Dubai: Salespeople in the UAE spending up to five hours per week on social media could be more likely to hit their targets compared to their colleagues who are not so connected online, a new research by LinkedIn has revealed.

In the survey, the average salesperson noted spending 4.8 hours per week using social selling tools. Approximately 89 per cent of those interviewed agreed that “social selling” — leveraging your social network to ultimately achieve sales goals — connects them with the right prospects, while 83 per cent agreed that social selling is important as a strategy for closing more deals at their company, LinkedIn said in a statement on Monday.

Dylan Sharkey, head of sales solutions at LinkedIn Mena, said that the typical business buying process now involves more than five decision makers.

Success in today’s social world relies on sales professionals being able to navigate “complex social structures” within the companies they want to work with. Luckily, social media helps to shed light on the key connections salespeople need to make, and makes it easier to build trusted relationships more quickly.

The survey showed that successful social sellers make use of all the connections within their own organisations to build relationships with their customers and prospects, whether through an old contact of the CEO or a family friend of the office intern.

Underscoring the rising influence of social media on business sales, he said that 95 per cent of the respondents can see themselves devoting at least the same amount of time or more on using social selling tools next year.

The survey showed that more respondents cite using social-selling platforms like LinkedIn to build and nurture relationships with prospects than they use face-to-face meetings or entertaining prospects outside of the office environment.

In terms of level of importance in closing a deal with a prospect, respondents rated the “trust in our relationship” as more important than price or even the value on investment of the products or services.

Also, 81 per cent seemed to agree that social selling enables them to builds stronger, more authentic relationships with customers and prospects while 80 per cent agree that social selling provides them with insight into key moments for connecting with customers and prospects.