Latest / Sales Leadership with Fexingo: Quota Carriers, Sales Managers, and Revenue Teams / How Top Sales Reps Use Social Selling to Win
Transcript
- Lucas: Luna, you know that stat that keeps floating around — that ninety percent of buyers never respond to a cold email or call anymore? Luna: I do. And honestly, I think it's probably worse than that for most reps. Lucas: Right. So the natural question becomes — if the old channels are dead, where are buyers actually paying attention? And for a lot of B2B sales teams, the answer is LinkedIn. Not in a spammy, 'connect and pitch on day one' way. I mean real social selling — building trust publicly before you ever ask for a meeting. Luna: We talk about this show being ad-free because we want the content to stand on its own. If these conversations have helped you refine your approach or close a deal, the best way to keep it that way is to support us at buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. It's what lets us stay independent. Lucas: Yeah, exactly. No agenda except what's useful for you. So back to social selling — let's talk about what actually works. I've been looking at a case study from a B2B SaaS company. One rep generated one point two million dollars in pipeline over twelve months. His secret? One thoughtful comment per day on his prospects' posts. Luna: One comment a day. That's almost too simple to believe. But I think the key word there is 'thoughtful.' Lucas: Exactly. He didn't just say 'great post' or drop a flame emoji. He read the article, added a data point from his own experience, or asked a question that showed he actually understood their industry. And over time, those prospects started checking his profile, then engaging with his content, then taking intro calls. Luna: So there's a real method here. It's not just 'be active on LinkedIn.' What's the framework? Lucas: I think of it in three phases. Phase one — listen first. Before you post or comment, spend two weeks just observing. Which topics get engagement from your ICP? Who are the influencers they follow? What language do they use? You're essentially doing ethnographic research. Luna: That's the part most reps skip. They jump straight to broadcasting. 'Here's why our product is amazing.' Lucas: Right. And then they wonder why nobody engages. Phase two — add value publicly. That's where the one-comment-a-day discipline comes in. But it has to be additive. Think of it as a public warm introduction. You're not selling a product; you're selling your perspective. Luna: What kind of perspective works best? Industry insight? Operational tips? Or something more personal? Lucas: It depends on your ICP, but the most effective I've seen is a blend. Maybe sixty percent industry insight — 'here's a trend I'm noticing in supply chain software' — thirty percent operational tips — 'three things we do to reduce churn' — and ten percent personal. The personal posts humanize you. But they have to be relevant to your buyer's world. Luna: And phase three is the actual outreach, right? Once you've built some visibility. Lucas: Exactly. And this is where most reps still screw up. They build a little awareness, then send a DM that's basically a pitch. 'Loved your post about X. By the way, here's a demo link.' That burns the trust you just built. Luna: So what's the right approach? I've seen some reps say 'never pitch in DMs' — but then how do you convert? Lucas: You don't pitch — you propose a conversation. The frame should be curiosity, not presentation. So something like: 'Hey, your post on logistics bottlenecks made me think about a pattern we're seeing with our clients. Would you be open to a fifteen-minute call to compare notes?' That's not a pitch. That's a peer conversation. Luna: And if they say yes, you actually have to deliver on that peer conversation. You can't pivot to a demo in minute two. Lucas: Right. If you respect the frame, they'll often ask you about your solution themselves by minute ten. That's the ideal — buyer-initiated interest. The rep in that case study said eighty percent of his pipeline came from prospects who asked him, 'So what do you actually do?' Luna: That's the dream scenario. But let's talk about the flip side — a lot of companies try to scale social selling with automation. Sending connection requests with a script, auto-DMs, mass posting. Lucas: It's a disaster. LinkedIn's algorithm flags it, and more importantly, buyers can smell automation from a mile away. One survey I saw said seventy-two percent of buyers say they're less likely to engage with a seller who uses generic messages. The whole point of social selling is that it's personal, one-to-one. Luna: So the paradox is that social selling is inherently unscalable at the individual level. But it can be a force multiplier if you train your whole team to do it consistently. Lucas: Exactly. And consistency matters more than volume. That rep who did one comment a day — that's thirty comments a month. Not three hundred. But he did it every single day for a year. Compound interest on relationships. Luna: What about metrics? How do you know if your social selling is actually working? I see a lot of reps tracking followers and likes. Lucas: Vanity metrics. The real metric is inbound conversation rate — how many people reach out to you first after engaging with your content. That's a leading indicator of trust. You track that week over week. And then downstream, you track how many of those conversations turn into discovery calls. Luna: So not 'likes per post' but 'DMs initiated by prospects.' That's a completely different game. Lucas: Right. And there's one more counterintuitive metric I like: response time to inbound messages. If a prospect DMs you, and you reply within an hour, your chance of converting that conversation into a meeting goes up dramatically. Speed of response signals that they matter. Luna: That makes sense. Social selling is really about being human at scale, not about automating human interaction. Lucas: Exactly. And the best part is, it works for introverts too. You don't have to be the loudest voice in the room. You just have to be the most useful. Luna: I love that framing. So if a listener wants to start today, what's the single action they should take? Lucas: Identify your top ten target accounts. Go to LinkedIn, find three people at each account who are posting or commenting. Set a fifteen-minute block each morning to read their content and leave one thoughtful comment. Do that for two weeks before you send a single DM. Then evaluate. Luna: And after two weeks, you'll have a much warmer pool of prospects. It's almost like warming up the engine before you drive. Lucas: Exactly. And if you do that consistently, you won't be chasing leads. They'll start coming to you. That's when you know social selling is working. Luna: It's a shift from outbound to inbound, even within the outbound motion. Lucas: Right. And that shift is what separates the reps who are hitting quota from the ones who aren't in this environment.