I was reading a few articles related to 'social selling'. Reading a few social sales specialist, describe that their work today is “ushering salespeople from the old world into the social world” – the cold calling world to the Twitter world, the salespeople who call prospects incessantly to the salespeople who educate their prospects with relevant content. There is a rise of social sales people using social media to sell in turn increasing profits.

The most interesting finding was that 78.6% of sales people using social media to sell out performed those who weren’t using social media. Now that’s wow.

"Does social media actually impact revenue?" 

The answer is a resounding, YES!

Now this intrigued me and I continued my research on social media about how relevant this information is. What I realized is that many will argue that the numbers may mean more correlation than causation -and they have a point. But consider that over half of the respondents (54%) who used social media tracked their social media usage back to at least one closed deal. Over 40% said they’ve closed between two and five deals as a result of social media and more than 10% of the respondents said; “Yes, It directly contributes to my closes.” Respondents were very clear. Social media was a leading factor in their closed deals.

That also means that Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, Google Plus, a blog, etc. are no longer nice to haves, they are salesperson must haves.

Social selling (def.)
is the process of developing relationships as part of the sales process. Today this often takes place via social networks such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, but can take place either online or offline.