Tell apart the measures that predict sales from the ones that only look good.
Open LinkedIn and find the last post you wrote. Write down how many people saw it and how many reacted. Then write down how many messages, meetings and clients came from it. LinkedIn puts the first two numbers in front of you. The last three tell you whether your social selling is working. Social selling is easy to measure wrongly because the platforms show you the wrong numbers first.
LinkedIn shows you impressions, which is how many people saw a post, and likes, which is how many reacted. These numbers are visible, they change quickly and they feel rewarding. They are vanity numbers: figures that make you feel good but don't show whether your activity brings in business.
Arjun, a financial adviser, wrote a LinkedIn post about emergency funds for new parents. It got more likes than anything he had written before. Hundreds of people saw it and dozens reacted, and he spent the evening refreshing the page. A week later he noticed that nobody had messaged him about it, and no meeting or client had come of it. Most of the likes came from other financial advisers and from friends. Separately, he had left a quiet comment under a parenting page's post. That comment led to a conversation with Marcus, who became a client. Marcus came as part of a couple who never reacted to anything. They read Arjun's comment and got in touch.
Likes and impressions measure reach, meaning how many people your content touched. Reach is different from buyer interest, and these numbers say little about buyer interest. A post can reach thousands of people who will never buy from you: colleagues, other salespeople, people in other countries, and people who liked it because they like you. Reach still has some value, because you can't start conversations with people who never see you. Treat it as the start of the process and don't judge your social selling by it.
Better measures sit closer to a sale. Four are worth tracking, and each one is a stronger signal than the one before it.
The first is profile views from target buyers. Count only the viewers who match your target buyer. Total views include recruiters and curious former classmates, so they overstate buyer interest. How much of the viewer list LinkedIn shows you depends on your account type and on each viewer's privacy settings, so count the buyers among whoever you can see.
The second is conversations started. These are direct message conversations with buyers that came from your social activity, where the buyer replied at least once. If you set up the tracker in lesson 4.4, "Run your comment-to-meeting pipeline", it already counts these.
The third is meetings booked, meaning meetings with buyers whose first contact with you came from social activity.
The fourth is deals closed, meaning deals that came from those meetings. This one matters most, but deals take time, so the other three will move first. Profile views show interest, conversations show engagement, meetings show intent and deals show results.
Referrals have their own set of measures, and the tracker from lesson 6.4, "Build your referral system", already records most of them. In order, they are asks made (referral asks made at the right moments), introductions received (asks that led to an introduction or a name given with consent), meetings with referred contacts, and deals from those meetings.
Asks made is the measure you control directly. If introductions are low, first check whether you are asking at all, then check your timing and your wording. Wei Ling (an invented example) checked her referral asks and found she was asking far less often than she thought. She had asked twice in a month when she had meant to ask weekly.
LinkedIn calculates a score called the Social Selling Index, which measures how you use LinkedIn as a selling tool. It is a Sales Navigator feature: if you are a Sales Navigator customer, you, your team and your admin can see your score. It rates your activity on the platform, such as how complete your profile is, how you engage and how you build your network. LinkedIn's own help pages explain what goes into it. The score can change, so check there for current details.
The score can be a useful guide to whether you are active and consistent. A rising score suggests you are doing the activities this course teaches. It measures activity on LinkedIn only, though. A high score with no conversations or meetings behind it means you have been busy without anything to show for it. Use the index as a guide to activity and never count it as a sales result. Don't chase the score for its own sake.
You won't track everything. Pick five measures that cover both social selling and referrals and that you can actually collect. For each one, note where you will find the number. If you can't name where a number comes from, you won't collect it. Your sources will usually be LinkedIn's profile view list, your conversation tracker, your calendar, your referral tracker and your CRM.
A typical set of five is:
profile views from target buyers conversations started meetings booked from social activity referral asks made introductions received
Once you have a few months of data, add deals closed by source.
In the activity below, you'll list the five measures you'll track for social selling and referrals and where you'll find each one.
Write down the five measures you will track for social selling and referrals, and where you will find each one.
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