Dive Brief:
- According to LinkedIn’s “The State of Sales 2016” report, social selling tools are the most impactful and 90% of top sales professionals use those tools. The good news is that 71% of sales professionals already use social selling tools such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
- Perhaps not surprisingly, the report found that millennials were 33% more likely to use social selling tools than sales professionals age 35 to 54, taking the lead as top sellers.
- The Gen Y cohort also led every category of sales technology adoption including social selling, sales intelligence, productivity apps, email tracking and CRM.
Dive Insight:
As digital continues to transform advertising, for marketers the takeaway is the importance of technology and understanding social media.
"Sales success is closely tied to an organization’s willingness to adopt sales intelligence and social tools," according to the LinkedIn report. "This trend will gain strength over time as more sales professionals across all generations continue to leverage products that help them to build and manage relationships."
Because marketers are becoming technology buyers in many companies – particularly martech and other tech stack pieces that impact the sales funnel – this should be seen as an opportunity to work more closely with sales. In this way they can ensure the company is providing technology and training that improves their work experience and performance.
"Sales professionals who’ve seen the impact of social, particularly top performers, will also ‘spread the gospel’ to their colleagues," LinkedIn concluded.