PARTICIPANTS IN SPOTLIGHT
REFERENCES / WOLFGANG WÜNDSCH
REFERENCES / WOLFGANG WÜNDSCH
NAME
Wolfgang Wündsch
ROLE
Digital Transformation Coach
BASED IN
Germany, Europe
Kramer & Crew supports the management of complex IT productions in companies, combines the broad spectrum of Crew solutions with SAP DigitalManagement and develops independent, personal and tailor-made services for the latest IT technologies. The customer spectrum ranges from global players to medium-sized businesses, organizations and associations. Read the business case of the whole team here.
Wolfgang Wündsch is a trained IT systems merchant and can now look back on 35 years in IT sales and 18 years of management experience. He has been involved with communities for 20 years and has been on board of Kramer & Crew GmbH & Co. KG since 2014. He manages the Alster/Elbe branch office in Hamburg, works in sales and is also co-organizer of the Azure Meetup in Hamburg. So nobody can fool him that quickly. In the past, he had been involved with Twitter and Xing and left LinkedIn out. For him, working for a German company, LinkedIn was a platform that was used where Xing was not available, i.e. outside the DACH region, and where people posted in English. When he then learned that his company wanted to invest in LinkedIn coaching, he became curious and wanted to know what was behind it and what tools were available here to help him build on his work success.
FRANSCHA was commissioned to coach 19 crew members from the sales department in the area of social selling between March and June 2020 and to provide them with a modern sales technique. It started with an 8-hour kick-off at Kramer & Crew in the headquarters in Cologne. There was an introduction to the topic of Social Selling & Personal Branding, followed by a deep dive in the form of webinars & individual online coaching on topics such as profile & content analysis. The program was accompanied by support mails, a closed LinkedIn group and further training sessions at the Kramer & Crew branch in Cologne.
Wolfgang felt taken away from the beginning: The group was made aware of certain inner hurdles with little games, such as the Marshmallow-Challenge – where the aim was to build a tower of spaghetti & marshmallows: For example, that not everything has to be 100 % perfect to work, but that sometimes you just have to do and start, as children show us.
FRANSCHA gave a lot of input to the whole team and still picked up the participants individually – each at his level – because social selling is about the individual employees building their own personal brand; they do not act as walking advertising pillars for the company. The company's social media also remains with the marketing department and not with the employees. But when it comes to posting on your own behalf, you first have to become aware of how I affect others, how do I perceive myself? Using paper on the neighbor's back, the first impressions were recorded here and provided a real boost to motivation, lively interaction and enthusiasm among the participants.
Wolfgang learned about the professional use of hashtags, the best times to post and much more. Nevertheless, he was still gripped by curiosity, so he also did A/B testing himself and discovered, for example, that private posts could provide for a lot of interaction even on a Saturday afternoon. And this is how he continues: "Thanks to FRANSCHA, I have the cooker, the pan and the eggs ready for use, but I have to fry the scrambled eggs myself".
The developing group dynamics were motivating and very useful, but frying the egg, he still has to do it himself. Therefore it is important to sharpen one's brand, to realize one's own goals. And that is what he has learned:
To have the first 500 contacts was a huge highlight, in the meantime it is well over 1,000 contacts. He was able to push up his Social Selling Index from 45 at the beginning to 82, the network has completely changed and optimized, the profile visits and the reach have skyrocketed.
In the meantime, he is not only fascinated and inspired by FRANSCHA, but also by 5-6 other LinkedIn users, who serve as role models for personal branding, storytelling and sales. He follows them, contacts them and sometimes even makes phone calls with them.
Wolfgang has caught fire. And it pays off, as his employer, Kramer & Crew, who financed this great training program for him, supports him and even gives him time to push his own LinkedIn marketing. Thanks to Wolfgang, Kramer & Crew now benefits from various new customers and six-figure project inquiries on his topic of hyper-convergence, which he was able to generate exclusively via LinkedIn. He has also founded a LinkedIn User Group, which is performing at the top of its class. He is also enthusiastic about Crosslinks: Through the group came inquiries about his other areas of expertise, such as the hybrid cloud.
LinkedIn has become indispensable for him. It's great fun for him, he's always finding new, exciting contacts and with his successes, he can also show himself to his employer.