Harnessing Social Capital for Building Meaningful Conversations in Sales

Oh, how I love to sell! What is the purpose of sales activity? To generate leads? Opportunities? Revenue? Sure. But for me, it's more about engaging with the prospect in a meaningful conversation (beneficial for them, of course!).

So, how should you choose your sales rep or design your sales cadence? Here are my thoughts:

Choose your sales rep based on the size of their social capital. Social capital refers to the network of relationships a sales rep has built over time, including connections with other professionals in their industry, key decision-makers, and potential customers. By developing strong social capital, sales reps can leverage their network to generate leads, close deals, and drive revenue for their company.

Dear salespeople, your LinkedIn profile is your strongest weapon when applying for a sales job. Be prepared to showcase your social capital by presenting a snapshot of your current network by size, industry, people profiles, seniority level, followers, engagement rates, post impressions, post frequency, and content type. Remember, you are a business of your own. You are your own brand that can be measured and effectively capitalized. Right?

Sales leaders, develop sales cadences based on a sales rep's social capital level and skills, not a general sales flow that nobody likes.

Why assign a sales cadence with five cold calls in the first two days to a rep with 11k connections, with 1k of them in your industry? Why force someone who excels in cold calls to write emails all day? Yes, they need to be versatile, but design the cadence so you can get results from each specific rep as soon as possible.

Measure the success of a sales rep not based on the entire cadence but on the steps they are genuinely good at! Skilled in LinkedIn messaging? Great. You will do that and call as well. You may need to improve your calling, but I will insist on you closing deals based on your LinkedIn skills NOW!

Also, don't hire a salesperson who doesn't want to share their network with you. This isn't Facebook or TikTok. LinkedIn is the place where you can make business. Plan a training program for each sales rep to improve and strategically grow their network in your industry when hiring. Monitor this and expect results. Help salespeople become better on LinkedIn and, as I said at the beginning, masters at engaging prospects in MEANINGFUL conversations.