---
tags: Week 4, H3, M9
---
# Introduction: The art of social selling
## The why
Once only a nice-to-have, social media has become a must-use channel in a high-performing sales professional’s toolkit.

:::info
:bulb: 75% of buyers use social media to research and become well-informed about the vendors they choose to work with. **This makes social selling an imperative when selling B2B!**
:::

Why use social media? **In short, because it works: 98% of sales reps with more than 5,000 LinkedIn connections meet or surpass their sales quotas, according to Sales Benchmark Index.**

Koka Sexton is a recognized social marketing expert, former head of social selling at LinkedIn and a social selling innovator. He gives a brief introduction to what social selling is really about and why you need to learn to master it 👇

{%youtube tHRX1NH-UzY %}

 
## The what
Ok, you know that social selling is a key component to how modern B2B sales is done. Now you may wonder:

**:bulb: What does social selling actually mean?**

Social selling is a bit of a buzzword. It can mean different things to different people. **In essence, it's establishing a presence on social media platforms to attract and interact with relevant leads.**

Here's how to do social selling right:
:::info
**The social selling process**
1. You craft a **compelling profile and regularly post and interact with interesting content** that's attractive to your target audience
2. Gradually, you become a **trusted expert** in the subject matter
3. This brings you **inbound** leads who directly approach you
4. It also makes your job easier when contacting **outbound** leads, as you have a strong profile and content they find interesting
:::

[This guy](https://www.linkedin.com/in/realsamnelson/) and [this guy](https://www.linkedin.com/in/christiankrausesalesforce/) are great examples of social selling done right (make sure to follow them!)

It's about establishing a social presence that allows you to connect with inbound and outbound leads.

Easy, right? Let's see how to bring it to life 👇

 
## The how
As many before you have done, you might be wondering... great, but where do I start? 🤔

In the following lessons, we're going to take you step by step through the social selling process.

1. **First, we're going to show you how to become a trusted expert,** by consistently posting and interacting with great content that adds value and resonates with your target audience.
2. **Then, we will focus on showing you how to generate actual outbound leads** on LinkedIn, our favourite and most widely used B2B social network.

*And what about inbound leads??*

Continuously posting and interacting with great content will attract great leads... in time. This will likely not happen during your training.

Regardless, we want you to be ready to do so! **For this reason, in this module we will also show you how to deal with inbound leads.**

Ready? Let's go!
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