Introduction

Social selling is booming as a sales prospecting method. To back this up, let me show you some interesting statistics about it.

The 30 Social Selling Statistics in 2024:

I've tried to collect as much social selling stats as possible for you not to look at tons of different websites, hope you'll like it!

Social Selling statistic 1

"Breakcold is becoming the number 1 social selling software."

(Source: Breakcold)

Personal opinion: the possibility to engage and contact prospects into one place is powerful and it's a never been done in the industry.

Social Selling statistic 2

"93% of sales executives have not received any formal training on social selling."

(Source: Everyone Social)

Personal opinion: I clearly see that on LinkedIn, sales reps pitch slap a lot unfortunately, they should read how to social selling with LinkedIn & Twitter.

Social Selling statistic 3

"78% of salespeople engaged in social selling are outselling their peers who aren’t."

(Source: LinkedIn)

Personal opinion: cold emailing and cold calling are not easy tasks. On the opposite, social selling feels much more natural and can get sales representatives a much better ROI.

Social Selling statistic 4

"A full 71% of all sales professionals and 90% of top salespeople are already using social selling tools."

(Source: Opti Monster)

Personal opinion: social selling softwares are on the rise, for now the most known one is LinkedIn Sales Navigator but more are coming.

Social Selling statistic 5

"That percentage gets even higher with the younger generation. 78% of Millennials say they use social selling tools."

(Source: Opti Monster)

Personal opinion: millennials are winning with unconventional social selling practices on Tik Tok or YouTube.

Social Selling statistic 6

"On top of that, 63% of those Millennials say social selling is crucial for their business."

(Source: Opti Monster)

Personal opinion: as stated above, they rely on platforms like YouTube or Tik Tok so it does makes sense.

Social Selling statistic 7

"Social sellers are 51% more likely to achieve sales quotas.Companies with consistent social selling processes are 40% more likely to hit revenue goals than non-social sellers."

(Source: LinkedIn)

Personal opinion: with traditional lead generation, I always had some trouble reaching my sales quotas. This problem disappeared when I took social selling seriously. Process matters though, be careful.

Social Selling statistic 8

"39% of B2B professionals said social selling reduced the amount of time they had to spend researching potential leads."

(Source: Opti Monster)

Personal opinion: with social selling tools like Breakcold, you can save even more time on data research. We're talking about +70% here.

Social Selling statistic 9

"Nearly 50% of social traffic to B2B websites comes from LinkedIn".

(Source: LinkedIn Blog)

Personal opinion: LinkedIn accounts for more than 80% of B2B leads, that's why.

Social Selling statistic 10

"A B2B sales rep made the fastest sale of his career using Twitter."

(Source: Harvard Business School)

Personal opinion: at Breakcold, we did our first sale with social selling on Twitter, this one doesn't surprise me.

Social Selling statistic 11

"72% of salespeople that use social media tend to exceed their quota."

(Source: A Sales Guy Consulting)

Personal opinion: from my experience, combining Twitter, LinkedIn & Email is extremely powerful in this context.

Social Selling statistic 12

"According to 39% of B2B marketers, social selling reduces their account/contact research time which makes it their top reason for using this sales strategy."

(Source: Insider Intelligence)

Personal opinion: all the interesting data about your leads are on social media nowadays, it simplified so much the B22 sales prospecting experience.

Social Selling statistic 13

"According to 33% of B2B marketers, using social selling include increased number of leads."

(Source: Insider Intelligence)

Personal opinion: posting content is part of social selling (social selling is not only about outbound, aka sales outreach).

Social Selling statistic 14

"According to 31% of B2B marketers, they’re able to build deeper relationships with clients thanks to social selling."

(Source: Insider Intelligence)

Personal opinion: closing deals, making sales is all about building relationships. The best sales you make are the ones when you're not actually selling.

Social Selling statistic 15

"According to 24% of B2B marketers, social selling improved lead conversion rate."

(Source: Insider Intelligence)

Personal opinion: if people know you before even checking out your product, you'll be top of mind which definitely improve the conversion rate metric.

Social Selling statistic 16

"According to 14% of B2B marketers, social selling brought shorter selling cycles."

(Source: Insider Intelligence)

Personal opinion: from our experience, if you understand how to leverage social selling you can reduce your sales cycle time by even 50%.

Social Selling statistic 17

"According to 13% of B2B marketers, social selling increased win rate of forecast deals."

(Source: Insider Intelligence)

Personal opinion: as mentioned above, social selling allows you to be top of mind which makes the difference when you're competing to win a deal.

Social Selling statistic 18

49% of B2B enterprises have social selling programs.

(Source: Anthony Barnum)

Personal opinion: I believe this number will jump even more with the years to come.

Social Selling statistic 19

"75% of B2B buyers and 84% of c-level/vice president executives use social media to support their purchase decisions."

(Source: International Data Corporation)

Personal opinion: all the recent B2B SaaS that we subscribed to lately came from people we saw online at some point, this stat is deadly accurate.

Social Selling statistic 20

"Customers are 57% through the purchase process before talking with a salesperson."

(Source: Anthony Barnum)

Personal opinion: the customer journey as changed, sales-led growth should be renamed social selling-led growth :)

Social Selling statistic 21

"89% of top-performing salespeople said LinkedIn was crucial to closing deals."

(Source: Forbes)

Personal opinion: I think we can challenge this stat a bit because I've seen countless online businesses, agencies, SaaS thriving with just Twitter as a winning sales acquisition channel. We see more and more salespeople on Twitter by the way.

Social Selling statistic 22

"Sales reps who responded quickly to social media inquiries saw a 9.5% increase in annual revenue."

(Source: LinkedIn)

Personal opinion: like customer support, salespeople need to be responsive to win deals. We live in a world where customers expect instant responses.

Social Selling statistic 23

Sales professionals with a strong social selling index on LinkedIn have 45% more opportunities than peers with lower SSI.

(Source: LinkedIn)

Personal opinion: right now I have a high SSI (above +75%) and I never saw a huge difference in results with now and in the past when my SSI was much lower (-50%).

Social Selling statistic 24

"More than 10% of social sales reps have closed 5 or more deals due to being active on social media."

(Source: Optin Monster)

Personal opinion: few sales reps like & comment social media posts from their prospects, if you join the 1% doing it you're winning.

Social Selling statistic 25

"28% of companies surveyed by HubSpot are prioritizing social selling."

(Source: Hubspot)

Personal opinion: HubSpot has tons of data on its users, 28% out of thousands and thousands of companies seems a pretty good signal to me.

Social Selling statistic 26

"The use of social selling tools can increase win rates by 5% and deal size by 35%."

(Source: not available)

Personal opinion: since I've used Breakcold for our social selling, we've noticed a boost in win rates by 30%.

Social Selling statistic 27

"Social selling is responsible for generating half of revenue for 14 major industries including computer and network security, health care, and financial services."

(Source: LinkedIn Sales Blog)

Personal opinion: half of revenues for 14 major industries, jeeeze, it's crazy when you think about it!

Social Selling statistic 28

"73% of sales representatives using social selling as part of their sales process did better than their colleagues who didn’t use social selling. On top of that, they exceeded quota 23% more often."

(Source: Aberdeen Group)

Personal opinion: another study on how social selling helps you reach your sales quota faster and more often, what are you waiting for?

Social Selling statistic 29

"Brand messages reached 561% further when shared by employees compared to the same messages shared via official brand social channels."

(Source: Marketing Advisory Network)

Personal opinion: I've always been an advocate of employees personal branding, some companies out there like Salesloft are killing it in the sales space.

Social Selling statistic 30

"80% of companies believe their salesforce would be more productive if they had a greater social media presence, but two-thirds of companies have no social media strategy for their sales organization."

(Source: Tomlaine)

Personal opinion: having process in place is key in social selling, that's why we provide you with prepared social selling pipelines :)

Conclusion

From my perspective, I believe social selling will continue to grow like crazy in the coming years. Traditional salespeople such as SDRs & BDRs want to enjoy sales prospecting now. Social selling is the way to achieve that.