My Favorite Employee Advocacy Statistics

Sarah Goodall

I read a lot about employee advocacy and social business and keep articles bookmarked in a number of places including my Flipboard Magazine, Pinterest Board, and Delicious Bookmarks – yes, I still use Delicious occasionally!

As a result, I’ve come across a lot of research from various sources covering everything from social selling, social leadership, social recruiting, and social marketing. So, I’ve jotted down all of my favorite employee advocacy statistics in one blog post for future reference and to share with you.

Missed any good ones? Then please leave a comment and let me know.

General Advocacy

• 77 percent of buyers are more likely to buy from a company whose CEO uses social media (Source: MSLGroup).
  
• Social CEOs are much more likely to be seen as good communicators than unsocial CEOs (55 percent vs. 38 percent, respectively (Source: Weber Shandwick).
  
• Leads developed through employee social marketing convert seven times more frequently than other leads (Source: IBM).
  
• According to Gartner, the number of companies blocking social media access for employees is dropping at 10 percent per year. 50 percent blocked access in 2010 – less than 30 percent blocked in 2014. (Source: Gartner).

Sales Perspective:

• Sales reps using social media as part of their sales techniques outsell 78 percent of their peers (Source: Forbes).
  
• 10.8 percent of social sellers have closed five or more deals attributed to social media (Source: A Sales Guy Consulting).
  
• 54 percent of social salespeople have tracked their social selling back to at least one closed deal (Source: A Sales Guy Consulting).
  
• 72.6 percent of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23 percent more often (Source: Aberdeen Group).
  
• 46 percent of social sellers hit quota compared to 38 percent of sales reps who don’t (Source: Aberdeen Group).
  
• 64 percent of teams that use social selling hit quota compared to 49% that don’t (Source: Aberdeen Group).
  
• 80 percent believe their sales force would be more productive with a greater social media presence (Source: Sales Management Association).
  
• 2/3 of companies have no social media strategy for their sales organizations (Source).
  
• 93 percent of sales executives have not received any formal training on social selling (Source: Accenture).
  
• 53 percent of salespeople want help in understanding social selling better (Source: A Sales Guy Consulting).
  
• 96 percent of sales professionals use LinkedIn at least once a week and spend an average of six hours per week on the professional networking site (Source: Aberdeen Group).
  
• 50.1 percent of social salespeople spend between five percent to 10 percent of their time on social media (Source: A Sales Guy Consulting).
  
• 21.7 percent of the sales people are not using social media, 18.9 percent cited not using it because they didn’t see the value and 45 percent cited because they did not understand social selling (Source: A Sales Guy Consulting).
  
• 77 percent of B2B buyers said they did not talk with a salesperson until after they had performed independent research (Source: CEB).
  
• 36 percent of buyers said they didn’t engage with a sales rep until after a short list of preferred vendors was established (Source: Demand Gen Report).
  
• 84 percent of B2B decision makers begin their buying process with a referral (Source: Sales Benchmark Index).
  
• A warm referral increases the odds of a sales success two to four times (Source; LinkedIn Social Selling Report).

Marketing Perspective

• The average cold calling appointment rate is 2.5 percent (Source: CEB).
  
• B2B buyers complete 57 percent of the buying decision before they are willing to talk to a sales rep (Source: CEB).
  
• 92 percent of buyers say they delete emails or voicemail messages when comes from someone that they do not know (Source: A Sales Guy Consulting).
  
• Content shared by employees receives eight times more engagement than content shared by brand channels (Source: Social Media Today).
  
• An employee advocate is two times more trusted than a CEO (Source: Edelman Trust Barometer 2014).
  
• Employees have on average 10 times more social connections than a brand does (Source: Social Chorus).
  
• 92 percent of employees’ Twitter followers are new to the brand (Source: Cisco).
  
• Only 33 percent of buyers trust the brand whilst 90 percent of customers trust product or service recommendations from people they know (Source: Nielsen Global Online Consumer Survey).
  
• Brand messages reached 561 percent further when shared by employees vs the same messages shared via official brand social channels (Source: MSLGroup).
  
• Brand messages are re-shared 24 times more frequently when distributed by employees vs brand (Source: MSLGroup).
  
• 98 percent of employees use at least one social media site for personal use, of which 50 percent are already posting about their company (Source: Weber Shandwick).

HR Perspective (Source: Jobvite Infographic):

• Employee referrals have the highest applicant to hire conversion rate – only seven percent of applicants are via employees but this accounts for 40 percent of all new hire hires (Source: Jobvite).
  
• 67 percent of employers and recruiters said that the recruiting process was shorter and 51 percent said it was less expensive to recruit via referrals (Source: Jobvite).
  
• 47 percent referral hires have greater job satisfaction and stay longer at companies (Source: Jobvite).
  
• Employees of socially engaged companies are… (Source: Altimeter & LinkedIn Relationship Economics 2014)
  
  
  
  • 57 percent more likely to align social media engagement to more sales leads.
    
  • 20 percent more likely to stay at their company.
    
  • 27 percent more likely to feel optimistic about their company’s future.
    
  • 40 percent more likely to believe their company is more competitive.
  
  
• And yet disengaged employees make up 74 percentof the average company’s workforce (Source: Tower Watson).

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