Social Media - the generation sales team

Has social media become more of an influential channel for business purchases globally, ahead of face-to-face meetings, client entertaining or traditional trade advertising in most markets?

A global survey conducted by GlobalWebIndex, 2011 reported that when it comes to leading influencers; “Conversations with people from a company/organisation on a social network” ranked a score of 15%, bench marked against other channels.

The second ranked motivation was “direct mails”, 13%. Among senior decision makers – those at senior manager level and above – conversations were level with “sales presentations”, both scoring 16%.

Conversations online now outrank advertising, direct mailings, webinars, conferences and corporate events while “Branded communities created by the company/organisation” are seen as more influential than corporate events / entertainment the report suggested.

As of June 2011, global figures show that: 39% of decision-makers had used a micro-blog in the last month versus 22% for the average internet user and 60% had used a social network versus 50% for the average. And despite an already high level of social networking, usage is increased from 41% to 60% over the two years surveyed.

The research was based on interviews with 17,425 purchase decision makers in 27 markets from July 2009 to June 2011, across 14 categories and five different sizes of company. GlobalWebIndex.

Social media is opening doors for sales forces as customers now have the ability to engage and interact with brands before they transact. Are the followers on your companies Twitter page now your sales team ‘warm list’? Can you observe behaviour of your customers through social allowing a more targeted approach and sales strategy? A modern day sales team now adapts to the new tools at their disposal.