When I worked in corporate it was 7 out of 69 salespeople that carried the organization

Those 7, all did 200%, where as the rest of the sales people never made their number

So when I spotted this research from Ebsta's 2025 GTM Benchmark, here it resonated with me

They reckon that the top 14% of sales reps bring in 80% of revenue

The research also found that top salespeople

• Spend 2x more time *actually* selling
• Close deals 11x faster (no, that's not a typo)
• Hit quota even when 78% of reps don't

Why is this happening?

Many years ago, when working at this big tech company, we researched what the top performing sales people had in common

There were a number of trends – investing in ongoing professional development, spending time on health and wellbeing, innovating and, crucially, being active on LinkedIn in the accounts they were selling to

Each of the top performers were connected to 200 people, per account, on LinkedIn 

The “B players” were all connected to one or two people per account

Back then the “A Players” realised that sales was about relationships and trust and the more people they knew in an account, the more they sold

Stands to reason really

I spoke with a sales leader recently who said “all of our sales people have been told to connect right across the accounts”, the problem was they still were not

Why?  Because using legacy sales methods such as cold calling or spam email it's hard

(The number of) Linkedin connections always should be part of the inspection process in deal reviews and QBRs

Can you drive revenue from social media?

Social selling is not about spamming people or inmails or connect and pitch

Our definition of social selling is 

"Using your presence and behavior on social media to build influence, make connections, grow relationships and trust, which leads to conversation and commercial interaction"
 

And the results?

For an AE, we can shorten sales cycles by 30%

And the average SDR will get 1 x ICP meeting a day

Which should increase your revenue by 20%

You can get these results by using our social selling methodology, that is certified by Institute of Sales Professionals (ISP)

"social selling techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition".

In this brand new edition, I have updated all the text, I have also got 15 practitioners, so people who are doing this already to explain how they are get (practical) business benefit. From the CEO that has been running a digital business for over 18 months to sales leaders and sales people who use social selling every day to drive revenue growth. 

Articles on how these business have and are implementing digital, from Mercer, Telstra Purple, Ring Central, Cyberhawk, Namos, Ericsson, DLA Ignite and more.

What does Mark Schaefer, Marketing guru think of the book "social selling - techniques to influence buyers and changemakers - 2nd edition"? watch the video here

It's available on Amazon worldwide.  Link to Amazon.com here and Amazon.co.uk here.