Are you a social salesperson? All the cool salespeople are! LinkedIn now has a measure to let you know whether you are: the social selling index (SSI).

The tool must be valid – when I checked it recently I scored 72, which puts me in the top 2% of my industry, according to LinkedIn.

You can check your score – here.

Do I sound cynical about the new index? Well… it was developed by LinkedIn and it measures your content sharing, engagement, profile quality, amount of searches, and communication (including paid inMail): all on LinkedIn. In other words it really measures the extent to which you use their product!

I also believe that influence-measures such as Klout have had a roll in making social media less personal by encouraging everyone to over-post and over-share. The “Hawthorne effect” is powerful in social media – behavior will change when it known to be measured. (For example, I pushed my SSI up from 65 to 72 by posting blog posts twice last week in anticipation of this article.)

Why it may matter

LinkedIn is THE professional network and has been shown to be the the most effective platform for lead generation. The four components of the index are logical for a social seller:

1. Self-branding,
2. Search (prospecting?),
3. Engagement, and
4. Relationship building.

LinkedIn claims that “Our research shows those with an SSI over 70 see two times the new clients approached, meetings secured, and opportunities gained than those who lag behind.” In a case study of the use of the SSI at Microsoft a sales manager for the software firm claims that for every “ten point increase in SSI, his team sees an average of 4.3 more opportunities.”

It may be self-serving, but the SSI index may signal your effectiveness as a social salesperson.

Again, can check your SSI score – here.

And an article from LinkedIn on how Microsoft uses the SSI index.