The Ultimate LinkedIn Messaging Guide

CHAPTER 3OUTBOUND SOCIAL SELLING

Over the last few years, I've noticed one thing…

A lot, and I mean A LOT, of salespeople, sales leaders, and even sales experts only think of social selling as an INBOUND‐generating activity. They see it as sharing content to generate inbound leads.

Whilst it is, of course, a very powerful inbound lead‐generating platform, it is equally a very powerful OUTBOUND‐lead‐generating platform.

For those who may not be familiar with these terms, inbound leads are leads that come into you. For example, someone visits your LinkedIn profile or reads content that you've shared and then sends YOU a message enquiring about your product or service. That is seen as an inbound lead.

Inbound leads are more commonly generated by marketing departments, where they are then sometimes qualified and passed on to the sales department.

Outbound leads are more commonly generated by salespeople via prospecting activities where they go out and generate the opportunity. For example, cold calling will find salespeople phone up totally cold prospects and work to turn them into sales opportunities. They have gone out and created an opportunity from nothing.

Right now, one of the biggest missed opportunities in sales is generating more outbound social selling opportunities.

Let me show you what I mean…

Say you're a B2B sales rep, and as part of a social selling push, you write an article on LinkedIn. After that article goes out and gets some good engagement, a nice little message ...