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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

Introduction to Social Selling

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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.

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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.

Build Awareness

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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.

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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.

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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

Educate Your Sales Professionals

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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.

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

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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

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

Reinforce Adoption, Engagement and Accountability

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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.

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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

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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

Measure Success

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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:

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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

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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

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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

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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

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?

Continue the Journey of Social Selling

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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.