This is one of the toughest challenges sales leaders face.
Your best sellers are hitting targets with their existing methods. Why would they risk changing what works?
Understanding their resistance is the first step to overcoming it.
Why Top Performers Resist LinkedIn
Top performers have built a process that delivers results.
They know their numbers.
They know how many calls lead to conversations. How many emails lead to replies. How many conversations lead to meetings.
Asking them to add LinkedIn feels like a risk. If they’re already hitting quota, experimenting with something new could distract them from what’s working.
There’s also a feedback problem. Cold calls give instant feedback. You pick up the phone, dial, and within seconds you know if you’ve reached someone. Cold emails give feedback within hours. You see opens, replies, rejections.
LinkedIn doesn’t work like that. It’s a process. Results build over time. There’s no instant dopamine hit of a conversation started or a meeting booked. For sellers used to immediate feedback loops, this feels uncomfortable. It feels like nothing is happening.
And if nothing feels like it’s happening, it feels like a waste of time.
Forcing Adoption Doesn’t Work
If you mandate LinkedIn activity across the team, you’ll face resistance. Top performers will do the minimum to tick the box. They’ll resent the distraction. And their attitude will spread to the rest of the team.
Forcing naysayers to adopt something they don’t believe in will jade the entire team. You’ll create negativity around LinkedIn before anyone has had a chance to see it work.
This isn’t a compliance problem. It’s a belief problem. And belief only changes when people see proof.
Start With a Small Pilot
Instead of rolling out LinkedIn to everyone, start with a small group of enthusiastic sellers. Find the people who are curious. The ones open to trying something new. The ones who won’t poison the well if it takes time to see results.
Work closely with this pilot group. Give them proper training. Help them understand the process. Support them through the early stages when results aren’t immediate.
When they start seeing success, share it widely. Talk about the meetings booked. The conversations started. The deals influenced. Make the wins visible to the whole team.
This creates curiosity. When sellers see their peers succeeding with something new, they want to know how. They don’t want to be left behind. Success is contagious in sales teams.
Very often, sellers who were initially sceptical will come asking how they can replicate what the pilot group achieved. That’s far more powerful than any mandate.
Use LinkedIn to Recover Failed Leads
Here’s a practical way to shift perceptions quickly.
Instead of asking top performers to add LinkedIn to their existing workflow, position it as a way to recover leads that have already failed.
Every seller has prospects they couldn’t reach by phone. Email sequences that went unanswered. Opportunities that went cold.
Suggest using LinkedIn to re-engage those dead leads. If a seller books a meeting with a prospect they’d previously written off, it changes everything. They’ve just created pipeline from something they thought was lost.
That’s a visible payoff. That’s proof LinkedIn adds value without threatening their existing process.
Once they see it work for recovery, they’ll be more open to incorporating it earlier in their outreach.
Gamification Works, But Only Short Term
You can use gamification to drive initial adoption. Leaderboards for connection requests sent. Prizes for first meetings booked through LinkedIn. Competitions between team members.
This works to get people started. It creates activity and momentum.
But gamification alone won’t sustain adoption. If sellers don’t see real results, they’ll stop as soon as the game ends.
Use gamification to kickstart activity. But make sure you’re also tracking and celebrating real outcomes. Meetings booked. Conversations started. Deals progressed. Those are the metrics that sustain belief.
Show, Don’t Tell
Top performers are pragmatic. They do what works. They ignore what doesn’t.
You won’t convince them with theory. You won’t convince them with LinkedIn’s own marketing. You won’t convince them by telling them other companies are doing it.
You’ll convince them by showing them results. From their own team. With their own prospects. In their own market.
Run the pilot. Generate the proof. Share the success. Let curiosity do the rest.
TL;DR
Top performers resist LinkedIn because they already have a process that works and LinkedIn doesn’t give the instant feedback they’re used to from calls and emails.
Forcing adoption will jade the entire team. Instead, run a small pilot with enthusiastic sellers and share their success widely to create curiosity. Position LinkedIn as a way to recover leads that have failed from phone and email. When sellers book meetings with prospects they couldn’t reach before, perceptions shift.
Gamification can kickstart activity but won’t sustain it.
Only visible results will drive lasting adoption. Show, don’t tell.