The typical fault in the thinking of many leaders, including marketing leaders, is that the sales team will drive sales. They put a lot of energy into hiring the best salespeople they can afford, training them up on their solutions, value props, and messaging. The problem with that thinking is salespeople are only one part of the equation.

It’s quite common for your sales team to represent around 10-15% of your entire staff. By creating an “everyone sells” culture within your company, you have a chance of getting 100% of your team helping you with your sales, marketing, and entire go-to-market efforts. And, in the process, get 85-90% more people thinking about customer experience, engagement, and spreading the word – aligning your entire staff on selling and driving revenue.

I am not suggesting anything new here. I’ve been involved with many organizations that stress this mantra, although some more successful than others. Furthermore, I am not suggesting that individuals not directly involved in the go-to-market efforts, staff outside of marketing, sales, and product management, need to drop everything they are doing.

What I am saying is that 100% of your staff have friends, family, colleagues, and other connections (via LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more) that could be leveraged by your company’s social channels. They have opinions and ideas on message, what constitutes excellent customer experience, and more.

Marketing leaders play a significant role in establishing an “everyone sells” mentality but need to:

1. Educate staff on company brand, its solutions, and value. Give them the tools and messaging they will need to help spread the word, especially with their connections. We live in an ever-shrinking world in which studies estimate that 2 degrees of separation connect everyone in the world.
2. Develop internal systems and processes to collect ideas and feedback
3. Develop employee advocacy programs to reward internal staff and partners for meaningful contributions. For example, providing GTM feedback/ideas or sourcing contacts that closed business.

Modern marketing plans need to tap into your internal staff and partners, whether its social channels, ideation or user experience feedback. Why?

• Company branded messages reach 561% further when shared by employees versus branded channels. (Advocacy)
• 70% of adults online reported trusting recommendations from friends and family, but only 15% trusted companies’ social media posts.
• 33% of employees agreed that relevant content would encourage them to share. (Advocacy)
• Organizations with high employee engagement outperform those with unengaged employees by 202%. (Advocacy)
• According to IBM, when a lead is generated through social selling or employee advocacy that lead is 7X more likely to close compared to other lead gen tactics. (IBM)
• 77% of B2B buyers said they do not engage with a salesperson until after they’ve performed independent online research. (CEB)
• 75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level executives use social media while making purchasing decisions. (LinkedIn)

Empowering your employees through employee advocacy is one of the best ways to accelerate sales…and this is in the hands of marketing leaders. Fuel your “everyone sells” culture through employee advocacy.