete managed service that mines data from both target and existing accounts, providing actionable signals to sellers.
Follow Jamie on LinkedIn and Twitter.
Check out his company Pipeline Signals to learn more about keeping track of key decision- makers and -influencers in your accounts and prospects.
Looking for modern sales trainings for your team or organization? Visit Sales for Life.
Artificial intelligence mimics our own human intelligence and enables technology to see, hear, speak, move, or write. This is important for the business and social media world, since AI can eventually create drafts for ads or even write social media posts for you.
But how does AI actually work, how does it relate to B2B marketing space, and why is it important for social selling. These and other questions we are discussing with AI and B2B marketing expert Apoorv Gehlot.
Apoorv is Founder and Board member at Matellio Inc., a software engineering services company with a focus on product design and development. Matellio operates in the areas of AI, ML, IoT, Embedded, Cloud computing, web and mobile driven solutions.
Listen to the episode to learn:
1.Where is AI in marketing on its life cycle? Is it still in hype or are there real practical applications?
2.How can you classify AI?
3.What AI application should marketers think about first? How do you go about it?
4.If you consider AI deployment: Do you develop it in-house, do you buy solutions, do you buy pre-products? What are the steps? What skills do you need inside your organization?
5.AI in social selling/social media: content creation, analytics, targeting
6. Do today's marketing departments need AI to be successful in the future?
Additionally, we're covering some fun facts about chef's hats, oranges and the best tiramisu in Silicon Valley. Don't miss it!
Milan Ruzicka is Co-Founder, COO Global, and CEO Europe of the social selling company ReadyForSocial. He has 20+ years of B2B enterprise marketing experience focusing on turnarounds and business growth, telco, and tech. He's also the analytical "mastermind" of ReadyForSocial and loves to prepare meaningful data for his clients.
In this episode, Milan shares his insights into the cost, KPIs and the ROI of social selling:
- what does social selling cost?
- how to measure the success of your social selling program?
- how much engagement should your sales people get?
- and: what is the ROI of social selling?
Listen to our episode to hear these and other learnings directly from Milan.
Wiebke Kraus is Digital Marketing Manager at SPS, a leading outsourcing provider for business processes solutions and document management.
Wiebke has been involved in the planning, development and implementation of integrated marketing campaigns, as well as in her company’s social media marketing and social selling program for the German market.
In this episode you learn:
o what is the role of social selling in today's digital marketing?
o social media marketing vs. social selling: what is the difference?
o how can marketing support their sales team? (trainings, tools, content, individual support)
o the role of tools in digital sales enablement & social selling.
Wiebke is passionate about digital marketing, audiovisual media, technology and storytelling. Prior to joining SPS, Wiebke has held various marketing positions at companies like Sky Germany - Europe’s leading media and entertainment company and part of the Comcast group - and Red Bull Media House - an award-winning, global multimedia company with a focus on sports, culture and lifestyle content.
Ronnell Richards has more than 20 years of experience as a successful entrepreneur and sales leader. His varied background includes roles as an account executive, president, and managing partner in telecommunications. Ronnell also excelled as marketing director in the healthcare industry, consistently achieving top accolades, and has experience in channel and partner development.
Ronnell loves sharing his knowledge and inspiring others. That’s why his current focus is on helping entrepreneurs create and execute go-to-market strategies and grow their sales & business. He is also the managing partner, creator, and host of the “Business & Bourbon” community of business leaders and entrepreneurs who share their knowledge and wisdom.
Next to that, Ronnell is the host of the top-rated podcast “Business And Bourbon with Ronnell Richards,” which has been featured in Forbes and Inc. magazine.
In this episode, you will learn:
- The keys to successful and sustainable community building.
- How to capture the attention of people in today’s busy world.
- How marketers can create their personal professional brand.
- How to use social media & social selling to achieve your goals.
… and much more. Listen in as Ronnell shares his incredible knowledge with you.
In this episode, Milan Ruzicka, B2B enterprise marketing expert, shares cutting-edge insights and learnings from the B2B Marketing Exchange*, one of the top B2B conferences in the United States.
Some of his key takeaways for the marketing of today & tomorrow include:
- the digital marketing industry is evolving with accelerating speed and complexity, the vendor market outpacing the needs of their customers.
- the change in buying behavior towards primarily digital brings new needs in terms of technology, operating models and the skillset required of marketers.
- customer intent becomes a critical factor, as well as allowing prospects to go through the entire customer journey in their medium of choice.
- the interest in social selling is growing with about a third of attendees indicating they want to talk about it.
Listen to our episode to hear these and other learnings directly from Milan.
Andreas Klauser is a senior tech marketing leader in the B2B enterprise space. After holding various marketing leadership positions at HP and T-Systems International, he joined Zoom in November of 2021. Now, he is leading and building out Zoom's marketing organization across the EMEA region.
In his previous position as VP of Field Marketing at T-Systems, he has successfully implemented a global social selling program for hundreds of colleagues in sales and beyond. In his current role at Zoom, he is in the process of rolling out a program across Europe and Asia.
In this episode, you will learn best practices for marketers when it comes to:
- setting up your social selling program and creating traction organically throughout the organization.
- who to start your program with (how to choose the people and business unit to begin with).
- how to secure sales leadership buy-in.
- how to keep your organization engaged for the long haul.
- how to define success along the timeline of your program, including a focus on marketing & sales KPIs.
- proving content to your (sales) organization, and much more.
… and much more. Listen in as Andreas shares valuable hands-on advice and experience!
Zac Wood is a seasoned sales professional with 15 years of experience in Sales & Sales Management Excellence. Zac has a track record of surpassing sales quotas, increasing revenue, and growing market share. He has used LinkedIn to advance his business success for over 10 years. His approach to sales is to build relationships and understand what jobs need to get done for the client.
Listen to this episode to learn more about how Zac sees the role of social media in modern sales. We talk about how sales teams and their organizations benefit from social selling, what challenges sales people face when integrating social selling into their day-to-day work, and how marketing can support them for optimal results.
Sander Biehn is founder and CEO of Thought Horizon, LLC, and a pioneer of social selling. After a successful sales career at AT&T, he founded his company in 2013, helping organizations build, manage, and succeed using social selling.
We talk with Sander about:
- how social selling can complement account-based marketing
- how organizations can implement social selling to build relationships and grow business with defined accounts
- hands-on tips for marketers and sellers who want to use social selling as part of their ABM approach
Plus: Sander share his own beginnings and his success story with social selling, working as an enterprise Account Executive in the telecommunications industry before founding his own social selling company.
We talk with Björn Radde - VP Digital Experience at T-Systems - how he is integrating social selling in the digital marketing and sales strategy at his company. The topics we cover include:
- How can companies influence buyers in today’s busy, digital world?
- Why is social selling uniquely positioned to help businesses build relationships with their prospects?
- How can you get your organization started with social selling?
- Key success factors of social selling
- Björn's personal social selling routine
Bonus: A short excursion into the world of NFT (non-fungible tokens) and their role in digital marketing.
Björn Radde is VP Digital Experience at T-Systems International - one of the world's leading vendor-independent digital services providers. Before joining T-Systems, he held various senior digital marketing roles in technology, internet, and hospitality industries.
In our introductory episode, Straight to Business host Lisa Davidson gives an overview of our podcast and what you can expect. In short: Straight to Business helps B2B marketers master the world of social selling. Lisa Davidson is joined by social selling expert Monika Ruzicka and varying guest speakers from marketing and sales, to discuss the strategic and operational elements of bringing social selling to your organization and making it successful.
Welcome to our podcast! We are sharing our expertise and knowledge around B2B social selling, specially for marketing decision makers.