Nobody buys from a stranger anymore
For sales reps, business development and those who need to “sell” for a living.
Trusted by teams at
AKD
Capgemini
ABN AMRO
TNO
Siemens
Teva
KNVB
Is this you?
Your leads go quiet on your outreach, then sign with someone else?
The tactics that used to open doors gets ignored now, so you work harder every quarter for the same result.
You close well once you get in the meeting but getting in front of the right buyers is the part that’s stopped working.
Every time you bring up the alternative of Social Selling, the whole team tells you they don’t want to spend time on LinkedIn. (And actually they are right).
Buyers stopped answering. They didn’t stop buying
You must have noticed that the B2B buying process has been flipped.
Buyers don’t respond anymore, but they still do their homework.
Research from Gartner shows that 57% of the buying process is complete before a buyer even considers talking to a vendor. If you’re invisible during that stage, you were never even an option.
You can make more calls, send more emails and pile on the pressure, but your buyers have learned to ignore you. At the same time, the signals that someone is considering your solutions, products or services are overlooked.
If you’re not aware of the signals in the noise and the tactics that do work, deals pass you by without you ever knowing they existed.
Your competitors aren’t waiting
While you and your team weigh up whether Social Selling or using LinkedIn as an additional platform is worth the effort, the ones you’re up against are already in your buyers’ feeds.
They comment on your posts, read and pick up on the warm introductions, and, slowly, they become a familiar name instead of you.
Every day you sit this out, someone else becomes the one your buyer trusts.
That head start keeps growing, and every day it’s harder to catch up.
How you become that familiar name: PROVE
Every B2B deal is a risk for the buyer. They hand over money, time and their own reputation, and all they get back is your promise.
So when two vendors offer a similar solution, buyers don’t pick the better pitch.
They pick the one that feels safest to say yes to.
I help you become that safe and obvious choice, with a five-step method I call PROVE:
Position
Instead of reading like a CV, your profile speaks to the problems your buyers have. The content you post proves you get their world, so it keeps working for you even when you’re asleep or on holiday.
Recognise
You start to recognize a few simple signals, so you spot the buyers who are ready in all the noise. These are the signals that used to pass you by, and now you get to them before your competitors have even looked.
Open
Before you ask for anything, you warm the relationship up by engaging with their content, show you get their challenges and position your unique point of view on it. So that when you connect, you’re not a stranger interrupting but a name they already recognise.
Validate
Connecting is the start, not the finish. You stay visible and useful for as long as it takes, so when they’re ready to buy, whether that’s now or half a year out, you’re the first call they make instead of the one they forgot.
Earn
You move from peer to partner without demolishing the trust you built. You diagnose before you prescribe so saying yes feels like the best and safest choice.
You’re not building fame or ego, you’re building credibility with the people who matter.
Get it right and you spend a lot less time chasing, because buyers start coming to you.
What changes when you get this right
You get found and introduced instead of hunting for leads and spam the s… out of people ruining your reputation and that of your company.
When the strategies and tactics behind the Social Selling concept becomes a natural part of how you work it isn’t another task on your lengthy to-do list.
You stop depending on tactics that are outdated and fail the moment you stop them and build on a long term strategy that will work no matter what new AI innovation your competitors will start using.
Those who implemented Social Selling:
Figures from LinkedIn sales research and other B2B studies, not individual client results.
The additional benefits:
- You stop exhausting yourself with lists that lead nowhere.
- Your conversations start warm, because the buyer already knows who you are.
- You build a reputation in your own industry that keeps paying off, long after any single deal is signed.
Three ways to work on this
Depending on where you are, one of these comes first.
When we work together we settle which one in the intake call.
Insights
A masterclass or keynote that gets the whole team seeing the same thing.- Everyone hears it together, so you’re not selling the change one rep at a time
- A fast way to shift how the whole team thinks about selling
- Turns the sceptics into people who want in or at least consider it.
- Gives everyone a shared language before you invest more
- Usually the kick-off the rest builds on
Strategy
A strategy project that sets your targets and the ground rules.- Clear targets: who positions at what topic in what market
- Ground rules for professional content creation.
- Fits social selling into the sales process you already run
- Built around your market, not off a template
- Strategic, tactical and practical insights
Skills
A hands-on training program where you build the routine.- An implementation of the PROVE framework so the foundation is set.
- Participants implement on their own accounts
- Modules chosen around where your team stands
- Small groups, so everyone gets feedback on their activities
- A routine they keep after the coaching stops
Proof
Since 2011, I’ve worked with 950+ companies and 250,000+ professionals.
Solopreneurs, teams at ABN AMRO, Capgemini and Siemens, and hundreds of companies you’ve never heard of.
Questions I get a lot
I don’t have time for LinkedIn.
Good. It’s fifteen minutes a day, and it replaces the cold activity that wasn’t working, not extra work piled on top. And once those fifteen minutes start turning into warmer conversations and shorter deals, it stops feeling like a chore.
We tried social selling training before and nothing changed.
Usually that’s because it taught tactics but never built the routine. People learned to tidy up their profile and then went straight back to what they always did. I build the routine on your own accounts, with implementation between the sessions, so by the last module it runs without me.
The team says they don’t want to spend time on LinkedIn.
They’re right about the version they’re imagining. Spending time on LinkedIn to post for likes is a waste of a seller’s time. Social Selling is spending time on buyers, lowering their risk until you’re the safe choice, and LinkedIn just happens to be where they are. That shift is exactly what the first session is for.
More on Social Selling
Recent writing on selling by reducing risk, building a pipeline that doesn’t depend on cold activity, and being useful before you’re needed.
Start a conversation
Tell me where your deals get stuck, and I’ll tell you straight which of the three fits, or if none of them do.