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Hey Reader, A founder I spoke with last week thought he had social selling dialed in. "I can ask a friend who knows an e-commerce manager to make an introduction," he said. I had to stop him right there. That's a warm referral. A perfectly valid tactic – but not social selling. Calling it social selling is like calling a taxi a road trip. Same road, completely different commitment. Here's what social selling actually looks like: Step 1: Find your exact ICPs on LinkedIn. Not broadly. Specifically – title, industry, company size, and the problems they post about. Step 2: Engage with substance. Not "Great insight!" but a real reaction. A follow-up question. A perspective that signals you understand their world at a peer level. Step 3: Repeat. For weeks. Sometimes months. Research puts the number at 7 to 17 touches before a prospect begins to see you as credible. That's not a typo. Up to 17 separate interactions before the door cracks open. The mechanism isn't complicated, but most founders skip it because it feels slow. You are becoming the smart person in the comments – the name they recognize, the voice they've read enough times to trust. When you finally send the DM, you are not a stranger asking for their time. You are the person they've been reading. That is a fundamentally different conversation to walk into. The Clarity Filter Insight Social selling isn't asking for a referral – it's committing value to strangers until you're no longer one. [Share on LinkedIn] [Share on X] If your current strategy relies on someone else making an introduction, that's networking – and there's nothing wrong with it. But don't confuse a shortcut with a system. The founders building real, durable pipeline on LinkedIn are not hacking anything. They are showing up, consistently, in the right orbit, until trust does the selling for them. Speak soon, P.S. Don't write code for a product nobody wants to buy. I built Traction OS to give you the exact 60-day roadmap, sales scripts, and validation templates you need to hit your first $10k MRR without guessing. From complete scratch or with an existing MVP. |
Every week, I advise founders on how to hit $10k MRR. On Tuesdays, I share my consulting notes from those private sessions. Learn from their mistakes so you don't burn your own cash.
Hey Reader, Alex had a great demo call with Billy, a marketing manager at an e-commerce brand. Billy asked good questions. Billy seemed interested. Then Billy went quiet. Alex assumed the product wasn't good enough. It was. The pitch was the problem. Alex was selling: "this tool does your email retention work for you." Billy heard: "this tool could do your job without you." That is not a sales pitch. That is a threat. Here is what most B2B founders miss when selling to employees rather than...
Hey Reader, A client came to me frustrated. They had the right targeting. The right demographics. E-commerce decision-makers, correct job titles, correct company sizes. Their LinkedIn ad campaign looked perfect on paper – and it was producing almost nothing. I wasn't surprised. Here's the thing nobody in your marketing agency will say out loud: LinkedIn's ad algorithm is years behind Facebook. It lacks the deep behavioral and intent data that makes paid social actually work. When you run a...
Hey Reader, A founder asked me last week how to respond to someone pitching a Shopify quiz app – 10x more expensive than existing competitors, no unique technology, no obvious edge. He expected me to help him dismantle the idea. Instead, I told him: I don't care about the idea. Here's the truth most early-stage founders don't want to hear: your product quality is almost never your real competitive advantage. You can have a worse product at a higher price and still win – if you have...