What is social selling, and is it relevant for you?

I have been on this journey of discovery since Jack Hanratty came in sold the dream of social selling with LinkedIn Sales Navigator, with Charity supporting me since day 1. This was in the backend of 2013 when I was working at a Law firm. Fast forward to today, I am now leading my 3rd social selling enablement programme on a 1000 seat deploy, which is synced with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM platform. Previously, I have led these across, Commercial Property and Law inhouse, and spent almost 5 years advising some of the biggest law firms and consulting firms in the world on, not only the why, but the how - and then delivering the how.

Anyway, enough about me, this is about you.

When I use the word "seller" this is interchangeable with lawyer, accountant, consultant, at all levels.

I still use this description from what was CEB in 2015, who were then acquired by Gartner.

This, for me, is still the core of what social selling is. There is, however, a lot more noise; a lot more automation, a lot more data, both 1st party, 3rd party and anonymous; and a significant change in the demographic of seller and buyer. And social media in of itself has changed dramatically. And continues to do so.

I am not going to insult your intelligence by sharing the global stats of social media, we all get it. If you want to dive into these, follow Simon Kemp The below, however, is where LinkedIn stands as of November 2022. Microsoft update these after each quarterly earnings call here .

LinkedIn remains the biggest b2b channel, and the one most people are comfortable with. What we have to change, is the perception of LinkedIn today, vs what was/is perceived to be - yes there are still 100s of recruiters on here, yes, it is a great place to find your next role, if that is your intended outcome is. However, it is also a huge resource for insight, knowledge, learning about what your existing and future clients are thinking and doing. It is also, the most up to date CRM system on the planet, therefore use it as such.

The key to success, is you need to define what your desired outcomes are. What do you want to achieve on here?

Remain front of mind with your existing clients? Originate new clients in an existing organisation, or land net new ones? Position yourself as subject matter expert in your field of expertise? Position yourself as an employer of choice for future hires? Chances are, I suspect, is that it is a blend of all of these, depending on where you are in your career.

Once you have defined these, it then becomes considerably easier to focus your time and energy on the right actions to achieve them. What's more, the mechanics of it, remain the same, what will change is the content and the narrative you shape.

This will become a 2 min a day muscle memory for you. And the rewards can be huge.

What does this all mean for you and your teams. The fundamentals still remain true, which are:

Your personal brand.

Your network.

Your message.

I will endeavour to walk you through each of these, with my take and experience of selling to and coaching teams who sell to the enterprise, where deal cycles can be anything from 3 months to 2 years, with multiple stakeholders. These tend to be consulting, advisory led vs product led, however, I believe the overall framework stands true.

Your Personal Brand

I will be honest with you; I have fallen out of love with this term. I am seeing too many people on LinkedIn and beyond taking, how can I put this politely, the instagram influencer approach. Which, if you are a solopreneur selling to the S of SMB, then I get it. However, this approach, I know puts off a hell of a lot of you. #selfie . The other side is I am seeing the next generation of sellers (and in this sense I mean SaaS sales) doubling down on their personal brand, making it all about them, and talking a good game, however I question if they are actually originating and closing business. They are trying to emulate some extraordinarily successful personalities on LinkedIn who do this, like Tom , Alex and Will - but this is their day job, and they are creative geniuses, which the majority of us are not.

Therefore, for the rest of us, you should treat this as your anchor point on LinkedIn, or other social channels, from you which you build out. And let's also be clear, you will neither win or lose business because of a "personal brand". I have never had anyone tell me, we wanted to work with you Alex because of your incredible LinkedIn profile; it is however important to bear in mind, if you are creating or publishing content, which leads your intended audience to your profile, it makes sense to back it up. This is no different from a website, and this is how you should treat your profile on LinkedIn, it is a website that is about you. This all supports you and enables to create and build your overall personal brand, as people will get to know you, your knowledge, and, most importantly how you can help. Start to stand out from the crowd.

And I have had people come up to me and say, we want to talk with you because we see you consistently in our feeds, engaging and sharing useful content.

So, here we go :

Make sure you have a banner image at the top of your profile. I use unsplash or speak with your marketing/brand/social media team and they will be able to guide you to what they have. If you choose one that is your own, think about how it will reflect the industry you advise to, eg if you are in sustainable energy, you might have a wind farm or equivalent.

Good up to date profile photo, first impressions and all that.

You can also add a 30 second intro video which sits behind your photo - you have to do this from your mobile device; if anything, it is a great way to practice your pitch! Here is how . You can look at mine, too, not suggesting you take my approach!

Your headline. Many people say different things about this. In short, you do what you feel comfortable doing. If you just want your title, just have your title. You may like to consider, Title, expertise, Industry: Partner, Banking, Corporate or Consultant, Retail, Cyber, or AE, Mining, Document Management solutions. You may feel comfortable taking it one step further, like mine and let it be more descriptive. To help you shape this, if I picked up the phone to any of your best clients, how would they describe to me what it is you do for them and build from there. Fundamentally, it's down to you, no matter what I, or anyone else for that matter, says.

Talks About - this enabled by turning on "Creator Mode" here which then gives you :

Hence, hopefully you can see the benefit. Note, when adding the topics that you talk about (these are the 5 hashtags) do not add the #, this will be added automatically. The other aspect that creator mode gives you through the creator tools, are, amongst other things, the ability to start a newsletter, just like this one. This enables to build your audience. The first newsletter you publish, every one of your 1st degree connections will get a notification and email inviting them to subscribe. Thereafter, you will grow your subscriber base organically. Just like I am, and so can you.

The other point to note is that you can add a clickable link - mine says subscribe to my newsletter, you can point people wherever you would like!

Next, we have Featured:

Again, a great, and easy way to promote whatever content you want, the easiest way to activate this, is to post on Linkedin, and the hit the 3 dots on the post and click Feature on top of profile :

Once you have done this, you can then click the + sign and add links, videos, photos and documents:

Next, we have About. Again, there are many ways to play this, there is no right or wrong. However, there are 875mn of us on here, yet, when someone lands on your profile, you are having a 1 2 1 conversation with that person. Therefore, think about who your ideal client is and talk to them. Don't write it in the 3rd person, as it just sounds weird. Think about using more of the "you" and "we" vs just the "I" . Humanise it by adding a bit of personality to what makes you, you, beyond the day job. You are talking to your next client, not your next job. This bit is really hard and will take a bit of time - once it's done, you can check it every 6 months or so. You be you.

Your Experience, this is more of what we do to help you solve business challenges. If you use a CV in your pitch material, make sure that this section reflects that.

As for the rest of your profile, ensure you have your education on there (most of you do), add any certifications or publications you may have. You can have up to 50 skills, so add 50 if you can. And finally, get client recommendations.

So, there you have it. These are the basics that, I believe, all of you can have in place to have an anchor point on here, to build your "personal brand" from.

Next up your network, and more importantly, your network of influence.

Every single one of you reading this has influence. You have influence at home, with your work colleagues and clients. What you need to consider is how you can use this, in a meaningful way to move your message through their network of influence to get to new people. This comes back to intentional behaviour driven by your desired outcomes.

First port of call is how big is your network of potential influence on LinkedIn. This is a very rough and ready way of calculating that, and hopefully will help you to start thinking about your network in a different way. How? Your 2nd degree network.

Here is how using Chief Marketing Officer, 2nd degree, UK, Financial Services :

I get to 878. This means I can be potentially introduced to 878 CMOs, in the UK, in the FS space. A straight referral. This also means, if I were to post something, aimed at CMOs in the FS space, and I have an engaged network of 1st degree CMO connections, I can potentially influence a further 878 CMOs toward me.

If your 2nd degree network of influence is small, unless you sell into a very niche market, you then need to consider how do grow this. However, the first consideration, in all of this, is that you may well be much closer to a referral or an introduction than you realise. Hence why it is paramount you connect with your colleagues internally, especially as you get into the medium and enterprise organisations - and why TeamLink and TeamLink extend in LinkedIn Sales Navigator is so powerful. But also, to connect with every person you have a business conversation with, even if this goes nowhere, you are increasing your network of influence - CMOs likely to be connected with other CMOs, GCs with other GCs, HRDs with other HRDs - I think you get the gist!

You can also do this at a company level, here I am looking at Microsoft and General Counsel:

I get to 397. Next steps could be follow, engage, connect, or, you have identified the person you want to get to, I would then go back to my strongest relationship at Microsoft and see if they would be happy to find a way to introduce me.

Next step. Think of LinkedIn as the biggest conference in the world, and it's free to join.

I am going to sound like a stuck record, but it comes back to intentional behaviour on LinkedIn, that 2 min a day muscle memory you are building up.

I have lost count the number of introductory workshops I have run on this, over the years. The number of intranets I am sitting on, business have this approach 10 times over at their disposal. It is however, really hard as you at the heart of all this is driving behavioural and mindset change.

Things to consider :

Are you following all of the company pages on LinkedIn of the clients you act for, work with and would like to work with, act for? If not go do that.

Go and follow all of the C-Suite of the clients you act for, work with - even better, if you do have meetings with them, make sure you connect! Not sure how to do this? Nice step by step guide here . And be sure to ring the bell!

Why do this? Well, when you do follow someone, they get a notification that you have done that, so, if they don't know you, well, now they do. If they post stuff on here, and it is appropriate for you to engage with that content, then do so - you are pulling yourself into their social proximity and making them aware of you, in a similar way to going up to someone in a conference an introducing yourself. You never know, they may look at your profile aka "anchor point", note an overlap of mutual connections, and send you an invitation to connect!

This approach can be used to remain front of mind, become front of mind, or highlight yourself the audience of a senior leader or thought leader around a particular subject, which in turn, draws their audiences to follow you and your narrative. Back to my "intentional purpose" on here, or any social platform for that matter.

Gone Fishing

There is little point fishing if there are no fish, or the wrong type of fish to what you want to catch.

This is where we start to talk about the algorithm on LinkedIn. In short, every action has a reaction on LinkedIn, therefore, every like, comment, message, recent connection accept, follow, will trigger the algorithm to show you more of that content, same goes for when people engage with you and your content. I will write more on this later - well I won't, I will share Richard van der Blom's brilliant work. What this means is that your news feed can become a bit of an echo chamber, therefore:

This is where hashtags become your friend. Use hashtags to find the topics of conversation you want to listen to and be part of. And, different people to engage and connect with. The principles remain exactly the same as mentioned earlier, when engaging with client content. The actions remain the same too! It's all about your intentions.

Find the hashtags that you want to listen to and be part of the conversation through likes and comments

2 mins a day, dipping in and out of these conversations will move your "personal brand" into the right ponds where your fish are, you never know, you might learn some new things too! Not sure what hashtags to follow? Ask marketing, see what hashtags your clients are using, both on the corporate page and their own posts. Be part of their conversations.

You can network in person, and online now. 2 mins a day, that is the habit you want to think about. Even if you just start by liking, to help build confidence, that's a great place to be! If you feel comfortable, then be part of the conversation in the comments, this is the most powerful aspect of LinkedIn at the moment.

Finally, you can be the conversation starter!

This can be the hardest part for some of you, and I get it - social media can be like the wild west. These thoughts may well be going through your head - what do I say? how do I say it? when do I say it? can I say it? what if I get no likes or comments?

All valid questions! In simple terms, if it feels wrong, it probably is. If you're not sure, ask someone. If you wouldn't say what you post, in person, at meeting, on stage at a conference, then don't.

Your content needs to talk to your intended audience.

Think about a question you were asked that week by a client and then reflect on it, in a post. You don't need to mention the client by name or even industry. An example below by Chris

Guess what, this led to a journalist from the Economist to connect with him to ask to contribute a piece of thought leadership! Your audience wants to hear from you. LinkedIn has changed a lot. People are getting a lot more personal with their posts, and yes, it's true they tend to get way more engagement and eyeballs BUT, are they the right eyeballs. Before we get to that though, as you will see with Chris' post he added in hashtags. This helps move Chris' post into those conversations. Therefore, rule of thumb, is 3 - 5 hashtags on your post. If you have creator mode on, then logic would dictate the hashtags you have listed on your profile, for the majority of what you post would be the same. Mix the type of content up, text, photos, documents even video if you are comfortable doing so, don't just push the corporate content either, mix it up! You will, over time, find what you are comfortable with doing. Listen and watch to what your colleagues are doing. Or your clients, and future clients.

If you can get to the position of posting something 2-3 times a week, mixed up with engaging with likes and comments on other content, this is a brilliant place to be - as long as you are doing this with intention, to drive the outcomes you want.

The Ripple Effect

When you engage on linkedin, with a like, comment or you post, and your audience engages, you are creating lots of ripples in the system, and this is you, moving your brand and content through your network - this is how you need to think of it, through and not to.

The Algorithm

I know you are all thinking about the algorithm word I mentioned earlier, therefore, here is the only insight on this, that I trust which is from the brilliant Richard

As you will see, there is a lot here to consider. My advice is use with caution. Don't focus on trying to beat the system - you won't. Focus on the people you want to talk to, write content for them, engage with them through likes and comments - I promise the rest will follow.

How do I know if any of this is working Alex?

Well, the easiest way to know is, if you are getting inbound - connection requests from the right people who want to learn more about how you might be able to help. It may well be you start to get invited to speak at conferences, guest on podcasts, contribute to articles because you are being seen as the subject matter expert across the relevant topics - hashtags - of conversation. You are getting the right type of profile views - LinkedIn premium needed for this - Your post impressions are landing in front of the right audience by company, function, job title, geography.

Follow this link to see how you can access all of the above and more.

The key is by being active, you are visible on LinkedIn, vs the competition who are not. It could take 1 day to see success to 1 year. This is all additive to your top of funnel pipeline, nurturing and nudging a sales process along, to expanding your presence across an account(s) or industry. This is not done in isolation to other outbound approaches you and your marketing team are already doing.

The single biggest take away from this, if you choose to do just one thing, be active. Likes & Comments, with ideally at least 1 post a week. 2 mins a day during the day - have LinkedIn always open on your desktop in the background - when you are waiting for people to dial in, or you are on an all-hands style call - come on, we all do it - or if you are out and about, on the app, waiting for a train, in the taxi, at an airport, at conference, sat at home on the sofa. You do not need to be on here 24/7, marginal gains for those 2 mins a day, will add up to a ton of engagement, connections and business opportunity - which you and your teams then have to go on and close.

To quote Rob from PwC - "It's about building your eminence online"

In simple terms, social selling is about creating the shortest route to a conversation with someone, where you and they believe there is an opportunity to solve a business challenge, together. How you get to that conversation, can be in many different ways.

I hope this has been a helpful guide with some practical hints and tips. I am more than happy to run an intro workshop for you and your teams to build on this, send me a DM and we can take it offline.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. Let me know what I have missed, or more importantly, the success you have had!