Good salespeople have always intuitively known that leveraging contacts to generate leads and close deals is a highly effective approach. One recent study aims to quantify that, revealing that personal connections increase the likelihood of receiving a call back five-fold and improve sales productivity by more than 240 percent.
Research from Reachable (reachable.com), the developer of a social business solution, analyzed survey responses from a random sample of 300 business professionals involved in the purchase process at their companies. Overall, callers with a personal connection — direct or otherwise — are more than five times more likely to receive a return call than those without any connections. For callers with direct connections, the likelihood of receiving a return call increases 11 times.
The research also revealed that for every 1,000 calls made, only 345 are returned if the caller doesn’t have a connection, whereas 849 calls are returned for callers who do have a connection. Overall, the research found that personal connections led to a 243 percent increase in sales productivity, which delivers maximum ROI for prospecting activities.
Sales professionals have always used personal connections to improve results, but social media, e-mail and CRM technology platforms offer new opportunities because connections are now documented in digital form.
According to Gartner, business-to-business applications for sales use will have the fastest growth and will account for 30 percent of all social CRM spending by 2015, up from five percent in 2011. Gartner analysts also said they expect the worldwide market for social CRM software licenses and subscriptions to total $2.1 billion in 2012, up from $850 million in 2011.
