Less scoring, more selling.
Say hello to smarter selling — powered by AI.
For years, the Social Selling Index (SSI) score has been the go-to metric for sales professionals on LinkedIn — a badge of honor signaling credibility and connection. But as buyer behaviors shift and sales cycles become increasingly complex, the SSI score no longer accurately reflects the modern sales environment.
By exploring the latest AI innovations in LinkedIn Sales Navigator, sellers will learn how new tools and technologies empower them to focus on what matters: closing deals and building meaningful client relationships.
What is a Social Selling Index (SSI) score?
LinkedIn developed the Social Selling Index (SSI) score as a benchmark to measure how effectively a salesperson uses social media for social selling, helping them improve performance.
It’s a metric from 0 to 100 that indicates how well social sellers establish a professional brand, find the right prospects, engage with key insights, and build relationships on LinkedIn. It allowed LinkedIn users to compare their efforts to competitors and others in their network.
Why is the SSI sales approach evolving?
A high SSI score doesn’t always represent the efficacy of a sales person or correlate with measurable sales outcomes. Plus, the time and effort needed for high SSI scores can distract people from closing deals and building deep customer relationships.
The sales landscape is also no longer about sending mass emails or InMails and spamming buyers who aren’t the right product-market fit.
Sellers must adopt a more human-centered approach to outreach and connection, identifying higher-quality leads and sending personalized, AI-powered messages at the right time.
Benefits of using LinkedIn’s AI-powered tools
Increases seller efficiency
AI tools cut manual work, giving you more control and precise targeting without fixating on SSI scores. Generative AI streamlines tasks like presentations, notes, prospecting, and scheduling—saving time and boosting efficiency.
Improves lead generation with advanced search and insights
The average sales cycle requires sellers to engage up to 11 people within a target company account. Unfortunately, most sellers only connect with a few target account buyers.
With Sales Navigator’s AI tools, you can quickly identify all target account stakeholders, not just the decision-makers. Find high-quality leads and accounts with 50+ Advanced Search Filters like Past Customers, Past Colleagues, and Account List, searching across a global network of over one billion professionals worldwide.
LinkedIn’s Lead Finder feature automates manual prospecting steps with targeted leads and unique conversation starters. You can track a qualified lead’s buyer intent and product interests via their LinkedIn interactions, like engaging with an ad, filling out a Lead Gen form, and engaging with a Company Page.
Enhances data-driven decisions and streamlines pipeline management
AI also helps sellers make more data-informed decisions and targets high-value leads by analyzing past customer behaviors, account insights, and buying signals.
View company insights like headcount and growth, sort accounts by intent and connections, and save lists to uncover new opportunities. Predictive AI forecasts sales trends, while real-time LinkedIn data syncs with CRMs to streamline pipelines.
Helps sellers close more deals, faster
Sellers must be persistent and organized, and follow up with key account stakeholders to close more deals. With Sales Navigator's AI tools, you can work smarter, navigating complex relationships within target companies. This strategy improves sales performance and helps you stand out —beyond a high SSI score.
LinkedIn’s TeamLink feature offers insights into mutual colleague connections that identify warm paths for introductions into a new target account. Using the Relationship Map tool, you’ll learn how account stakeholders are connected to boost close rates and move prospects through the funnel faster.
Deepens and personalizes client relationship-building
AI-powered insights help engage leads, tailor outreach, and automate messaging. Backed by LinkedIn, Microsoft, and OpenAI, Sales Navigator sparks high-quality conversations with tools like Message Assist and Lead IQ for personalized, scalable InMail.
Personalized InMails can increase acceptance rates by 40%. So, you can, for example, call out an article or blog post a prospect has written and shared on social media to tailor the message to their interests.
Sales Navigator users can also stay connected with priority customers by generating personalized post-sale InMails. Share product recommendations and insights, and provide helpful resources to keep customers engaged.
Redefining sales success with AI solutions
Some sales leaders and sellers may be reluctant to abandon SSI scores as a performance measure because it feels safe and familiar. They might even fear losing sales credibility or control by abandoning a familiar metric.
Past training or company culture may also have overemphasized the SSI metric, leading to discomfort with dropping it in favor of new AI-powered technologies and performance metrics.
How to persuade sales teams to adopt AI-powered solutions
1. Ask your team, “What defines true sales success?”
2. Run a brainstorming session and highlight desired outcomes without relying on SSI scores.
3. Compare traditional or familiar sales benchmarks with those that can be achieved by adopting innovative, AI-driven tools.
4. Highlight case studies or statistics demonstrating the value of investing in new solutions and performance metrics.
The AI-driven proof is in the data
1. PTC used LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s AI-driven insights to better understand and manage its complex customer ecosystem, reaching over 2,000 new prospects and generating more than $4.5 million in closed deals.
2. Over three months, Hyatt’s sellers garnered 6,200 saved leads and 2,600 new connections using LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s AI-powered tools to target key contacts and build new relationships.
3. An organization that uses LinkedIn Sales Navigator’s AI-enabled software achieved a return on investment (ROI) of 312% over 3 years, and the platform paid for itself in less than 6 months.
How to prepare sales teams for AI-powered success
1. Find new AI-driven sales solutions
It’s easy to get overwhelmed choosing the right software for your sales needs. Start by picking solutions that integrate seamlessly with your tech stack and are easy to use. Then, slowly embrace small changes by integrating and learning one AI tool at a time.
2. Host training sessions and create guidelines
Host regular trainings to update sales teams and leaders on new AI features and benefits. You can also share a roadmap for integrating tools into daily workflows, provide usage guidelines, and encourage peer collaboration and prompt sharing to boost adoption and performance.
3. Help sellers feel less intimidated
Some sellers may feel intimidated by new AI-powered tools, so use training sessions to reframe AI as a way to enhance sales performance and relationship building. Ease the pressure around SSI scores by shifting focus to more relevant success metrics aligned with AI-driven workflows.
4. Measure AI-powered performance over SSI sales success
Focus on long-term success over short-term validation. Here are three ways to measure the ROI of AI-powered tools:
a. Benchmarks and goals: Compare individual and team performance to pre-set targets before and after adopting AI tools and dropping SSI scores, like quarterly and annual closed-won deals per sales rep.
b. Break-even analysis: Ensure the value of closed-won deals surpasses the AI investment within a set period after software adoption and post-SSI score measurement.
c. Net Present Value (NPV): Determine the AI tool’s present contribution to long-term profitability, by evaluating the current price of the software against your sales team’s forecasted revenue and performance over a set period.
Achieve AI-powered success with Sales Navigator
AI-powered tools boost productivity across the sales funnel, helping teams nurture relationships, hit targets, and move beyond SSI scores. Sales Navigator streamlines outreach with real-time insights, fast setup, and tools to quickly close more deals.
