Social selling is past its buzzword days. For the most part, sales leaders now recognize it as a legitimate sales methodology. It works. They see how properly using it affects pipeline and revenue, especially when up against traditional tactics. Rather than questioning the validity of its existence, many leaders are now facing the question: how do I successfully implement social selling within my sales team?
The truth is there is no one path to success. But there are undoubtedly commonalities that all successful companies see. These commonalities, we’ve come to realize, comprise the near perfect formula for social selling success.
So what are they? How, for example, did Genesys Technologies use social selling to increase won opportunities by 22% and average deal size by 42%? Specifically, Genesys looked at the results of social sellers vs non-social sellers in these three areas over a period of 18 months.
Before we get to the how, let’s look at why I want to discuss this particular case study:
1. It was conducted by Genesys—all results and data come straight from them, so no vendor bias ;-).
2. Their social selling program has been up and running for three years (it’s reached a level of maturity other companies simply haven’t achieved).
3. Genesys was able to obtain exclusive, not-available-to-the-public data from LinkedIn to more accurately correlate the social selling actions of their team with the engagements and responses of prospects on the LinkedIn.
There’s lots of detail included in the case study. However, it can be boiled down to three stats concerning pipeline, win rate and, deal size:
- Genesys social sellers outperformed non-social sellers in the following ways:
- They were able to build pipelines 2.2x larger
- Their win rates ranged from 16% to 22% better
- They were able to close deals that were 42% to 185% larger
Considering this is a company with 10,000 employees and over $1B in revenue, you can start to understand the significance of such improvements. The exciting thing is that these kinds of results can be achieved by all. There wasn’t any magic involved—just pure dedication and accountability.
Genesys’ social selling program was rolled out over the span of two years and looked something like this:
Year One
Year Two
Year Three
You can see how a with a structured program and the right tools such as employee advocacy and LinkedIn Sales Navigator, your team can become social sellers, and those social sellers can become quota crushers.
Overall, Genesys sales reps who used employee advocacy and LinkedIn Sales Navigator as part of their overall social selling efforts have pipeline 2.2x greater than those that don’t.
Furthermore, reps who combine the above tools with additional social techniques, such as researching buyers on social, social listening and connecting with buyers on social media, saw win rates lift 22% higher than those who didn’t use the tools.
The most astounding part? When those same reps posted content that buyers interacted with, they increased their average deal size as much as 165%! Content really is king.
These results are in line with what other companies have found with a consistent social selling approach. Over 500 sales, marketing and enablement leaders and professionals said when teams properly embraced social, they saw:
- 18% more pipeline 28% faster
- 78% more chance of hitting their revenue goals than non-social sellers (no formalized training)
- 31% higher ROI than those who stick to traditional tactics
What Genesys had was the conviction to incorporate social selling into their overall sales enablement strategy and the commitment at the executive level to support it. Every seller is unique and uses social in their own way.
With an overall sales enablement strategy, leadership buy-in and the right resources, virtually any company can achieve lift from social selling.
This year is going to be a big one for sales organizations. We’re excited to share more data and success cases with you here and on our own blog over the coming months! Stay tuned.
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