The Rise Of OUTBOUND Social Selling

Most of the people I talk to only see social selling as an INBOUND lead generating activity.

They see it as creating/sharing content on social media to drive inbound leads into your inbox. This is why so many people don’t think that it should be social “selling” but instead social marketing.

In all fairness I have never classed inbound lead generation as a real sales activity, although in modern day selling it has become a sales activity now.

What IS a sales activity, that requires REAL salespeople, is OUTBOUND lead generation.

Where salespeople go out and create their own opportunities.

They pick up the phone and call someone.

They go to an event and approach people.

THEY start the conversation, not wait for someone to start the conversation with them.

Outbound lead generation is tough, it involves interupting people and trying to buy time with them to pitch what you’re offering.

Now, what a lot of salespeople are missing out on is leveraging Social Selling to actually generate outbound sales opportunities.

Let me give you a couple of examples…

Imagine you create and share a piece of content on LinkedIn. It could be a post or it could even be an article. You get a few likes and a few comments on that post, and you sit there and wait for some leads to come in.

As I mentioned before, if a lead comes through, you’ve generated an inbound opportunity. Most people, quite rightly so, would class this essentially as marketing, not selling.

However, let’s say you went and LOOKED at the people that had clicked like and had commented on your post.

Whilst doing that you noticed that a few of them were either prospects OR people who worked within prospective companies.

You then use that engagement as an opportunity to START a conversation with them, which you work through qualification and then turn those that pass into a sales opportunity.

That is very much OUTBOUND selling!

That in essence is NO different to making a cold call. With a cold call, you have a piece of data, perhaps a MQL (marketing qualified lead), and you call them to start a conversation and potentially create a sales opportunity.

With this, you’re generating the data via your content and then starting a conversation pro-actively from the engagement.

I’ll give you another example…

Let’s say you build a strong LinkedIn profile, one that is fully optmized (which I believe ALL salespeople should have). This is very much the same as what a website is for a company. You drive traffic to your profile through the content, they read, learn what you do and if it’s something they’re interested in they get in touch with you.

Again, in principle, this is a marketing activity.

However, let’s say that again you are pro-active. You are a sales hunter and you want to find and create your OWN opportunities.

You decide to use the amazing LinkedIn feature that lets you SEE who is viewing your LinkedIn profile. When you scroll through you find that a prospect, or someone within a prospective company, has viewed your profile.

Once again you use this as an opportunity to connect and start a conversation with them.

There you go, you’ve created another OUTBOUND social selling lead.

And this is what is happening in sales…

Social Selling isn’t about creating lazy salespeople who sit behind a screen waiting for leads to come to them. Social Selling is creating smarter hunter salespeople who are leveraging it to start MORE outbound leads.

The rise in outbound social selling is happening and I’m on a mission to help salespeople all over the world learn how to truly leverage social selling to its full potential.

Another big part of effective outbound social selling is using LinkedIn messaging.

So many salespeople get this wrong and send terrible spammy sales pitch messages, which rarely generate any positive return.

This is what inspired me to write my brand new book, “The Million-Pound LinkedIn Message”

I’m actually going to be giving away a FREE digital copy to everyone who either joins my LIVE 2-hour LinkedIn Masterclass in January OR who buys my full online LinkedIn course. (You get both the digital book AND a ticket to Masterclass if you buy the course)

Between now and Christmas I’m running a HUGE offer on my on-demand LinkedIn Masterclass

You get full access to 60 LinkedIn training videos (over 10 hours of learning), 35 guides, templates & scripts, 7 eBooks and loads more.

It’s normally £499 per person, but it’s now just £99!!

NOT ONLY THAT…

But if you sign up you’ll also get a FREE ticket to my LIVE 2-hour LinkedIn Masterclass in January and a digital copy of my best-selling book “The Million-Pound LinkedIn Message”.

This online course will cover everything you need to know to start generating more from LinkedIn from as little as just 15-minutes per day.

  • How to build the ultimate lead-generating LinkedIn profile
  • How to find any prospect you want (and connect with them)
  • How to send effective LinkedIn messages that get replies
  • How to create engaging content that generates leads and sales
  • Which tools and tactics are delivering HUGE results in 2020
  • How to leverage video for content and messaging
  • and LOTS more

You can find out more here

To take advantage of this offer simply use discount code OFFER99

Thank you again for taking the time to read this blog! If you enjoyed this post please click LIKE and click SHARE to share it with your network. If you enjoyed it please do take time to read some of my other recent posts:

Just Pick Up The Phone and Call!

The ABC Of Social Selling

The Modern-Day Sales Prospecting Stack

The 10 Things That Will NEVER Change In Sales

About the author: Daniel Disney is one of the world’s leading Sales, Social Selling, and LinkedIn experts and is the author of the #1 Amazon Best Selling book, “The Million-Pound LinkedIn Message“.

Daniel is currently delivering LIVE LinkedIn Social Selling virtual training sessions for businesses and salespeople around the world. For more information please email contact@thedailysales.net