If you want to dramatically increase pipeline and revenue then you must invest in social selling strategies, tools and techniques. Here's the proof. Independent researcher C9 Inc surveyed 36 companies and 9,000 sellers, finding that those who embraced LinkedIn's Sales Navigator tool created 7 times more pipeline and 11 times more revenue. LinkedIn themselves analyzed a cross section of new and existing sellers who increased pipeline by 45% and the probability of achieving their sales targets by 51% simply by improving their social selling index (SSI) scores using both free and paid editions of LinkedIn.
"For sales management and sales leaders; ignoring the power of social selling amounts to professional negligence."
I will provide you with a link for you to obtain your own Social Selling Index (SSI) score, where you'll receive a report just like mine in the screenshot below, but please allow me to first briefly state the case for why social selling matters.
Sales people need to become micro-marketers to build their own credentials and create opportunity pipelines. They need to engage earlier and at senior levels to create the necessary value for both the buying and selling organizations to fund their roles. Social selling techniques that focus on listening for trigger events and content publishing for attraction, education and credibility are all important but consider these points:
Achieving a strong SSI score is about a holistic approach and content publishing contributes only 12.5% of the overall SSI score (including updates and Publisher posts).
If that does not work, ensure you are logged-in to LinkedIn and paste this into a new tab: https://www.linkedin.com/sales/ssi
To understand how the SSI algorithm works and how to improve you ranking, click here. Also, this post by LinkedIn explains more. This infographic from LinkedIn reminds you why it's important.
If you've achieved a SSI score of 90 or above please let me know in the comments of this post as I am creating a honor board.
The highest SSI score I've seen is by John Dougan with 99 and he is a brilliant writer. Follow John Dougan's LinkedIn Blog here. Congratulations also to these other SSI leaders!
If you'd like to learn more about how to maximize LinkedIn and Sales Navigator, contact Sales IQ Global.