Time to read: 3.5 minutes. Should you improve your LinkedIn Social Selling Index (SSI)? Should you be measuring your sales team’s effectiveness using it?

I say no. Because a sellers’ broad use of LinkedIn matters less than productivity with it.

Unfortunately, LinkedIn is falling short with its SSI—placing more focus on a seller’s “raw activity” versus results. Beware: The SSI is largely a vanity metric.

“I imagine you can have a high Social Selling Index score and not sell a darn thing,” observes sales copywriter, Jeff Simmons of B2BMarketingPortal.com. Jeff is right!

Here’s what I mean in more detail … and how to exploit the Social Selling Index wisely.

The dangers of LinkedIn’s SSI

Forget about how experienced you are with LinkedIn. As a seller, you only invest time in what matters most—setting more appointments and bringing leads to close, faster. Right? Thus, you want to avoid wasting time with vanity metrics.

LinkedIn’s SSI is one of these dangerous metrics.

Because the SSI encourages sellers to behave in ways most customers don’t respond well to.

One of my clients sums it up nicely. He said, “Is the noise sellers make on LinkedIn helping them set more appointments? As a buyer myself I cannot imagine it is. Yet I see my manager rewarding all the noise-making!”

“The SSI plays on the psychology that people want to compare themselves to others for belonging and get an ego boost out of it,” warns Colin Daymude, Director of Sales at Frontline Selling.

What is the Social Selling Index?

The Social Selling Index is designed, in LinkedIn’s words, “to measure how effective you are at establishing your professional brand, finding the right people, engaging with insights, and building relationships.”

The SSI is composed of four categories.

1. Establish your brand (be a thought-leader by publishing meaningful posts).
2. Find the right people (identify prospects faster).
3. Engage with insights (share “conversation-worthy” updates to grow relationships)
4. Build relationships (“finding & establishing trust with decision-makers”)

Here’s the rub. Each category is based on a practice vital to your success (on LinkedIn). They are important to your productivity, effectiveness… ultimately, your success rate.

However, each of these areas have a strong quality component. Less quality of communication skill you demonstrate, less success.

Yet each of these four are measured by LinkedIn purely on a quantitative basis.

The problem with LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index

In sales we’re forced to balance. LinkedIn must help us keep this balance. Specifically, you need to make as many new prospecting calls as possible—all while keeping the quality of engagement with prospects high. But is the SSI in support of this goal?

Ignoring this balance produces sellers that fail to get in the door and earn a seat at the table. Productivity suffers.

But LinkedIn is rewarding (purely) sellers’ quantitative use of LinkedIn. The more use, the higher the SSI score. The more updates, the more comments, the more typed into the keyboard the “better” the SSI score.

The direct implication by LinkedIn is increased productivity. Reps with higher SSI’s are getting more done on the platform. But this doesn’t hold water with me and others like Colin Daymude.

“I need to see a direct correlation to sales before I jump on the band wagon, says Colin who feels all of LinkedIn’s claims and statistics are illogical… connecting an observation to a theory without having any real connections.

“I’m not questioning whether having a social profile with great content and regular engagement is likely to help in the sales process. I actually think it will. But there is an opportunity cost associated with that time spent,” he adds.

“Our top sales people know exactly what to do to create opportunities that turn into closed business and that’s where they spend the majority of their time. Social media is something they do because they feel they have to keep up with changing times; it’s professional peer pressure 101.”

An activity indicator, not a productivity measure

Is SSI a potential indicator of productivity? Yes. However, as Yoda would say, “an active user of LinkedIn makes not a productive seller.”

Sales productivity takes more. It takes qualitative behavior and specific business outcomes.

Colin Daymude recommends sales reps focus on activities that have a direct correlation to closed sales. He urges resisting, “the temptation to boost a SSI just to appease the desire to fit in and get some validation.”

Sales managers measure performance based on quantitative numbers—new calls made, appointments booked, emails sent. But the boss also looks at qualitative facts like close ratios. Sellers are measured using both quantitative and qualitative yardsticks.

Bottom line: Earning more appointments and closing more deals takes more than sharing valuable content frequently, commenting frequently, connecting frequently to prospects and having a completed profile.

Don’t be tempted

There are a lot of “LinkedIn experts” claiming LinkedIn’s SSI is a vital measurement tool. I disagree. Don’t be tempted to measure productivity with it. Instead, use it only as an activity indicator.

Digital platforms of all sorts tempt us as sellers. We’re tempted to abuse them—play mostly in the quantitative realm. After all, we’re busy. We don’t have a lot of time. And we see others doing it all the time.

Thus, we often send poorly-written emails out en mass. Some sellers use software to scrape LinkedIn profiles and automatically connect or send mass messages to prospects. This violates LinkedIn’s terms and conditions. Yet many try to “fly below the radar” when using it.

Instead, focus your time on qualitative improvements to your communications approach. Then find ways to scale that quality approach.

In defense of LinkedIn

Many who disagree with my perspective do so on a simple basis.

“Hey, Molander. LinkedIn is encouraging use of the platform. And sellers need to be using the platform. Especially those who are not yet using LinkedIn much—or at all!”

The argument is, “this isn’t doing any harm—it’s encouraging sellers to be active.”

But I disagree. Strongly. Because I don’t have an interest in LinkedIn’s business. I have an interest in mine.

As a responsible business owner, rep or sales manager your job is to judge if LinkedIn can help you sell or not. Assume nothing. LinkedIn may not be a fit for you. Assuming it is, your job is to use it effectively—as the very best, most effective, sellers do.

As a quality-driven tool. Not as a vanity metric measuring usage!

What’s LinkedIn’s motive?

I disagree with anything that encourages spammy use of LinkedIn. As I see it, LinkedIn’s SSI does just that. Not because LinkedIn doesn’t want sellers to succeed. They do. I see LinkedIn wanting to sell more Navigator accounts (to improve your SSI).

This is how they’re positioning the Sales Navigator—as a “fix” to low SSI’s. (which most users have)

Thus, the SSI is truly a vanity metric that is largely mis-understood by sellers … yet simplistic enough to sound good.

In the end, the belief system the SSI supports (just “do it” and success will come) is why 95% of sellers are showing up to regurgitate press releases. Because LinkedIn is rewarding it.

Is the SSI helpful or not?

Measuring your team’s usage of LinkedIn or social media is trivial. It’s a vanity metric. Using quantitative activity data (alone) is not a good basis for helping sellers sell more, faster.

The Social Selling Index measures raw activity—not quality of prospecting activity. This kind of (purely quantitative) measure is less important to today’s most successful sales teams.

Bottom line: Sellers don’t need to be more active on LinkedIn to boost their SSI. The SSI is trivial.

Sellers need to be more productive at generating leads and nurture them to close faster. Yes, on LinkedIn. So be careful when using LinkedIn’s SSI to measure your sales team’s “social selling savvy.”