12 Stats That Prove You Need To Start Social Selling

By thought-horizon | Aug 23, 2019

Numbers do not lie. 

Your target market is changing. And if you don’t meet its pace, you are losing out on a great deal of profit. 

With 57% of the buying decisions made online before your prospects even talk to your reps, the traditional methods of cold calling are gradually losing their grip. 

Everything from the buying process to sales techniques to tools has changed, and to keep up, you must change how you sell. You need to start using social media more in your B2B sales and marketing efforts! Here’s how: 

1. Support Your Digitalization Efforts With Striking Social Selling

Digitalization has been here for some years now. Given its importance, brands who miss out on it are lagging behind. If you have got your digital demands satisfied – congratulations! You are already halfway through to reaching potential customers. But is it enough? Are people able to make their way through to this amazing website or yours? Are they able to reach your blogs? The website has all the latest conversion software (heatmap tracking, chatbots, etc) but the monthly visitors are still decreasing.

Chances are no one is finding their way to your blog. What’s worse, when they land on it, they bounce away in seconds without so much as one click. Why? Because they are not qualified visitors who have been given a reason to click on the webpage. They are blindly searching.   

But you can overcome this problem, by leveraging social media to send more targeted traffic to your website and blogs. 44% of buyers believe that a website is the company’s top asset that influences buying decision. Furthermore, 90% of the top-performing sales reps use social media a part of their sales strategy and transfer directed traffic to their website. So if they are there on your website via social media inspired by your posts, they are more likely to convert. 

Simply emphasize your brand value and potential as a market leader in the industry, and results shall follow. 

2. Social Media Can Help You Close More Deals

You may have great deals with amazing opportunity waiting in your CRM, but they are years old and you have lost hope. Your sales reps go hot and cold on these leads but never seem to catch on. Can you guess why? Times have changed. Nowadays, 57% of the customer’s buying decisions are made even before they engage with a salesperson. 

Understand that neither the buyers nor the sales reps have enough time to communicate with each potential buyer only to get turned down at the end. Moreover, the idea of reaching out to each potential buyer is humanly impossible. 

Thanks to the era of social selling, sales representatives from various brands across industries use social media to reach out to the broader market. And why not? Modern sellers who adopt social selling enjoy over 19% faster sales growth. They don’t need to list out the dead leads and go cold calling to receive no response. A social media post or mention can reach all your lukewarm leads and get them ready to boil! Moreover, even if they don’t end up converting, you’ll grab a spot in their minds, which will encourage them to refer you every time someone talks about an opportunity relevant to you. 

But that’s not the only angle to this. Social sellers are 51% more likely to hit sales targets. You can simply curate the best content from your niche, participate in discussions, interact with people and establish yourself as a thought leader. Once your potential buyers are impressed, they are likely to covert. 

3. Social Selling Helps With B2B Selling

What does your LinkedIn Navigator look like? Can you not find any active LinkedIn users from your salesforce? No. While there may be multiple reasons for this, we doubt you are using LinkedIn effectively. If social media for you is only related to signing up for it, you are certainly not using it properly. If your team is not active on social media, it is going to be a problem. The main reason is that your competitors are actively looking to use social media to sell. As more and more buyers move to social media to figure out what to buy, you will be at a natural disadvantage. 

Here’s what numbers look like in the modern buying scenario:

– 62% of B2B prospects respond to the sales pros who provide them with relevant insights.

– 75% of B2B buyers use social media to make final buying decisions.

– 70% of sales professionals use LinkedIn to support lead generation.

– 73% of sales teams prefer technological aid to close more deals.

– B2B sellers who engage in social selling are 72% more likely to exceed their sales quota.

With this picture, if you don’t use social selling to support lead gen efforts, you are not on the same platform as your buyers and competitors. Social selling can be a huge component to your success. Make sure you understand the value each platform has to offer for your sales goals, how they benefit your brand, how can you reach your target market there, and what content works best on them. Once you have the data handy, simply get started!

No more second thoughts

No matter what business you are into, where your target market exists, or what your sales targets are, social selling enriches each stage of your selling funnels wonderfully. The statistics mentioned above clearly indicate the same. If you want to stay in the game for a long time and beat out your competitors, having a stunning social media presence is vital. If you still find it difficult to convince yourself, get in touch with social selling experts at Thought Horizon, and get the ball rolling in your court.