It is more apparent than ever that sales professionals are deriving value from social selling strategies across industries and regions. LinkedIn’s Social Selling Index, or SSI, tracks a professional’s use of the social landscape to build their personal brand by engaging in networking activities. In charting SSI trends, it is evident a variety of companies are adopting these strategies at a high rate with demonstrable growth in traditionally offline industries and developing regions.
On average, SSI across all industries has doubled from 2012 through 2016. While software sales continues to lead as an early adopter to social selling, the largest disproportionate gains were seen in engineering, manufacturing, transportation, and retail. Nonetheless, continued growth in technology indicates that there is still room for adoption of social selling strategies in this space.
The global perspective tells a similar story. Expected gains in North America and Europe can be seen with an average 20% yearly increase. More so, Africa and Latin America saw the steadiest and, highest average year over year gains in social selling at 30% and 26%, respectively.
A key aspect of these social selling trends are how widespread they are. Growth is not limited to specific areas. The long tail of few, high performing social selling companies is transforming. The 2012 to 2016 distributions seen below illustrate highly skewed lower SSI expanding towards the tail.
The trends above show social selling gaining popularity amongst a variety of sales professionals. No matter which industry or region, it is key to ensure your company not fall behind in promoting these selling strategies. Learn how to better adapt to this evolving landscape by downloading the Social Selling Index kit today.
Source: LinkedIn Internal Data. Analysis reviewed > 600K LinkedIn active, non-HR members identified as sales professionals from 2012 through 2016. SSI distributions examining 100k LinkedIn identified companies with a sales operation.
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Topics: Modern selling
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