20 Sales Influencers To Follow on LinkedIn

Looking for ways to improve your sales operations and learn from the best professionals?

If so, LinkedIn is one of the best channels for this.

It’s a place to learn, inspire, network, and engage with some of the world’s biggest entrepreneurs and sales influencers.

According to HootSuite, 93% of B2B content marketers use LinkedIn for organic social marketing and 40% of B2B marketers say LinkedIn is the most effective channel for driving high-quality leads.

So, you know there will be A LOT of B2B sales influencers, professionals, and other thought leaders on the platform.

And as one of the best lead generation tactics, they’re constantly sharing the latest sales hacks, campaigns, case studies, and other quality content.

If you want to get ahead in your sales career or simply improve your sales development, it’s highly recommended you follow them on LinkedIn. 

This way, you get an inside look into what’s currently working in the sales development world and what’s not.

But going out of your way to creating detailed, filtered LinkedIn searches will take forever.

So, to save you the trouble, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best sales influencers to follow on LinkedIn below.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What Is Sales Leadership And Influencer In B2B Marketing?
• Why Bother Finding B2B LinkedIn Influencers And Sales Professionals?
• How Do You Identify Sales Influencers And Professionals On LinkedIn?
• Top 20 Sales Influencers To Follow On LinkedIn

But before we roll out the carpet for the best sales influencers on the platform…

Are you in our private Facebook group yet? You’ll want to join our group if you’re looking for the best sales content, campaigns, and proven tips and tricks. In it, you’ll also find some other sales professionals who are generating big results on LinkedIn. Check out the LinkedIn Outreach Family now!

What Is Sales Leadership And Influencer In B2B Marketing And What Makes Someone A Sales Leader?

First things first, what are sales and influencer marketing in the B2B world?

For most people, the term “influencer” means someone on Instagram sharing their latest travel pictures or advertising the latest product.

And by all means, not everyone is an influencer.

But in the B2B marketing world, things are a bit different as sales leaders carry an important influence.

Let’s take a look at some numbers:

• According to TopRank, 74% of marketers agree that influencer marketing improves customer and prospect experience with the brand. And 77% of marketers say their prospective customers rely on advice from industry experts.
• LinkedIn is very important for sharing professional content. According to Oberlo, there are 740 million professionals on LinkedIn and 25% of these users are senior-level influencers.
• According to HubSpot, 75% of people don’t accept advertisements as truth. While 90% of people believe in brand recommendations from friends or people with authority.

What does this mean for your brand?

People trust professionals and thought leaders, whether they’re sales influencers, thought leaders, business owners, or in some other kind of authority position.

A single LinkedIn post share advocating for your brand by an important sales figure can help push your brand to thousands of people.

This is similar to the effect of social proof and testimonials.

If people see professionals they look up to talking about your product, they’re more likely to trust that influencer. Meanwhile, they might be less convinced if you tried to sell them yourself.

Here’s an example of Expandi testimonial from one of the top sales leaders.

Why Bother Finding B2B LinkedIn Influencers And Sales Professionals?

If you’re in the B2B industry, you might wonder if influencer marketing or simply engaging with them is worth it.

Statistically speaking, people are to believe more influencers, word-of-mouth, or social proof than your website.

When it comes to B2B lead generation, most conversions happen on LinkedIn. So, it’s clear to see why influencer marketing is a key trend in sales strategy.

So, why should you bother finding B2B LinkedIn influencers and sales professionals?

There are a few reasons.

But first, it’s important to note that you can’t simply “bribe” them to promote your product in most cases. While paying an influencer for a partnership in the B2C world might be common, B2B is built on reputation and transparency.

Instead, it’s much better for the long-term if you put in the effort and focus on building relationships with them.

Be transparent, direct, and make sure to mention what they get from working with you.

When building out Expandi, we reached out to many micro-influencers who like to share their knowledge on LinkedIn. So, we scraped a list of LinkedIn experts and reached out.

Now, instead of selling them anything, we built relationships, got their feedback, criticism, and implemented that into our product! 

This, in turn, helped us create a better product for sales teams (our target audience), make friends, and to make it beneficial for them as well, we gave away free access to our B2B sales product.

Ilya Azovtsev from Lempod (left), Houston Golden from BAMF (center), and Max Makarenko from Docsify (right)

Read the full Expandi bootstrap story here.

Some other benefits of utilizing sales influencers in your B2B marketing include:

• LinkedIn influencers speak to key decision-makers, no matter what industry you’re in.
• Their opinions are trusted and typically, they’ve put in a lot of time to building an audience that trusts them. Through transparent and quality content that provides value.
• They can amplify your reach. Some sales influencers have well over 100,000+ followers. Though, getting their attention might be harder.
• Good networking opportunities. Even if they might not promote your product or influence your marketing, you can still learn a lot from them that might help you indirectly. For example, about their insights on the sale process, sales development advice on working with your target audience, and more.

We’ll provide some examples of these below in our full sales influencers list.

But till then, let’s now take a look at how you actually identify influencers on LinkedIn.

How Do You Identify Sales Influencers And Professionals On LinkedIn?

Now, how do you identify a sales influencer and what makes someone an authority figure, exactly?

They might have a huge following, a LinkedIn newsletter, an active podcast, or may simply be creating valuable content their audience keeps coming back to.

But one of the most important parts of becoming a LinkedIn influencer has to do with your reach.

Some of the biggest sales influencers we’ve featured below all have managed to:

• Define their brand and positioning.
• Create engaging and meaningful content that their audience loves.
• Stand out.
• Invest in meaningful relationships with their audience.
• Promote their content consistently weekly (if not daily) to increase their reach.

So, it might be no surprise that it takes time to build up an audience and follow.

With that said, when creating our list below, we looked at:

• LinkedIn groups.
• LinkedIn Sales Navigator advanced filters.
• Word-of-mouth recommendations.
• Social proof.
• Quality of content.
• Keyword research.
• And more.

There are many different ways you can identify influencers on LinkedIn. 

And one common mistake is to look at whoever has the largest following.

However, someone with a smaller, more engaged audience is often more in tune with their followers and regular sales reps.

Additionally, getting their attention is harder if you only reach out to huge industry figures.

One last thing to mention here is that when identifying influencers on LinkedIn, you should also look at their industry and job positions.

For example, if you’re looking for feedback on a sales tool for software companies, it wouldn’t make sense to reach out to human resources, right?

Meanwhile, once you’ve defined your audience (E.g. sales and marketing teams) then, you can use a LinkedIn automation tool to reach out to them on autopilot.

This is similar to defining your ideal customer profiles and buyer personas and you’ll want to have a clear overview of this first before doing any outreach.

Now with this out of the way, we can get started with our list of the top sales influencers on LinkedIn!

Top 20 Sales Influencers To Follow On LinkedIn To Boost Your Sales Development

Below, we cover sales professionals with followers ranging from 18,000+ all the way up to 384,000+.

The top 20 sales influencers we’re covering below include:

• Houston Golden.
• Andrei Zinkevich.
• John Barrows.
• Lori Richardson.
• Kevin Dorsey.
• Amy Volas.
• Noah Kagan.
• Jill Rowley.
• Chris Voss.
• Colleen Francis.
• Marcel Van Der Meer.
• James Watson.
• Thibaut Souyris.
• Charlotte Jonhson.
• Bec Holland.
• Kyle Coleman.
• Morgan J Ingram.
• Sarah Brazier.
• Will Allred.
• Jeremy Schaller

Now, here’s what you need to know about each sales leader.

Houston Golden

If you work in marketing, sales, or use LinkedIn daily, you might have come across Houston Golden already.

With well over 90,000+ followers, it’s hard not to!

As the founder of BAMF.CO (badass marketers and founders), Houston specializes in LinkedIn and provides a done-for-you solution to turn individuals into personal brand content creators.

This includes ghostwriting viral content, lead generation, appointment setting, and more.

On LinkedIn, he’s constantly sharing content about:

• Sales development advice.
• Personal development.
• Entrepreneurship and business.
• What it takes to be successful.
• Scaling business teams.
• How to get the most out of LinkedIn as a professional.
• And more.

Give him a follow here!

Andrei Zinkevich

Andrei Zinkevich is a true pro when it comes to B2B sales, marketing, and tech company scaling.

His approach is “less leads, more revenue”. And this is exemplified in the way he approaches full-funnel marketing for B2B companies.

The 3 pillars of full-funnel marketing he focuses on to scale businesses include:

• Go-To-Market strategy.
• Account-based marketing (ABM).
• And demand generation.

And with 30+ years of experience growing B2B companies with 5-7 figure deals, it’s safe to say he knows what he’s talking about.

Since demand generation is becoming more and more important, especially in the B2B and SaaS companies, so you can learn a lot from his content.

But aside from demand generation and full-funnel marketing, Andrei also creates quality content on:

• Generating enterprise sales-qualified opportunities.
• B2B sales development and marketing. 
• Buying process for different customer profiles and audiences.
• Scaling marketing and sales operations.
• Effective content distribution.
• And more.

You can find his profile on LinkedIn here.

John Barrows

John is the founder of JBarrows Sales Training, which “elevates the people and profession of Sales so that it’s accessible for anyone willing to do the work to create freedom and opportunities they want in life.”

He offers individual and group sales training and in-person and remote training for corporate clients. And he’s worked with B2B companies like Slack, Google, AWS, Zoom, and many more.

On LinkedIn, he’s posting about:

• Scaling and improving sales organizations and sales development.
• How to improve your sales process.
• Email marketing.
• Interviews and podcasts with other sales influencers.
• Business thought leadership.
• How to stand out when selling.
• Online sales and strategies.
• B2B sales.
• Being a sales coach.
• And more.

If you’re looking to improve your sales operations for your company, it might be worth giving him a follow.

You can check out his LinkedIn profile here.

Lori Richardson

Lori Richardson is a B2B sales coach, strategist, accomplished speaker, podcast owner, advisor, and so much more.

But beyond that, she’s an advocate for women in sales and shines a light on industry expectations and reality.

Lori started in an SDR position from the bottom, only to become a full-cycle rep and transition into leadership in about 18 years.

Then, she launched her own sales development and strategy firm to help B2B sales teams succeed.

Now, on LinkedIn, she’s creating content about practical ways to grow revenue and sales transformation through data and best practices. Mainly focusing on the following industries:

• SaaS.
• Tech.
• Manufacturing.
• Distribution.
• Financial Services.
• Telecom.
• Software.
• And more.

Content-wise, you can expect her to be covering the following topics on LinkedIn:

• Diversity in sales.
• Sales strategy.
• Personal development.
• Lifting up other people.
• Practical sales tactics and strategies.
• B2B sales.
• Helping other women sales professionals.
• And more.

You can find her LinkedIn profile here.

Kevin Dorsey

Kevin Dorsey is a sales leadership coach – helping sales leaders, managers, directors, and VPs sell better.

His qualifications are long and lengthy, as he’s been awarded and recognized by top brands like Salesforce, Pavillon, LinkedIn, InsideSales, and more.

His approach to B2B sales focuses on the “person” in “salesperson“. This means understanding what truly drives behavior, motivation, and long-term success.

He’s built teams from 0-150+ sales reps, scaled revenues from 0-100M+ ARR, and strongly believed in processes and systems.

On Linkedin, he loves to share what he’s learned. Kevin consults all sorts of companies looking to improve their sales results, including early, mid, and late-stage B2B SaaS companies worldwide.

Finally, he’s sharing content on scaling operations teams, improving your skills, buyer behavior, sales processes, B2B marketing, and more for sales professionals and business owners.

You can find his LinkedIn profile here if you’re looking for sales content or actionable sales tips.

Amy Volas

Amy Volas covers all things sales and customer success leadership recruiting for SaaS startups.

She’s a 3x founder, has done 2 business exits, is a limited partner, podcast owner, and more.

Amy strongly believes that hiring the wrong sales leader can be an extremely expensive mistake. With over 20+ years of startup experience and $100MM+ in closed revenued, she’s confident that helping high-growth startups get strong sales leadership and enterprise sales hiring is her “why“.

With an enterprise sales career in leadership, startups, and HR tech, she’s equipped with a wealth of knowledge that many other recruiting firms or sales influencers don’t have.

Now, on LinkedIn, she’s sharing content on:

• Lessons learned from working in B2B sales.
• Problem-solving and how to gain the right attitude in sales.
• Personal experiences, insights, and failures.
• Actionable startup lessons.
• Diversity in sales.
• Hiring the right sales reps.
• And more.

You can find Amy’s LinkedIn profile here.

Noah Kagan

Noah Kagan is the CEO and founder of AppSumo – a daily deals website for digital software and products.

With over 12+ years of experience running AppSumo, Noah is a master of all things scaling businesses, online software, sales, marketing, and so much more. Aside from AppSumo, he’s also scaled Sumo (email capture tool) from $0 to $6,000,000 in 24 months, created $70M marketing plans, done hundreds of podcasts, and interviews, and the list goes on.

When it comes to LinkedIn, he’s sharing content regularly on and off.

But what makes his LinkedIn content different from other sales influencers on this list is that Noah is also running monthly office hours, where viewers can drop in and ask questions about anything that’s on their minds. From B2B sales to marketing and business management.

Check out Noah’s LinkedIn here!

Jill Rowley

Jill Rowley was one of the first SaaS sales professionals in the industry when she worked as an account executive at Salesforce from 2000-2002. Since then, her sales career has only skyrocketed.

Now she mainly works as a sales and GTM advisor at Stage 2 Capital venture firm, Guild Education (where she helps people and sales reps unlock their opportunities in their workforce), and as an advisor at LoopVoc (customer software for B2B SaaS companies).

That means she has over 22 years of SaaS and sales experience, 6 years in management consulting, 52 quarters in software sales, 6 years doing professional speaking, and more. All while working with huge brand names and having done numerous successful exits.

Jill’s work has kept her focused on the changing B2B buying environment and what revenue teams need to do to evolve their culture, skills, processes, data, and tools.

Now, she’s sharing content related to all things:

• Sales and growth.
• B2B sales and marketing.
• Changing sales environment.
• Go-to-market content.
• Being customer-centric in your sales.
• How to be a better sales leader.
• And more.

You can find Jill’s LinkedIn profile here.

Chris Voss

Christopher Voss is the author of the bestselling book “Never split the difference” and the world’s #1 negotiation coach.

In Never Split The Difference, Chris explains and breakdowns negotiations tactics and strategies from his experience as a former international hostage negotiator for the FBI.

In simple terms, this phrase refers to not selling down with less than what you intended to when negotiating.

But his long list of experience doesn’t end with being an ex-FBI hostage negotiator.

He’s also the founder of The Black Swans Group – a professional business and sales communication coaching service, and an advisor at FIX Health.

There’s a lot you can learn about sales from an ex-negotiator. Whether it’s from his book or his LinkedIn content, which touches on:

• Mastering the art of negotiation.
• Improving sales performance.
• Becoming a better negotiator – in sales and daily life.
• Learning from your mistakes.
• Identifying “Black Swans”.
• How to control yourself in a sales call.
• And more.

For B2B professionals and sales teams alike, Chris has a lot of useful knowledge to share.

So, be sure to check out his LinkedIn profile here.

Colleen Francis

Last but not least on our list, Colleen Francis is the author of Nonstop Sales Boom, Honesty Sells, and has more than 2 decades of experience as a sales leader, speaker, and strategist.

Colleen focuses primarily on the B2B market and offers guidance to drive consistent sales results while avoiding downswings in sales performance as sales reps.

According to her, the B2B buying process has been revolutionized in recent years. Customers are now the hunters and the sales professionals are the hunted. As a result, the focus of her work is to help companies accept and embrace this new reality.

She’s done this for industry leaders like Merck, Experian, Merrill Lynch, Dow, NCR, and hundreds of other global businesses. Meanwhile, her long list of recognitions includes:

• LinkedIn #1 sales influencer in 2020.
• LinkedIn top voices 2018.
• Canadian speaking hall of fame.
• Top sales world’s top 50 sales and marketing blogs in 2017.
• Best-selling author.
• Being listed as a keynote speaker for Dreamforce, Experian, MDRT experience, and many more.

Regarding LinkedIn, she shares actionable and valuable content on all things sales. Including how to deliver value in sales, sales metrics, leadership, lessons learned working with big brands, and more.

For more info, check out her LinkedIn profile here!

Marcel Van Der Meer

Marcel van der Meer is a man of many talents.

Though, he primarily focuses on all things LinkedIn. Including:

• LinkedIn recruiting.
• Community building and management.
• Growth hacking for recruiters.
• Strategic sourcing for B2B companies.
• And more.

With over 10+ years of experience, Marcel knows how to train companies and professionals on how to use sourcing successfully. 

He’s helped more than 2,500 professionals and 250+ companies in the world of sourcing and recruiting, including SMEs to international B2B corporations.

ow, he runs Klikwork a professional training and coaching service in which he coaches recruiters, sources, and businesses to help find the right talents.

So, if you’re recruiting on LinkedIn, you’ll want to check out his LinkedIn profile for more info!

James Watson

James Watson is a B2B growth consultant and a LinkedIn outreach expert by trade.

With many years of experience, James is a true sales pro who’s managed to provide a 5x-300x ROI across 7 figures in private client deals closed. And with many social proof and testimonials to back it up, it’s safe to see why he’s so good at growing businesses.

Not only that, but he also knows the ins and outs of all things closing, LinkedIn optimization, using LinkedIn automation properly, and more.

As such, you can find him posting about:

• Sales.
• LinkedIn automation.
• Growth hacks on the platform.
• Lessons learned working in sales.
• Podcasts, collaborations with other sales influencers, expert tips, and more.

So, you’ll definitely want to give his profile a follow here!

Thibaut Souyris

Thibaut is the CEO and founder of SasesLabs – a sales training, coaching, and consulting company for B2B companies looking to start more conversations and turn prospects into customers.

Though, aside from that, he’s also a VP, advisor, podcast owner, and more.

With his training program, Thibaut helps SDRs gain a 38% reply rate and an 11% meeting rate on LinkedIn. 

And the best part is he shows you how to do just that in his newsletter and paid course.

if you’re looking for more content on tactical sales training, sales coaching, direct and honest sales advice, be sure to follow Thibaut on LinkedIn!

Charlotte Johnson  

Charlotte Jonhson went from being in the SDR warzone to effectively becoming a top-performing SDR in a company of 100+ reps.

Instead of working super long hours, she managed to achieve this by enforcing a number of right strategies.

Now, as an account executive and podcast owner, she helps people:

• Properly research prospects.
• Compose impactful emails.
• Create stand-out videos.
• Make pattern interrupt cold calls.
• Send strategic LinkedIn messages.
• And more.

Check out her prospect attractors guide and be sure to follow her on LinkedIn here!

Bec Holland

Bec Holland is the CEO and founder of Flip The Script (among other roles). In which she gives away most of her sales training for free.

Across all-inclusive training videos, podcasts, and LinkedIn posts on all things sales, Becc offers a lot of different ways SDRs can improve. From getting better at cold calls to using personalization and advancing in their career.

For more information on her content and brand, you can find her LinkedIn profile here.

Kyle Coleman

Kyle Coleman is a senior vice president at Clari. In which, he handles all things growth, marketing, and boosting revenue opportunities.

With a passion for people development, identifying and solving problems, creating and optimizing processes, and unifying departments across the revenue organization, Kyle knows how to get ahead in the world of sales.

On LinkedIn, he covers all things:

• Career growth as an SDR.
• Sending personalized messages on LinkedIn.
• Personal and career development.
• Work-life balance.
• Prospecting.
• Email marketing.
• And more.

Check out his LinkedIn profile here!

Morgan J Ingram

Morgan Ingram provides proven training for driven sales professionals and teams, optimized for remote delivery and immediate results.

He’s been named a back-to-back LinkedIn Top Sales Voice in 2018, 2019, and 2020. Though, when he was starting out, he didn’t even want to create a personal brand or become a sales influencer.

Now, he’s managed to overcome that fear and step into his calling.

Morgan coaches sales teams on how to use modern-sales techniques that bolster the pipeline, leverage social media, schedule net new accounts, and cold call with confidence.

With his work having been featured in Forbes, HubSpot, Sales Hacker, and the Harvard Business Review, it’s safe to say he knows what he’s talking about when it comes to sales.

For more info, be sure to check out his LinkedIn profile here!

Sarah Brazier

Sarah Brazier went from a sales development representative to a mid-market account executive at Gong – a sales platform that captures and understands every customer interaction to make decisions based on data.

Across her journey, Sarah has worn many hats, as an educator, actor, and people mover.

So, her content is just as insightful as her career.

On LinkedIn, you can find her posting about working in sales, personal insights, sales training, industry trends, and more.

Find Sarah’s LinkedIn profile here!

Will Allred

Will Allred is the co-founder at Lavender (an email assistant tool that helps write better emails and get more replies) and an accomplished sales influencer.

As the owner of Lavender, he’s a huge believer in personalization and writing better emails faster. From instant personalization and optimizing emails for replies, Will is teaching sales teams how to get better at writing emails and optimizing their outbound workflow.

For more info, check out Will’s LinkedIn profile!

Jeremy Schaller

Last but not least on our list, Jeremy Schaller is a growth partner for B2B SaaS companies who managed to grow a “boring” startup all the way up to INC5000 within 2 years at the age of 20.

As a professional growth hacker, his approach is as follows:

1. Find product-market-fit by testing the ICP & offer with outbound to get case studies.
2. Build and revise the funnel, which will be then scaled with ads.
3. Install and train sales team.
4. Build company operations and systems.
5. Raise capital if needed.
6. Acquire channel partners and revamp as needed.

Jeremy’s got so much experience and results under his belt that listing out everything here would take too much time.

So, if you want to learn from his achievements in detail and his valuable content on growing businesses via growth hacking, you can find his LinkedIn profile here.

Conclusion

So, to recap, the term “influencer” might not carry much weight for many people.

But as far as sales professionals and industry leaders are concerned, they play an important part in how people make decisions. From social proof to recognition, they’ve built up an audience that trusts their advice and opinion.

As a result, there’s a lot you can gain from working with a LinkedIn influencer and sales and marketing leaders.

Now, whether you want to reach out to the sales influencers or build up your own audience, one simple way to do this is through LinkedIn automation.

Meaning, that instead of writing out connection requests, LinkedIn InMails, or follow-up messages, emails, and more manually, you can put all that (and more) on autopilot.

So, this can work whether you’re using LinkedIn for hiring, recruitment, lead generation, networking, or simply want to engage with your core audience.

Ready to automate your LinkedIn outreach or sales process?

Sign up for a free, 7-day Expandi trial now!

Alternatively, you can join our private Facebook group the LinkedIn Outreach Family for free. In it, you’ll find more sales influencers and leaders sharing content, B2B sales strategies that worked for them, asking questions, and more.