Social selling, at its core, is half social media and half content marketing. It is a powerful part of today’s sales professional playbook.

Social selling is an evolution of marketing and a revolution for sales.

Companies that provide value and insights through social selling are winning their customers or clients over. The old sales model used to be about cold calls, qualifying leads, and sales demos. The new sales model is about education, social networks, and engagement.

Social selling is one of the most powerful ways to enhance your sales and marketing efforts. It is revolutionizing sales like digital marketing changed marketing.

While you cannot learn everything there is to know about social selling from books, books can give you new ideas and explain some things you always wanted to know. With the new year coming up, you should put some of these social selling books on your reading list.

10 of the best social selling books to read this year

Here is a list of top 10 social selling books you should read immediately. They will help you with social selling.

1. Social Selling Mastery: Scaling Up Your Sales and Marketing Machine for the Digital Buyer

Author: Jamie Shanks

Why should you read this book? This book teaches the art of developing and nurturing relationships with your potential customers. It also shows how to reach customers online, where they are doing their research. The book will teach you how to engage customers online and develop the relationships that lead to sales. Jamie Shanks is the CEO of Sales for Life, who has helped companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Xerox, Sprint, and Oracle.  It provides a key resource for sales and marketing professionals who are seeking a better way to connect with today’s digital customer. This book provides a solid social selling curriculum that teaches you everything you should know to grow your sales and marketing machine.

2. The Ultimate Sales Machine: Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies

Author: Chet Holmes

Why should you read this book? The author has been called “one of the top 20 change experts in the country.” Too many leaders jump on every new trend, but don’t stick with any of them. The book shows you how to tune up virtually every part of your business by spending just an hour per week on each impact area you want to improve (aka social selling). The author’s advice starts with one simple concept: focus. Instead of trying to master thousand of strategies to improve your business, hone in on essential skill areas that make the big difference. The Ultimate Sales Machine shows you that you should teach your people how to work smarter, not harder; get more bang from your website, advertising, trade shows, and public relations; and perfect every sales interaction by working on sales, not just in sales.

3. Social Selling: Techniques to Influence Buyers and Changemakers

Authors: Tim Hughes and Matt Reynolds

Why should you read this book? This book provides a practical, step-by-step guide on how to create digital communities and build relationships online. The authors provide tips, checklists, and examples to make it easier to understand selling digitally. The digital landscape has changed buyers’ habits so sales professionals now need to develop relationships with decision-makers through social media. Social Selling provides an outline for the skills and techniques needed in today’s digital world, including developing a high-quality community, building trust, and connecting with influencers. The book discusses how enterprises can implement a social selling strategy, improve their maturity, and invest in certain technology platforms.

4. The LinkedIn Sales Playbook: A Tactical Guide to Social Selling 

Author:  Brynne Tillman

Why should you read this book? This book provides you how to sell on LinkedIn, one of the most powerful sales tool available to sales professionals today. This book shows what to do and what to say in a way that attracts, teaches and engages targeted buyers and coverts them to connections. The author provides a guide that will help you gain access to stakeholders, add more opportunities in your sales pipeline, reduce your sales cycle, and close more business without cold calling. This book will show you how to prospect more effectively, make more qualified appointments, reduce the sales cycle, and close more business.

5. LinkedIn for Dummies

Author:  Joel Elad

Why should you read this book? LinkedIn is one of the top personal branding tools available today. LinkedIn is a social network for professionals who are looking to discover new opportunities, connect with other professionals, and grow their career. This guide shows you how to use LinkedIn to build connections and relationships. This book shows you how you can develop a good LinkedIn profile and how to successfully expand your reach on LinkedIn. From keeping track of your LinkedIn activities to taking advantage of recommendations to find a job to using LinkedIn to cultivate sales leads, this book will help you better take advantage of LinkedIn. Additionally, it provides step-by-step instructions on how to take advantage of the latest LinkedIn tools and features.

6. Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline by Leveraging Social Selling, Telephone, Email, Text, and Cold Calling

Authors: Jeb Blount and Mike Weinberg

Why should you read this book? This book gives salespeople, leaders, and executives a guide to clearly explain the importance of prospecting. The number one reason for failure of an empty sales pipeline is the failure to consistently prospect. By ignoring the muscle of prospecting, many otherwise competent salespeople and sales organizations who consistently under perform. The author outlines his unique approach to prospecting that works with real prospects. This book will show you how to keep the pipeline full of qualified opportunities and avoid sales slumps by taking advantage of a balanced prospecting methodology across multiple prospecting channels.

7. LinkedIn Unlocked: Unlock the Mystery of LinkedIn to Drive More Sales Through Social Selling

Author: Melonie Dodaro

Why should you read this book? From the author of the #1 Amazon bestseller The LinkedIn Code, this book shows you how to attract more leads, clients and sales using LinkedIn. Very few people today use LinkedIn to build meaningful connections that translate into measurable sales. This book explains how to master social selling on LinkedIn and generate a consistent flow of quality leads. In this book, you’ll learn how to turn your LinkedIn profile into a client-attraction magnet; how to send LinkedIn messages; the do’s and don’ts for using content marketing to build authority, credibility and trust; how to stay top of mind with your network and potential prospects; how to convert cold LinkedIn prospects into clients; and how to turn LinkedIn into a lead generation machine.

8. Social Upheaval: How to Win at Social Selling

Author: John Golden

Why should you read this book? John Golden is the best selling author of Winning the Battle for Sales. In this book, the author explain how every business to business (B2B) salesperson should add social selling to their sales toolkit and why it is so important that they do so without delay. The author explains how to use social media to sell. A hint: it is all about communicating value quickly and concisely. This book provides insightful and practical advice to successfully utilize this new frontier of digital selling. This book is provocative, entertaining and useful. Above all, it is a quick rad that helps you start on your journey to successful social selling.

9. The Art of Social Selling: Finding and Engaging Customers on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Other Social Networks

Author: Shannon Belew

Why should you read this book? This book is another guide for sales professionals looking to engage with prospects in digital. This book shows sales representatives how to work with content and execute sales strategies for each social media platform. The book reveals how to utilize social trends that may influence their buyers. The book shows you how to track influencers or close a deal on a mobile device. Social media platforms are changing the way people are make purchasing decisions and tapping into these digital communities has become critical. This guide shows readers with a methodology for growing their sales pipeline and expanding their customer base using social media.

10. Social Media for Direct Selling Leaders

Author: Karen Clark

Why should you read this book? This book will help you grow and support your team using social media tools and strategies. The author built a large organization using a combination of traditional offline and innovative digital marketing strategies. The authors shows you what it is like to build, train and coach a team using technology. This books shows you how to lead online with integrity to grow and support your team online. In this book, you’ll learn how to establish your digital presence; utilize the professionalism of LinkedIn to establish your expertise as a leader; develop relationships; use technology to support and train your team; and develop effective team training meetings.

What social selling books would you add to this list?

Is one of your top social selling books missing from this list that others should read? What social selling books are a must read? What books helped you with social selling?