2. 2
Table of Contents
How to use this playbook
The LinkedIn Social Selling Playbook was created to
help our LinkedIn Sales Navigator program
managers and administrators transform their sales
organizations with Social Selling. The playbook will
help build the foundation of Social Selling within your
organization, provide the principles of success, and
introduce actionable plays across each principle.
Each play (identified by a PLAY tag in the upper
right-hand corner of a page) has been designed to
help integrate Social Selling into your sales
organization. The plays include actionable guides
and checklists along with their anticipated outcomes.
03 Introduction to Social Selling
06 Build Awareness
10 Educate Your Sales Organization
15 Reinforce Adoption, Engagement and
Accountability
19 Measure Success
26 Continue the Journey of Social Selling
Principles of Social Selling Success
4. 4
5 The Value of Social Selling with
LinkedIn Sales Navigator
How does LinkedIn define Social Selling?
It starts with leveraging the sales professional’s brand and network
Social selling is about leveraging social media networks and your professional brand to
achieve your sales goals. By finding the right connections and building trusted
relationships, it will enable your sales professionals to be better at sales lead generation,
sales prospecting, cold calling, building and maintaining relationships.
There is a growing awareness among sales leaders, that at its core Social Selling
adheres to the same time-tested principles of sales success away from core selling
activities. LinkedIn Sales Navigator offers the tools your sales teams will need to become
Social Selling professionals.
LinkedIn will assist you with the best practices for Social Selling and LinkedIn Sales
Navigator in this playbook. We are committed to helping you achieve success in
establishing a Social Selling program and unlocking the value that will come with it.
5. 5
The Value and Impact of Social
Selling with LinkedIn
Sales team are ready to embrace social
Social selling can have a profound positive impact on your
business with introduced effectively. To get started, make
sure the Sales and Marketing team are aligned with clearly
established roles, key performance indicators (KPIs), and a
shared statement of purpose. Powerful solutions such as
LinkedIn Sales Navigator can help achieve Social Selling
success when these steps are defined.
With Social Selling guidelines introduced across your
teams, they will be positioned to generate better leads,
nurture prospects, and form lasting relationships with
clients. You can turn digital disruption into a Social Selling
revolution for your business.
51%
3X
81%
Sales professionals who use LinkedIn
for Social Selling are 51% more likely to
exceed their sales quota than sales
professionals who don’t use LinkedIn for
Social Selling.
Sales professionals that use LinkedIn for
Social Selling are 3X more likely to
exceed their sales quota than those who
do not use LinkedIn.
81% of buyers are more likely to engage
with a sales rep who has a strong
professional brand.
7. 7
8 Generating Social Selling
Awareness
9 Building a Social Selling
Awareness checklist
Prepare your team for success
Sales teams will use Sales Navigator to generate sales success
Raising the awareness of your investment in Social Selling will be paramount to create
executive sponsorship and drive accountability with your sales professionals. Awareness
is the first principle of success that will allow you to build a healthy and sustainable Social
Selling program. Similar
At LinkedIn we’ve seen our customers create awareness campaigns and initiatives
focused on developing and growing their programs. Leveraging ongoing communication,
building sponsorship and enforcing accountability over time will strengthen your
program. Eventually leading to a significant return from the time and effort that has been
invested.
8. 8
Generating Social Selling Awareness
The key to driving awareness is sponsorship
It’s time to drive your sales team’s awareness of Social Selling.
Traditional sales models may be hardwired into your team, but
it’s time to challenge the status quo. Sales prospecting has
always been focused on going where the people are, and today
those people are on social networks.
By the time a prospect engages with a sales team, they’ve
already done the following:
• Used search engines to research information about the
product or service
• Read blog posts and reviews about the product or service
• Asked for feedback and input from their peers on LinkedIn
and other online communities.
Social selling helps sales professionals insert themselves
during the information-gathering stage most customers go
through. This is a critical stage in the sales cycle of a customer.
Social Selling adoption requires sponsorship
As a Social Selling program manager, you play a vital role in
helping your sales professionals recognize the importance of
performing the key activities that generate results in the new
B2B buying environment.
76%
of B2B purchasers prefers vendors referred by
people they know
Convey the benefits of leveraging Social Selling solutions
such as LinkedIn Sales Navigator in the selling process.
9. 9
Status Description
Establish executive sponsorship
Identify key stakeholders. Their responsibility will be to understand the high level benefits of Sales Navigator so they can reinforce that message to their sales teams
Decide on the key stakeholders roles and responsibilities. Effective communication will build awareness and accountability
Establish a consistent and timely cadence between the Sales Navigator program managers and executive sponsors to evaluate the program’s performance
Utilize the executive sponsors to establish the program launch and highlight the investment made in the organization’s sales teams
Introduce and reinforce the Social Selling program to sales professionals
Leverage LinkedIn Sales Navigator communication templates to inform your team about the launch of the Sales Navigator Social Selling Program
Encourage users to visit the LinkedIn Sales Navigator Learning Center upon product activation to learn more about the Sales Navigator and Social Selling
Continue awareness with ongoing communication to keep the sales team engaged
Highlight LinkedIn experts who can be leveraged by other sales team members for help with LinkedIn and Sales Navigator
Building a Social Selling Awareness Checklist
PLAY
Outcome: Generate awareness for Social Selling and Sales Navigator amongst your entire sales organization
11. 11
12 Educate your sellers about
Social Selling
13 Build a Social Selling Learning
Path
14 Prospecting with Social Selling
as a Sales Manager
Establishing a foundation of Social Selling education
Sales teams need to be equipped with the knowledge and skills to
succeed with Social Selling
Education is an important building block towards your sales team’s adoption of Social
Selling. Take advantage of the LinkedIn Sales Navigator training curriculum to ensure
that your team has the right Social Selling skills. Building this foundation will allow your
organization’s salespeople to leverage their own networks for introductions to their
buyers and find prospect quicker than they had previously.
Through consistent education and learning, your sales professionals will instill a social
selling culture into their daily sales workflow. The learning will encourage them to
complete their LinkedIn profiles, leverage Advanced Search to find quality leads, share
engaging buyer-centric content through LinkedIn, and build lasting relationships with
contacts.
12. Educate your sellers on Social Selling
Leverage our Sales Navigator Learning Center
One action that drives ROI is training. We want to make sure
you (and your users) are aware of a valuable tool at your
fingertips – it’s the LinkedIn Sales Navigator Learning
Center. The Learning Center houses a library of training
materials, tip-sheets, videos, and webinars.
To access, simply log into LinkedIn Sales Navigator, simply
hover over your picture to the top right, and click into
Training. Within the Learning Center you will find a wealth of
information and content to quickly educate your sales team on
Sales Navigator and Social Selling.
On the right you will find just a handful of topics that we can
educate your sales team on.
Introduction to LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Help users get started with Sales Navigator, focus on
the right prospects, gain insights, and leverage
introductions and warm outreach.
Save Leads and Accounts for Social Selling Success
This interactive session will explain how to save leads
and accounts in Sales Navigator, and provide the
benefits of doing so.
Transform Your LinkedIn Profile
In this session created specifically for sales reps and
sales teams, LinkedIn will review the best practices for
creating a profile that will help you to generate inbound
leads.
PLAY
Outcome: A team of sales professionals trained on the
value of Social Selling and features of Sales Navigator
13. 13
Status Description Comments
Month 1 – Introduction to Social Selling and LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Attend the Sales Navigator Admin Workshop via the Learning Center (program managers and admins only)
Assign Sales Navigator accounts to your sales team using your Sales Navigator admin console
Ask your sales team to complete the set up process (it takes 60 seconds) and their sales preferences to match
their specific job role
Ask your team to attend a live Introduction to Sales Navigator training or access a recorded version from the
Learning Center
Require your sales team to begin gaining insights by saving Accounts and Leads (10-15 leads per account)
Month 2 – Transform the LinkedIn Profile
Distribute the following tip-sheets from the Learning Center: Build Your Sales Profile, How to Build a High-Quality
Network on LinkedIn, Use Endorsements to Your Advantage
Encourage your sales team to attend the “Transform Your Profile” session from our Learning Center
Conduct a thorough review of your sales team’s LinkedIn profiles and provide feedback where necessary.
Month 3 – Advanced Prospecting with LinkedIn Sales Navigator
Ask your team to attend a live Advanced Sales Navigator training or access a recorded version from the Learning
Center
Encourage the team to use TeamLink and profile information to personalize InMails
Ask your team to attend a short, live training webinar or access a recorded version from the Learning Center
Month 4 – Thought Leadership
Distribute a bi-weekly newsletter highlighting sellers who have achieved success with Social Selling and specify
the role Social Selling played
Encourage your sales team to share and distribute approved marketing content to their networks over LinkedIn
Build a LinkedIn Sales Navigator Social Selling Learning Path
PLAY
Outcome: A complete Social Selling education plan for each member of your sales organization
14. Prospecting with Social Selling as a Sales Manager
The rise of social selling has changed the role of sales leaders. High performing social selling teams share resources and contacts, and
reward sales team for achieving organizational sales quotas.
As a sales leader, your challenge is to guide and motivate your team as they become social sellers. A key step is to model best practices.
Your team will look to your social presence as a guide, so the best practices below will integrate you as part of the social selling team..
• Have access to a wider network
• Benefit from the increased visibility of the brand
• Collectively create more resources to share with prospects
PLAY
Outcome: Sales managers will learn how to drive actionable social selling best practices with their sales teams
Get involved with Social Selling
1. Save key accounts and leads to stay
informed on top accounts and leads
2. Quiz team on introduction
opportunities. Have they leveraged a
specific connection yet?
3. Join prospecting blitzes leveraging
your network
4. Post marketing content to your
LinkedIn profile, ask team to share
5. Take the lead and post engaging
content about your product/service
Manage your people, not just pipeline
1. Open Sales Navigator during 1:1s
2. During deal strategy discussions, ask
sellers to provide engaged prospects
3. Focus on prospect profiles and
discuss buyer motivations and
potential opportunities and pitfalls
4. Look for opportunities to engage at a
senior-level leveraging your network
Share stories and correlate results
1. Encourage team to broadcast pipeline
wins via email or groups
2. Develop a Social Selling prize or
incentive for the best success story
and announce it during a
company/team meeting
3. Team QBRs should include key
metrics about team’s Social Selling
performance. Ask top performers to
discuss how they leverage their
network to sell
16. 16
17 Developing Social Selling
Initiatives
18 Sales Manager Adoption
Checklist
Drive the Reinforcement of Social Selling
Deploy Social Selling and Sales Navigator and then highlight success
LinkedIn would like to assist you with the best practices to succeed with Social Selling
and Sales Navigator, and one of those over-arching best practices is adoption
planning. Our recommended best practices are derived from the tens of thousands of
hours our team has spent with customers all over the world. Social selling requires an
adoption plan that is thorough and flexible. A balance of awareness and sponsorship will
be critical for it’s success.
Our customers have run creative awareness campaigns leveraging gamification,
engaging ongoing communication, and a reinforced method of learning in a variety of
subtle ways over time. The following plays will help you get started.
17. v
17
Developing Social Selling
Initiatives
Ideas to build and drive adoption
To reinforce and hold your team accountable for
incorporating Social Selling into their daily workflow,
it’s important to consistently message the
performance outcomes Social Selling can provide.
Eventually, you can use internal metrics for validation,
but at the outset it may be helpful to communicate
that 78% of salespeople leveraging LinkedIn outsell
their peers.
Another way to reinforce the importance of Social
Selling is to offer real-world examples whenever
possible by showcasing the tactics and results of your
advanced social sellers. Showing your team how they
can personally gain is critically important toward
achieving buy-in.
Social Selling Initiatives
1. Sales Social Hour – One hour per day or per week,
your sales teams are to be heads down doing
various Social Selling activities.
2. “4-1-1” campaign where sales professionals are
expected to post 4 items per week on LinkedIn, one
of which is to be about your company/your products,
and another is to be a piece of industry expertise
3. “TeamLink Tuesdays” day in which everyone takes
time to research contacts/prospects and use their
TeamLink connections for an introduction or advice.
4. Dictate a certain month as “Profile Month” in which
everyone is expected to update their profile and
review profile training materials are sent out
5. “Networking November” where people are urged to
build out their connections and join groups.
Encourage them to share stories to win prizes.
PLAY
Outcome: Reinforce the value of Social Selling
and maximize adoption amongst the sales team
18. 18
Status Category & Actionable Tasks Comments
Find the right prospects
Reviews a prospect’s or customer’s LinkedIn profile prior to every phone call
Saves and multiple Lead Builder searches to get proactive insights of target contacts and accounts
Combines keywords and search filters to run targeted searches.
Gain Insights
Uses ‘People Also Viewed’ to identify and map additional decision makers at key accounts.
Searches additional social networks to find the accounts of key decision makers using the ‘contact info’ tab.
Sales Manager looks up contacts at the reps account to see what direct connections or TeamLink connections
they have at the account that can help the rep gain entry or get higher in the account.
Engage Prospects Effectively
Sends inMails to reach prospects where a warm introduction is unavailable
Uses TeamLink and profile information to personalize InMail.
Follows InMail best practice by sending personalized, customized messages referencing what’s in it for the
prospect and connections in common.
Builds a high quality network
Connects with customers after an in-person meeting or phone call
Develops a well connected network of decision makers where there are key opportunities.
Personalizes connection requests to build conversations and relationships.
Sales Manager Reinforcement Checklist
PLAY
Outcome: Accountability from each sales professional to leverage the features of Sales Navigator
20. 20
21 Social Selling Index (SSI)
22 CRM Tracking
23 Review Sales Navigator Usage
24 Uncover Success Stories
25 Sales Managers –
Evaluating Your Social Sellers
Measuring Success with LinkedIn
The value and impact of Social Selling can be measured based on
established success criteria
It is important to determine what success looks like for your business, what you’re going
to monitor and how you’re going to monitor it. Some of these measurements will require
tracking by you and your sales professionals, others can be tracked through LinkedIn
usage reports. The following are a few examples and best practices shared by our clients
from all over the world:
21. 21
Social Selling Index
Measuring Social Selling Success on LinkedIn
The Social Selling Index (SSI) is a measurement of how well a
client has adopted Social Selling on LinkedIn. It was
developed by surveying 5,000 reps, identifying the top
performers, then pinpointing 50 activities that social sellers do
on LinkedIn. The final formula was designed to keep variables
that were correlated with sales success so that we can provide
a quantitative way to predict successful sales reps.
SSI is measured on a scale of 0-100, with 25 points for each
of 4 key tenants: creating a professional brand, finding the
right people, engaging with insights, building strong
relationships. We further defined SSI leaders as those with
SSI > 70 and SSI laggards as SSI < 30.
Your LinkedIn Sales Navigator team can provide you with the
SSI data for all of your Sales Navigator users as well as your
organization and competition.
Using SSI as a predictor of success and revenue growth
20.4%
lift in revenue for Sales Navigator users who
increase their SSI by 20% or more in 6 months
SSI leaders, or those with SSI higher than 70, are 51% more
likely to hit quota than SSI laggards
22. 22
CRM Tracking
Leverage your CRM to track success
Establish either a tag or opportunity name/category
for LinkedIn Sales Navigator within your CRM. This
will allow your users to clearly identify and mark
opportunities generated or influenced by their use of
Sales Navigator, allowing you to tie this back to
specific opportunities and deals.
Once you establish the process within your CRM, the
process of logging LinkedIn Sales Navigator activity
must be shared and reinforced with your users as
part of their daily sales processes. This step will also
reinforce accountability in helping your organization
measure success and ROI.
Pipeline Creation
1. New decision makers identified
2. New companies identified
Opportunities
1. Opportunities influenced by LinkedIn
2. New opportunities created
3. InMail communications sent (copy and paste InMail
correspondence to CRM)
4. Meeting generation / conversion
PLAY
Outcome: CRM reporting to identify all opportunities
impacted by LinkedIn Sales Navigator
23. 23
Review Sales Navigator Usage
LinkedIn Sales Navigator includes a Usage Reporting tool to help you understand and evaluate usage data
for each user. Usage Reporting can be found within the product’s settings and is available to all
administrators of LinkedIn Sales Navigator.
Outlined below is each usage metric along with it’s definition. Depending on your business objectives and
KPIs, certain metrics may be primary drivers of success. For example organizations focused on new
business growth can emphasize Saved Leads, Saved Accounts and Searches Performed. Each of those
metrics are aligned to a sales professional actively searching for new business.
Unique Daily Logins
Unique daily logins by a
user on LinkedIn Sales
Navigator
Saved Leads
The number of Leads saved
within LinkedIn Sales
Navigator
Saved Accounts
The number of Accounts
saved within LinkedIn Sales
Navigator
Searches Performed
Advanced Searches
performed with LinkedIn
Sales Navigator
Profiles Viewed
Unique profiles viewed on
LinkedIn.com and Sales
Navigator
inMails Sent
The number of inMails sent
by user
Messages Sent
The number of messages
and connection requests
Unique Connections
Number of unique
connections on LinkedIn
PLAY
Outcome: Evaluate the product engagement of each sales professional using Sales Navigator
24. 24
Uncover Success Stories
One way drive usage of LinkedIn Sales Navigator is
to leverage the Sales Navigator ROI Survey or create
an internal discussion group to collect success stories
and have them shared among sales teams and their
leadership.
Here is how we suggest you roll out these initiatives:
1. Reach out to your LinkedIn Sales Navigator
sales professional and request a ROI Survey
and send the link to your sales team
2. Decide on the outlet: Use your CRM or internal
messaging platform and encourage your sales
professionals to share their success stories.
Have your Executive Sponsor send out the
message about the group. This process must
be shared and reinforced with your users as
part of their daily sales processes.
ROI Survey and Success Story Examples
• Leverage a colleague for a “warm introduction”
• Receive a closed-won proposal and dollar value
• Circumvent a blocker to a potential deal
• Receive an inMail response
• Identify a new decision maker or company using
Lead Builder
• Use Account or Lead insights to open an opportunity
PLAY
Outcome: A collection of success stories to share
with executive leadership on the impact of social
selling within your organization
25. Sales Managers – Evaluating Your Social Sellers
The best way to encourage your sellers is to take Social Selling seriously and evaluate the program. Figure out what’s working
and not working within your team, and tell your sales team how to mimic successes.
As your sales sellers dive into social selling, you’ll want to track their results to ensure that they’re using LinkedIn Sales
Navigator effectively. It will also be important to review the impact of Social Selling on your book of business
PLAY
Outcome: Track and evaluate the impact of Social Selling on the business
Evaluate the seller’s Social Selling Index
1. Create a Professional Brand –
established professional presence on
LinkedIn with a complete profile
2. Finding the Right People – efficient
prospecting with advanced search
capabilities
3. Engaging with Insights – sharing
valuable information to initiate and
maintain relationships
4. Build Strong Relationships – expand
existing network to reach prospects
and warm introduction paths
Measure Social Selling activity
1. Targets for accounts touched AND
number of outreaches per account
using Saved Account feature
2. Targets for leads found and saved per
account using Saved Leads feature
3. Evaluate seller connectivity in top 3
accounts by VP+ and total
connections
Review the impact Social Selling
1. Sales cycle – are sellers gaining
access to prospects earlier and are
deals being won faster?
2. Adoption – are sellers adopting
consistent strategies of social selling?
Are there road blocks?
3. Recognition – are sellers who attain
success recognized in front of their
peers? How can that success be
replicated across the team?
27. 27
Continue the Journey of Social Selling
Sales professionals will find that social media leads to sales success
As much of the buying process continues to move online, social networks like LinkedIn
have become fundamental to the success of sales organizations. Increasing numbers of
sales professionals are using LinkedIn Sales Navigator to increase their revenue
potential, exceed quota, prospect more effectively, and consistently create a more robust
pipeline. Social Selling offer sales organizations new opportunities to connect with
customers and close deals.
This playbook has helped you build and integrate a Social Selling program into your
organization. However Social Selling is an evolution that will require continued
sponsorship, awareness, engagement and success measurement. LinkedIn is committed
to helping you along this journey.
For more information about the growth and evolution of Social Selling, please visit our
LinkedIn Sales Solutions blog (http://sales.linkedin.com/blog/) or contact your LinkedIn
sales professional.
