The Originator of Social Selling

Koka Sexton.
The person who put social selling on the map.

Before social selling was a phrase, Koka was doing it. He joined LinkedIn before the category existed, helped build Sales Navigator into a billion-dollar business, co-developed the SSI, and has spent 15+ years proving that visibility creates opportunity.

LinkedIn (2010–2015) Hootsuite Slack Social Selling Index (SSI) Sales Navigator GTM Founder, Executive Visibility Program
KS
Koka Sexton
LinkedIn Social Selling Expert &
Executive Visibility Strategist
15+
Years in Social Selling
$1B+
Sales Navigator GTM
SSI
Co-Created the Index
3
LinkedIn, Hootsuite, Slack
Connect on LinkedIn
The Origin Story

Before social selling had a name.

Koka Sexton started his career in law enforcement. That's not a metaphor — he was actually a cop. Then he found his way into inside sales, discovered LinkedIn years before anyone called it "social selling," and never looked back.

He joined LinkedIn in the early days of what would become LinkedIn Sales Solutions. At the time, the idea that salespeople could use a professional network to find, research, and build relationships with buyers was novel — even controversial. Most companies were still debating whether their reps should be allowed to use social media at all.

Koka wasn't debating. He was doing. He started building playbooks, writing content, and proving out the methodology that would eventually become the foundation of social selling as a discipline. He wasn't studying a trend. He was creating one.

"I didn't invent social selling as a concept — buyers and sellers have always been social. But I was part of the team that named it, systematized it, and proved to enterprise sales organizations that it was a predictable path to pipeline."

During his time at LinkedIn, Koka played a foundational role in building and promoting the Social Selling Index (SSI) — now the industry-standard metric for measuring social selling adoption across enterprise sales organizations worldwide. He also contributed directly to the go-to-market strategy that helped grow LinkedIn Sales Navigator from a product into a billion-dollar business unit.

After LinkedIn, he took his playbook to Hootsuite — helping large enterprises build social selling programs at scale. Then to Slack, where he led marketing for one of the fastest-growing enterprise products in history. In every role, the thesis was the same: visibility creates opportunity, and the professionals who understand that compound their advantage over time.

Today, Koka runs the Executive Visibility Program — a structured 90-day LinkedIn system for founders and executives who want to turn their point of view into a pipeline engine. It's the same system, applied personally. The same belief, operationalized.

Career Timeline

15 years. One consistent thesis.

Every role was a different context for the same bet: visibility creates opportunity, and the system can be built.

2009
Early Career

Inside Sales → LinkedIn

Before LinkedIn was a sales tool, Koka was using it as one. He joined LinkedIn's emerging Sales Solutions team and started building the playbooks that would define the social selling category.

→ Social selling before it had a name
2012
LinkedIn

Social Marketing Leader, LinkedIn Sales Solutions

Built and executed the content and social marketing strategy that drove awareness and adoption of LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Helped establish the social selling methodology as a repeatable enterprise discipline.

→ Sales Navigator GTM strategy
2014
LinkedIn

Social Selling Index (SSI) Launch

Played a foundational role in the development and promotion of LinkedIn's Social Selling Index — the metric that gave enterprise sales organizations a quantifiable way to measure social selling adoption and tie it to pipeline outcomes. SSI is now used by sales teams worldwide.

→ Co-developed the industry-standard metric
2016
Hootsuite

Social Selling Strategist

Brought the LinkedIn social selling playbook to Hootsuite, helping large enterprises build social selling programs across their sales organizations. Expanded the methodology beyond LinkedIn to the broader social landscape.

→ Enterprise social selling at scale
2018
Slack

Marketing Leader

Led marketing at Slack during its hyper-growth period. Applied content-led demand generation and community-driven visibility strategies to one of the most successful enterprise product launches of the decade.

→ Hyper-growth B2B marketing
2023
Executive Visibility Program

Founder, Koka Sexton Strategy

Launched the Executive Visibility Program — bringing the same system used to build billion-dollar sales motions to individual founders and executives who want their LinkedIn to generate real pipeline. The same thesis, applied personally.

→ Visibility creates opportunity
Watch

Hear it from Koka directly.

Philosophy

What Koka actually believes.

After 15 years in social selling, a few things have become non-negotiable convictions.

1

Visibility is not vanity. It's leverage.

Every buyer, investor, partner, and recruit is researching you before they engage. If you're invisible, you're losing deals you don't even know you're in. Visibility isn't about ego — it's about making sure the right people find you before they find someone else.

2

Systems beat motivation every time.

You cannot will yourself into consistent LinkedIn presence. Life happens. Quarters happen. The only professionals who maintain long-term visibility are the ones who have a system running in the background — not willpower. That's what the program builds.

3

Pipeline is the only metric that matters.

Impressions, followers, and likes are not business outcomes. The only thing that matters is whether your LinkedIn activity is generating conversations with the right people that turn into revenue. Everything else is noise.

4

Your point of view is your unfair advantage.

You can't out-spend a competitor on content. But you can out-think them. A consistent, distinctive point of view is the one thing that can't be copied — because it comes from your specific experience, failures, and convictions. That's what we extract and amplify.

Published Writing

Read the thinking behind the program.

Work With Koka

Ready to build your visibility system?

The Executive Visibility Program applies the same methodology Koka used to build billion-dollar sales motions — to your LinkedIn, your voice, and your pipeline.