A recent study conducted by the ES Research Group, a consulting group which provides sales training and market research, has released the results of a study which evaluates the actual effectiveness social media has on closing sales.
There is endless noise and publicity surrounding online sites like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. The term, “business networking” is loose at best when describing these sites and there’s been very little evidence to conclude whether or not the time spent networking on these sites creates actual sales for your small business.
ES Group interviewed 392 sales people to answer the question, “Do The New Social Media Enable B2B Selling?“. The results were surprising.
Survey recipients were then asked a single question about each of these tools — “Do these tools help you win B2B sales?” — with available responses of:
- don’t use;
- never helps;
- rarely helps;
- sometimes helps; or
- often helps.
According to the study, claims that these tools “sometimes” or “often help” B2B sales were underwhelming, at best. The responses break out as follows:
- LinkedIn…………………………36 percent
- Hoovers and OneSource……….33 percent
- Jigsaw…………………………..10 percent
- Facebook…………………………8 percent
- Plaxo……………………………..7 percent
- Twitter……………………………4 percent
ESR’s CEO, David Stein says, “given the sales department’s ‘quick-fix’ attitude toward problem-solving, all the hype and noise around social media — in particular, mostly unproven and unstructured channels such as Twitter and Facebook — will only serve as a distraction. Stein warns of salespeople who misguidedly assume that social media empowerment means they no longer have to focus on Sales 101 — a mistaken view, not unlike perceptions of CRM in its early days, that social media is going to be ‘the savior’.”
Our Synopsis:
The term “business networking” is being redefined to accommodate people’s activity on social media sites and the sites themselves are not necessarily facilitating profitable business activities. You need to ask yourself for instance, ” Is asking everyone in your LinkedIn network to read your nephew’s resume business networking?” While we may be socializing with professionals or sharing resume’s… while we’re at work, the true test of a tool is it’s ability to help you do business.
Don’t forget the power of sales 101 basics like generating qualified sales leads through referral marketing with people you know and trust.
More Resources Regarding this study:
New Social Media Not Helping Sales
Tags: close sales leads, social media study
Wow, I don’t think this study is going to be very popular. Some people are using social media to get great results and they are going to disagree very strongly. Some people will be disappointed that social media isn’t the answer to all their marketing problems. And some people will ignore it because they are having way too much fun on social media!!
Yap, I’ve never used the Ads neither from Twitter or Facebook
That’s one of those typical questions that doesn’t really tell IMHO the whole truth.
If you use one of those Social Networks mentioned above and you find it isn’t helping you selling B2B, is that the ‘fault’ of the Social Network or is the way you use these networks ‘faulty’?
A better question would have been: HOW do you use Social Networks for B2B selling? (i.e. make first contact, get referrals, answer questions etc).
It’s that old saying: if you want the social networks to work, you’ll have to work the social networks (can be replaced with: if you want your websites, blogs, webshops, email marketing to work, etc etc).
Karin H. (Keep It Simple Sweetheart, specially in business)
One of the flaws in the study is that sites like Twitter are bound to be less useful because the majority of sales people aren’t using Twitter yet.
However, one could also make the argument that because they don’t use Twitter, by definition, it’s less of a closing tool.
A good qualifying question would have been, “Have you ever used Twitter?… Facebook.. and so on.
I personally think the study affirms some of my own hypothesis.
I was recently at a Social Media panel and got to speak with a few Social Media Consultants with some very big clients.
I believe the usefulness of Social Media is actually quite apparent and needs no further explanation. It is the fervor and obsession of those who have made Social Media a profession that alarms me.
Furthermore, people in this field often pride themselves on being innovators and earlier adopters yet they always seem to promote the same three sites because the happen to be the only adult in their circle using them… (not exactly beneficial to the rest of us who have been beaten over the head with how great Twitter is).
If you spend half your day justifying your profession to a board of execs there’s something wrong.
What can small business owners take away from this?
Many have touted Social Media as the great equalizer; for example, a niche shoe manufacturer can have just as much presence as NIKE through Social Media as opposed to a traditional media model.
Herein lies the paradox of Social Media. These same experts will also say that Social Media isn’t about making sales, it’s about fostering relationships with your brand. Clearly, NIKE has the same advantage they’ve always had. More resources and man power to spend on Twitter which in turn will only perpetuate brand dominance for the same companies that held the throne before Social Media existed.
For anyone who runs a small business, sales are extremely important. An attorney spending three hours a day, Tweeting with 50,000 Twitter followers, trying to create brand conception or realization (or whatever buzzword you’d like) is obviously at a disadvantage.
The icing on the cake is when sites like Twitter, MySpace, and Facebook come to the realization that they need to actualize revenue. They create a model whereby companies with a bigger budget are given more exposure. Whether it’s purchasing ads on Facebook or extra characters in Twitter, they essentially reconstruct the same hierarchical structure indicative of a centuries old marketing model.
Many will point examples of Social Media successes. Perhaps, you’ve come across a human interest piece in the local newspaper that features a “Baker” who’s used Twitter to gain a following. I would argue that the “Baker’s” success with Twitter is completely contingent on the law of scarcity. Inevitably, this baker has competitors who just haven’t utilized Twitter yet.
It’s free, easy and there’s no barrier to entry so what is likely to happen?
As every Baker in the state begins to utilize Twitter, the inherent marketing power of our original Baker begins to wane.
Over saturation of New Media sites is nothing new. Just a few years ago, believe it or not, MySpace was a great way to drum up a following with very little time or effort. Inevitably, everyone and their uncle started promoting their music, services and wares on MySpace. The same forces which had made it a revolutionary tool for marketing began to make it an un-enjoyable experience. People began tuning everyone out and spent more time deleting friends than making them. Eventually the site became rather unappealing do to the noise and clutter.
Now telling a colleague to “Check out my MySpace” is the cyber version of saying, “Let’s do lunch at the Greyhound track.”
Facebook has been able to walk a tight rope. At times upsetting their users, while trying to court revenue and make themselves profitable.
Even the young and innocent Twitter has already had to impose restrictions on their member’s ability to reach large numbers of people.
What was considered a great marketing tactic on a site one month, will be deemed as Spam the next month. It all depends on where the site owners want to place the fulcrum between a marketing frenzy or restricting people’s ability to socialize.
Social Media has allowed individuals to connect and share media with a larger number of acquaintances and friends. That in itself makes Social Media incredible, yet any claims above and beyond that are unproven and fantasy at this point.
There are no shortcuts. If you’ve been able to make some quick connections using a new tool, congratulations. Wait until a dozen of your competitors are targeting the same people.
Too many hands in the cookie jar.
About what I expected.
Linkedin is professional and therefore useful. “Social networking” things like Facebook, Twitter, Myspace are distractions, merely for entertainment. I use them for that, and that alone.
Linkedin (and to some extent Plaxo, Hoovers, etc) are for business.
Too bad that post above is by an anonymous poster - it almost looked interesting. But I have learned not to read anything that people are afraid to put their name on
John Tenney
IsuranceHR.com
@JohnTenney
I’m not quite sure it’s about being afraid to post a name. It’s about a high-profile person separating professional and personal thoughts; a must in the twenty first century. Integrity is my policy.
One could make the argument that LinkedIn is just a Facebook whose members are more likely to have jobs. As an older demographic begin to flock to Facebook, the distinction between Facebook and LinkedIn becomes even more difficult to make.
The responses here are far better than the actual study. You get the results you want in any study. It all depends on the questions you ask and how you ask them. Ruling out study bias is almost impossible, even among professional scholars.
Personally, Twitter has produced a number of consulting gigs, interview opportunities, guest blog posts, etc.
As one person said above, it really depends on how well you use any social media. Use it well, and the results will come.
Check out my 30-Day Twitter Challenge for a blog post on how I use Twitter to produce great results: http://blog.bookmarket.com/2009/03/30-day-twitter-challenge.html
Social media is used to drive traffic to you/your site, product or offer. It then becomes your responsibility to close the sale. So technically the article is true, social media is not for closing a sale it is to drive traffic and a great tool to research a company/product.
There is no magic bullet when it comes to increasing sales except to create better relationships with consumers and then support them. This is something that is anathema to corporate cultures still today - even with the business and social recalibration going on after this recession.
SM is all about supporting relationships with consumers. While it can drive traffic, make introductions, etc… it cannot create relationships or close sales unless you have developed the prospective consumer’s relationship to that point. Social media is still about the social and not the media - and always will be.
I just wrote about the biggest disconnect between those businesses that are successful with SM and those that are not is that those who are having success are doing so because their business cultures already embrace the more social elements of the consumer relationship. Those that do not, fail because it comes across as hypocritical, insincere and thus manipulative.
My company decided to dive into Twitter head first because we saw it as a way to have more conversations about more issues with our clients than anything else could do. It is immediate and that is extremely powerful as witnessed by the number of new clients and strategic partners we have culled from using it, as well as the existing clients we have been better able to communicate with and draw distinctions between our products and offers and our competitors.
Consumers are also demanding more transparency and communication from the brands they do business with and SM is great for helping brands facilitate this part of their message as well.
The results exist for companies who understand and embrace SM for what it is and not for what it is not. It is a tool. An interactive strategy for helping develop and support relationships with those who would be your friend or your client. It is not business as usual.
IMHO you won’t ‘close a sale’ on any of the social networks (rare exceptions set to the side). They’re useful to make personal connections with people you hope to do business with in the future. The goal should be to establish your brand as reliable, friendly and trustworthy, which is an important competitive edge in any market. Perhaps it would be helpful if businesses looked at the social networks as giant cocktail parties that go on 24/7. You meet and greet a lot of people, exchange business cards and, if you’re good at it, get quite a few business leads for future professional interaction. You don’t close sales @ cocktail parties (or rarely) so the survey misconstrued what people are using them for, making the results unreliable and irrelevant.
Molly
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