Who is the best social selling coach on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn trainers and coaches are ten a penny these days. You may ask yourself, why you even need a social selling coach, surely LinkedIn is self-explanatory right?

Well, it really isn't. When you start social selling you quickly realise there is a lot more to it than posting and the leads rolling in. Social selling demands strategy and a plan of action. So, who is best to help you? Who is the best social selling coach on LinkedIn?

Well, that too depends on what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it. Linked is a vast platform with a billion users. There are lots of different ways to leverage the platform to get results.

The ranking reports

For a number of years there was a ranking report of LinkedIn trainers. It died after a while, but it tracked LinkedIn coaches and social selling coaches by their raw numbers of followers. I peaked on it as position 13, but it quite quickly died because the raw follower numbers and follow growth aren't really prove someone is a good or the best coach. What quickly happened was that people who got really good at content, shared funny stories or went viral overtook the subject matter experts. 

In other words, if you were good at content, you would wipe the others off the map. It didn't really mean you could help people win clients. It died.

The 2023 ranking

In 2023 a social selling coach decided to pull together a list using a wide variation of external metrics, such as content engagement, followers, newsletter subscribers and other public metrics. This one had promise, however, if you spend any amount of time on LinkedIn you'll notice there is a LinkedIn trainer clique. They all support each other, collaborate together. There are many outside that clique that were never invited to take part. So in essence it was a promotional tool for a small clique of LinkedIn coaches. 

When the report came out, guess what? The author won. Guess who where all in the top 10?

What do you define as the best?

To do proper job at identifying the best social selling coach on LinkedIn, we need to define what we mean by best coach. Is it about popularity? Is it about their experience? Is it about their results? 

If you are looking for a social selling coach, you need to define what you are looking for and how you will know who is the best social selling coach for you.

Here are some thoughts:

• How long have they been a social selling coach?
• Who has the most experience working within your industry?
• What client success do they have in social selling coaching?
• Are they someone you can work with?
• Does their model and approach work for you?

There are generally three types of social selling coach. Let's look at the different types of social selling coach on LinkedIn:

The Social Selling Content Coach - This type of coach will heavily focus on content as the primary driver of social selling success. Often they will place the main emphasis of their coaching on content. In my view content is important, but for the vast majority of social sellers will not be a silver bullet. 

It is incredibly difficult to generate leads consistently when you rely mainly on content unless you have a very big audience. These type of coaches can be great helping you with content, how to do it better and how to get started but, to be honest most of their advice when it comes to leads doesn't work because it relies on getting high engagement and reach. If you want consistent leads, this type of coaching is for people who want to pursue that influencer model. It's good stuff, but not really practical or applicable as a way to win consistent clients. The majority of these coaches lean into the marketing disciplines and have experience in marketing.

The Personal Branding Social Selling Coach: This type of LinkedIn coach will often focus on your personal story and journey and again will place emphasis on content as the means to generate leads. To be fair, sharing your story and personal experience is a smart move and they can really help you turn your experience and personality into a compelling profile and content strategy. However, it again is a form of attractional marketing. In reality, this again only works if you have a ton of eyeballs. I'm not saying it doesn't work, personal branding really is important BUT... you can't build a business on an attract model unless you pursue big numbers of impressions, followers and build a big fanbase. It's not practical for a small business owner or with someone with limited time to devote to LinkedIn. In many cases, these coaches are people who have found success for themselves leveraging themselves to get business.

The Outreach Social Selling Coach: Outreach based LinkedIn coaches often place all the emphasis on messaging prospects. This type of coaching is good for salespeople as their job is to talk to potential prospects on a daily basis. These coaches will help you with how to do outreach and get the best results. Often these type of coaches are experienced salespeople and have had success outreaching to prospects. They can help you build cadences, understand the best way to message. The downside to these type of coaches is that their strategies don't necessarily fit for someone who isn't a full time salesperson. A fully outbound strategy can be quite a thing and involves handling rejection. You need a thick skin to be solely outbound.

A different way to social sell

If you are solopreneur, senior executive or more consultative seller, you need a bit of all three. That's why I lead the biggest social selling coaching business in Europe. With over 30 full-time experts and trainers, we combine content, personal branding and outreach to form an approach to social selling that doesn't require a volume approach and fits for people who want to share content but it not turn into a full-time job, want to leverage their personal brand, but not obsess about sharing selfies and wants to talk to prospects but avoid pitching and turning into a salesperson. That's my model to social selling.

Social selling is more than posting content, today, more content is shared off feed on social media than in-feed, yet, we place so much emphasis on getting likes and impressions. Social Selling is more than reaching lots of people, it's more than a top of funnel tactic - it's about building depth with your network, being trusted and seen as an expert.

Social Selling has to work within your day, for most people the 100% content, 100% attract model doesn't work for them. They can't sustain it. It's unrealistic. 

Likewise, if you aren't a natural seller, the thought of playing a volume outreach game and trying to persuade people cold to buy from you just won't fly.

The reason our model has worked so well, is because it fits real life, where you might only have an hour a day to spend on LinkedIn.

That's why I believe, I'm the best social selling coach on LinkedIn.

That's my approach.