According to LinkedIn’s 2016 State of Sales report, 70% of sales professionals indicated that “relationship building” sales tools have the biggest impact on their ability to generate revenue.

As B2B marketers struggle to engage buyers with automation, sales professionals are turning to new technology to build and nurture relationships with prospects and customers across social media.

Social Selling is one of the fastest growing tools in a modern sales stack. With 90% of top sales performers using social selling tools, it’s no surprise that sales teams are flocking to this new technology in massive numbers.

We talk a lot about the insight sales professionals can gain by leveraging social sites like Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn to learn more about their buyers. Each network provides a unique perspective on the personal and professional interests of your prospects and customers.

The challenge with social media…noise. It’s becoming harder to find the valuable bits of information that you can use to engage your buyer.

When prospecting you need to show that you can provide value to your prospects in order to build trust. When nurturing existing customers or leads, you must be able to continuously provide value to be recognized as a trusted advisor.

This is no easy task in a world overloaded with social data. It’s great to see the next generation of sales platforms really focusing on relationship building - the key ingredient of any successful business deal.