Dan BrockwellIn recent years, social selling, once just a buzzword among many, has evolved beyond mere industry jargon and has now firmly established itself as a crucial element in the strategies of modern B2B sales teams.
In today's hyper-connected world, where digital interactions dominate communication channels, social selling has emerged as an effective tool for SDRs to engage with prospects, add value, build relationships, and ultimately drive revenue.
According to LinkedIn, 78% of social sellers outsell reps who don’t, yet more than 90% of SDRs don’t have any formal social selling training or consistent strategy.
In this article, we'll explore tactics and offer practical advice for sales managers to effectively incorporate this strategy into their team's workflow. However, it's important to note that this topic is constantly evolving and dynamic."
How to Social Sell
Optimising Your LinkedIn Profile
The first step in launching a social selling initiative involves updating your LinkedIn profile.
When potential prospects view an SDR's LinkedIn profile, it offers a chance to create a favourable impression by highlighting your company's solutions and how they meet needs.
Avoid undermining excellent messaging and positive engagements with an outdated or irrelevant LinkedIn profile.
Linkedin Profile Tips
- Use a professional photo - profiles with pictures are 14x more likely to be viewed on Linkedin
- Add a value proposition to your headline - avoid reciting your title and focus on answering who you help and how you help them e.g. “I’ve helped 100+ B2B tech companies save over $10m through outsourcing SDRs”
- Have a cover photo - consider adding a logo, photo of yourself or a tagline; feel free to use these Canva templates
- Include your contact information (email address and mobile number) for prospects to get in touch beyond Linkedin.
- Create a killer bio → the two most important things here are to be authentic about your own goals & journey, and to show your domain expertise/focus to create relevance with the prospect. Don’t be afraid to use a bit of humour or add non-work elements here. People want to talk to people, not companies. Here’s a rough template you can follow if you’re not sure how to approach it:
- First paragraph: reiterate your personal purpose and focus from your headline.
- Second paragraph: get more specific and elaborate about your work, results achieved, projects you’ve taken on and clients you’ve worked with.
- Third paragraph: include a clear CTA why and how a prospect should get in touch.
- Detail your experience section - in each experience listed, make clear what you did and the top 3-5 achievements. Prospects want to buy from trusted sellers.
Posting Relevant Content
Most people post content to celebrate themselves or their company. But the best social sellers see content as a tool to solve problems for prospects and genuinely add value to them first, before showcasing themselves.
Ask yourself honestly: are most of your LinkedIn posts actually helpful to your prospects?
To effectively leverage social selling, focus on sharing valuable and tailored content that addresses the specific needs and pain points of your ideal customers. Prioritise content that strategically targets these pain points to boost engagement and conversion rates.
The aim is to offer information that directly addresses the challenges your prospects encounter, building trust and rapport while laying the groundwork for potential sales opportunities.
In finding your content niche, the key is to find the intersection of 1) What areas you know more about than the average person and 2) What areas your prospects are seeking more information on.
Regularly sharing thoughts on industry-relevant articles and ideas can bolster credibility and engagement; see these posts serving more as conversation starters (awareness) rather than pitching your product.
Tune into the conversations happening within your network both digitally and physically. Look out for topics that keep popping up, solutions that people are searching for, and things that catch everyone's interest.
Then, create content that dives into these subjects, giving out useful tips or advice that your audience can put into action.
By aligning your content with your audience's interests and needs, you can establish a robust presence on social media, nurturing valuable connections and driving business growth over time.
LinkedIn Posting Tactical Tips
For a more tactical guide, here’s a list of the best practices, patterns and insights that we’ve picked up from building’s Earlywork LinkedIn presence to 50,000+ combined followers:
- Do one of these 4 things and create the promise of doing so early in the post:
- INFORM: Solve an unmet need (e.g how to negotiate your salary)
- PERSUADE: Challenge an existing belief (e.g stop looking for strategy roles)
- ENTERTAIN: Make people laugh with a meme that’s related to trending industry news or common absurdities / jokes in industry
- CONNECT: Share vulnerable human stories or moments increase the depth of a reader’s engagement (be raw & vulnerable; share personal anecdotes, both highs and lows)
- Hooks are key to stopping the scroll: LinkedIn only previews the first 3 lines of your post, so focus on the first 3 lines creating enough intrigue/urgency to click ‘see more’. E.g. rhetorical questions, promise of a secret, reveal of a learning
- Post Times: Weekdays 8-10am, 12-1pm, 5-6pm are the sweet spots, with the exception of Monday morning & Friday evening. Avoid more than one post a day as this negatively affects algorithm (ideally minimum 18 hours between posts).
- Images generally do better: Posts with an image take up more screen real estate (square dimensions are optimal) and tend to perform better, particularly with pictures of people. However, images that look too ‘branded’ like an event banner actually do the opposite; people treat them like ads and scroll past.
- Personal page posts do better than company page posts in the LinkedIn algorithm, but it’s worth still doing the latter to build brand credibility / following
- Single-sentence spacing on LinkedIn does wonders
- Posts without links have higher reach overall: This is why you’ll see people put the external links in their comments instead
- ...but posts with links have higher link CTR: If you think the link is relevant to most of your audience and the conversion matters a lot, you may want to still do a link post. Note that with every successive team member who posts the same link, it performs worse.
- At the end of posts, ask a question or give a prompt to increase engagement in comments
Here’s why:
First off, you improve the readability of the post
And by keeping things snappy, you also keep people engaged rather than giving up on a big block of text
Social media attention spans are short; nobody wants long paragraphs
Sample Social Selling Process for SDRs
When it comes to outreach processes for SDRs engaging in social selling, the approach varies widely and is often influenced by factors such as industry dynamics and the length of the sales cycle.
Here’s one rough example of what a sample workflow can look like:
- Profile Review: Examine the prospect's profile without initiating a connection, so they see your name pop up.
- Industry Insight Post: Share a post relevant to the industry with a unique perspective.
- Engage With Prospect Content: Comment on something they’ve posted recently with support or insight.
- Custom Connection Request: When the prospect views your profile, send a personalised connection request with an explanation; if not, wait a day before sending it.
- Tailored Content: Provide valuable content customised for the prospect based on challenges you expect they may be facing.
- Targeted Messaging: Follow up with messages centred around a topic that showcases its relevance to the company.
Don’t just share internal company content or you’ll seem too salesy / harder to trust. Balance this out with thinkpieces, polls and discussions around third-party content/products to be more balanced in the image you put out.
By prioritising the prospect's interests, SDRs can build credibility and rapport more authentically, steering clear of an overly sales-focused approach that might not resonate well.
Alternatively, integrating pertinent articles or posts can enrich the messaging's value and context, providing further reinforcement for your arguments.
Designing prospect-centric messaging and encouraging creativity
A common trap in social selling is the tendency to excessively focus on self-promotion, diverting attention from the primary goal of building relationships rather than chasing immediate sales.
In any outreach campaign, you're essentially introducing yourself to someone who likely has no prior knowledge of your existence, underscoring the importance of eliminating self-centric language such as "I," "we," and "our" to maintain relevance to the prospective audience.
What truly distinguishes effective messaging from the noise with prospects is its ability to acknowledge and resonate with their perspective.
Clients aren't just purchasing a service; they're investing in outcomes, emphasising the need to craft messages directly addressing their needs and aspirations.
Yet, rigid guidelines enforced by many companies on SDR messaging often result in interactions feeling impersonal and lacking personality.
Prioritising authenticity, personalisation, and relevance when engaging prospects on social media is essential for leaving a positive impression.
Encouraging a culture of creativity and continuous improvement among SDRs while avoiding excessive restrictions can enhance their ability to connect effectively with buyers in the sales process.
Social Selling Workplace Norms
The first step is crucial, but it's also important to recognise that it's perfectly okay to work on this during regular hours. Many people brainstorm content ideas while commuting or in their free time, but some leaders may see this as a distraction.
It's essential to establish a culture from the top down that acknowledges content creation as part of the overall sales strategy.
The actions of company leaders set the tone for the entire organisation. When leaders actively participate in activities like content creation or commenting on socials, it sends a message to employees that these activities are valued and encouraged.
Conversely, a lack of leadership in this area may discourage employees, who might fear potential consequences within the company for appearing ‘distracted’ from their other responsibilities.