The team at ZoomInfo put together the following list of 48 social selling statistics in hopes that sales reps everywhere would take this information and apply it to their current social selling practices. One of the most revealing stats is 

"80% believe their salesforce would be more productive with greater social media presence but, 2/3 of companies have no social media strategy for their sales organization"

Wow, just WOW. If this is to be believed then why aren't companies doing more to put this into play?

Perhaps you need a guide?

Here at DLA Ignite dlaignite.com we have been running digital transformations for three years and have come up with a measure.  Measure your employees on how digital they are, measure your company on how digital it is, compare how you compare with your industry and competitors.

Check out the article below for the full 48 Stats but here are some to wet your appetite

The State of Social Selling

  • 93% of sales executives have not received any formal training on social selling (source)
  • 80% believe their salesforce would be more productive with greater social media presence but, 2/3 of companies have no social media strategy for their sales organization (source)
  • 50.1% of social salespeople spend 5-10% of their time on social media (source)
  • 53% of salespeople want help in understanding social selling better (source)
  • Marketers spend an average of 4-6 hours a week on social media (source)
  • 61% of US marketers use social media for lead generation (source)

B2B Social Selling with Twitter

  • 92% of employees’ Twitter followers are new to the brand (source)
  • 74% of B2B marketing companies use Twitter to distribute content (source)

B2B Social Selling with LinkedIn

  • 98% of sales reps with more than 5,000 LinkedIn connections meet or surpass their quota (source)
  • On LinkedIn, 65% of people wouldn’t find it creepy if a salesperson sent them a message and they had common connections (source)
  • There are 128 million LinkedIn users in the U.S. alone (source)

B2B Social Selling with Facebook

  • 81% of people find unsolicited Facebook messages from salespeople creepy, and 78% are turned off by friend requests from sales reps (source)
  • The reach of 135 employees engaged in employer advocacy is larger than that of a company page with one million Facebook followers, likes or fans (source)

How Effective is Social Selling?

  • 78% of salespeople using social media perform better than their peers (source)
  • IBM increased its sales by 400% thanks to its inbound social selling program (source)
  • Sales reps who viewed the profiles of at least 10 people at each of their accounts were 69% more likely to exceed quota than those who viewed 4 or fewer (source)
  • Social sellers generate 38% more new opportunities than traditional sellers (source)
  • 90% of top salespeople use social selling tools, compared with 71% of overall sales professionals (source)
  • 62% of employees at large companies agreed that social selling enables them to build stronger, more authentic relationships with customers and prospects (source)
  • Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing (source)
  • 63.4% of Social sellers reported an increase in company sales revenue, compared to 41.2% of non-social sellers (source)
  • Sales teams who embrace social experience report 18% more pipeline (volume) and 28% velocity increase (source)
  • The majority of social sellers with long-term training in place (78%) hit their revenue goals in the past 12 months versus those without formalized training (38%) (source)
  • Salespeople leveraging social selling experience a 31% higher ROI than those who stick to traditional tactics (source)
  • Content shared by employees receive 8x more engagement than the same content shared by company/brand channels (source)
  • Brand messages are re-shared 24x more when shared by employees vs. brand/corporate accounts (source)
  • 90% of an employee’s social audience is new to the brand (source)
  • Messages reach 561% further when shared by employees vs. the same messages shared via official corporate social channels (source)
  • Employees have on average 10 times more social connections than a brand does (source)
  • 54% of salespeople who use social media can track their social media usage back to at least one closed deal (source)
  • Sales reps who leverage social selling in their sales process are 79% more likely to attain their quota than those who don’t use it (source)
  • Sales teams that use social selling techniques exceed their quota 31% more than non-users (source)