Tuesday 10 June 2014

Social Media & Technology in Sales – Sales Survey 2014

Aaron Wallis has recently undertaken the largest sales survey of its type which explores changing trends within the industry as well as a powerful insight into the minds of sales professionals.

With 62 questions answered by 726 completely anonymous sales professionals we have captured some impressive results helping us promote professional sales, raise awareness and gain a firmer understanding on how to succeed in sales teams.

To receive a full free copy of the 2014 UK Sales Survey please follow this link – 2014 UK Sales Survey Report


While Jeremy Kyle and others are constantly referring to Facebook causing problems and being the route to all evil, it does have some slight benefits in terms of helping the company you’re working for as it can help with advertising and expanding PR and publicity.

It also seems that the other well-known social media sites in business, Google+, Twitter and of course, LinkedIn, are beginning to help sales professionals develop leads and sales.
Promote your business correctly across the different forums and sites and it can quickly, and cost effectively, help you to gain a new audience .

It’s lucky for the 421 people who use these social media sites but for the remaining 305 there’s some catching up to do:

·         Quite astonishingly, 58% don’t or rarely use social media sites for lead generation
·         42% do regularly and proactively use social media sites for lead generation

Social networks aren’t just for posting egotistical ‘selfies’ or challenging your mates to drink crème de menthe with Dettol! In fact, these networking websites were found to be extremely effective for securing sales.

It is glaringly obvious that LinkedIn is the ‘winner’ for securing sales in the social website sector with 47% of workers using it; it’s hardly surprising either as this media site has all the best qualities; it is professional, prestige, popular and it’s specifically designed for business in the least annoying way.

Additionally, 17% of people own a Google+ account. Google+ is free and an excellent way to promote your company; it gives you the opportunity to really show off your business by adding specific detail and links to content that makes your business more approachable and noticeable.

Facebook has been running before the dinosaurs became extinct (well almost!); while 14% have secured sales from this site, it seems more of a casual, relaxed and personal bubble that individuals prefer to use for their ‘me’ time rather than promoting or using it for a business. However, at least you can visually monitor how well your work is doing by reading the comments and seeing how many likes it gains.  It also offers surprisingly strong analytical tools so you can see how your campaigns are working.

Twitter is the dark horse of the social networking family; it seems that Twitter is increasingly becoming popular, particularly for some reason in the UK with 9% using it.  There is talk that it could possibly overtake Facebook’s addictive nature which for a social media site originally created to take advantage of posting via text message (hence the 140 character limit) that will be quite a feat. Twitter is a great way to promote your business and those famous hash tags allow certain words to get you name anywhere that castor oil can’t. Twitter also gives you the freedom to add anyone and everyone without having to wait for friend acceptances or having to state how you actually know the person. It does sound invasive but if you want to get your company’s name out there, you’re going to want to approach certain organisations that you won’t personally know to learn what’s going on in their business to help hone your targets.

We appreciate that YouTube is primarily for watching cats pull funny faces and hilarious videos of people’s epic falls but we were quite surprised that YouTube hadn’t created more sales for the respondents (only 3% of respondents) bearing in mind the amount of great content that organisations are uploading to help promote their products and expertise. 

Realistically, Pinterest is only great, at the moment, for visual products, I personally know photographers and Fashion Designers that have developed rich contacts from the site but only 1% of the respondents in this survey can attribute a specific sale to this site.

We were also quite surprised that no one had generated a sale from SlideShare bearing in mind it’s prevalence on LinkedIn (0% could attribute a sale to the site!)

In conclusion, it seems that to grow sales it makes more sense to invest time and energy into the most popular accounts to broaden your audience.

Not only are these websites available on the PC at work, but nowadays you can easily access them on your smartphone, tablet and soon to be watches, glasses and more; which is great for the sales workaholics mentioned earlier who do not switch off!

Technology is a great and inventive method to promote your work and develop leads with the fast ability to communicate. Unsurprisingly, the majority of the sales professionals questioned felt the benefit of technology.

  • 49% think technology has been a complete benefit
  • 9% feel it has made absolutely no difference in getting sales
  • 21% believe accept that change happens and they just do things differently
  • 11% feel that technology has made them spend more time doing admin work
  • 4% feel that technology has robbed them of their freedom
  • Another 4% strongly believe they used to work less hours without technology
  • 2% wish they could have the power to turn back the clock
There are mixed reviews about technology; some people think that it hasn’t helped and it’s just created more work for them.  However, the majority have embraced it and it has helped them make sales more than before.

Written by Liam Oakes
Liam is the Office Manager at Aaron Wallis and has been with the company for 3 years after having a career with the RAF; Liam has helped hundreds of Sales Professionals secure a new Sales role and ensures that Aaron Wallis runs smoothly.

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