Brands not keeping up with buying behaviour, social media habits : Ogilvy One

Ogilvy One conducted research among 1,000 full-time sales professionals in the US, UK, China and Brazil, evenly divided into 250 respondents per country. The results reveal that social media has had an enormous impact on buying behavior with an average of 49 per cent of all sellers seeing social media as important to their success.

In China, a whopping 73 per cent see it as important to their success – the highest rate among the four countries, and nearly triple the 27 per cent US figure.

Among all the most successful salespeople, over two-thirds believe social media is integral to their sales success. In China, 71 per cent of top sales people believe so.

Companies are not adapting fast enough. In China, 84 per cent of sales professionals said that the selling process is changing faster than their own organisations are adapting to it. The figure was lowest in the US at 68 per cent.

Companies are not providing solid training to sales professionals in social media. A total of 78 per cent of Chinese sellers said this is true at their company, while 93 per cent of the UK sellers also agreed.

Many companies are actively discouraging the use of social media despite the fact that customers are buying that way. 42 per cent of Chinese salespeople believe their companies are afraid of letting employees use social media. 55 per cent of British salespeople think so – the highest of the four countries.

Many US companies claim to have a social media strategy, but only 9 per cent of US salespeople say their company trains or educates them on the use of social media for sales.

This stands in stark contrast to China where 38 per cent of the salespeople surveyed use personal blogs in their selling process. Only 3 per cent of US salespeople do the same.

"In a market like China where word-of-mouth recommendations are so critical to purchasing decisions, salespeople would be more effective if they understood not only the importance of social media to their customers, but also how to use it to engage with them in an appropriate and helpful way," said Chris Reitermann, president of Ogilvy One Greater China.
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