Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Flipboard 0 Even if you’ve been on social media for years, being good at social selling isn’t something that comes naturally to most people. There are nuances to building beneficial business relationships that can take years to truly master. Putting themselves into the buyer’s shoes and reverse-engineering how to build trust and relationships online successfully are also more learned than natural abilities for many. To improve your social selling skills and embrace the future of sales — a channel-neutral, relationship-focused method of connecting with prospects — you’ll need to invest in resources that can point you in the right direction. There are plenty of great social selling resources online for you to turn to learn the basics of social selling. But having a complete resource on hand is always helpful. The books in this list offer a deep dive into the art and science that is social selling, giving you a deeper understanding of how to perform social selling and explain why the psychology behind it works so well. Instead of sifting through Amazon to find the best social selling books, we wanted to provide you with some of our favorites. Each of these books features a slightly different focus. What they all have in common is that they provide actionable insights into effective social selling techniques: “Social Selling Mastery: Scaling Up Your Sales and Marketing Machine for the Digital Buyer” by Jamie Shanks “Social Selling Mastery” is the go-to book recommendation among social selling industry leaders. The book focuses on the art of developing and nurturing relationships with prospects that fit your ideal buyer persona. It delves into reaching new customers online by identifying where your customers go to research products similar to yours. The book is authored by Sales for Life CEO Jamie Shanks, who has worked with companies like Microsoft, Intel, Xerox, and Oracle to re-shape their sales strategies to incorporate social selling principles. “Social Selling Mastery” is widely regarded as the industry standard for learning how to connect with today’s digital customers genuinely. “The LinkedIn Sales Playbook: A Tactical Guide to Social Selling” by Brynne Tillman “The LinkedIn Sales Playbook” is the best resource available today for cultivating B2B relationships by leveraging LinkedIn. While it doesn’t provide the in-depth strategies for other social platforms, the focus on LinkedIn makes it the perfect companion for B2B social sellers. This book focuses on the connections between today’s social selling tactics and their connections to more traditional sales tactics. Tillman outlines step-by-step instructions for connecting with targeted buyers, facilitating warm introductions, nurturing prospects, and converting more of your LinkedIn connections to phone calls. Brynne Tillman has honed her social selling skills in her time as Chief Learning Officer at Vengreso, a social selling company. She has worked with Fortune 500 companies to help them improve their digital sales strategies and install tools that help them to leverage LinkedIn fully. “Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling” by Jeb Blount and Mike Weinberg “Fanatical Prospecting” is another book that counts to my industry standards on modern sales techniques. The book provides salespeople and executives with an in-depth guide that clearly explains the importance and nuances of prospecting and how you can use modern channels to turbo-charge your efforts.The book focuses on the biggest reason why many sales pipelines fail — a failure to prospect and keep the top of the pipeline filled consistently. By zeroing in on that particular aspect of social selling, the book serves as a true deep-dive into the art of prospecting, featuring a unique approach that is effective regardless of channel.If you need help keeping sharpening your social selling skills, if you want industry best practices or if you need ideas on how to keep your sales pipeline filled, all three are excellent starting points. This article was previously published SocialSellinator’s blog. Twitter Tweet Facebook Share Email This article was written for Business 2 Community by Jock Breitwieser.Learn how to publish your content on B2C Author: Jock Breitwieser Follow @MrSocialSelling With 20+ years of international communications expertise in agencies and in-house, Jock Breitwieser is an award-winning communicator. He focuses on Digital Marketing and Communications. Throughout his career, Jock worked in agencies and in-house, running global marketing programs that deliver business results. He is currently based in Silicon Valley, California. Jock … View full profile ›More by this author:5 Reasons Why SEO is More Important Than EverHow Does Facebook Marketing Work?Facebook Marketing Strategies for eCommerce Businesses