Thought leadership and social selling as B2B sales drivers – Case Hopkins Oy
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School of Business |
Bachelor's thesis
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Authors
Date
2019
Department
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Mcode
Degree programme
Tieto- ja palvelujohtaminen
Language
en
Pages
21 + 4
Series
Abstract
This thesis is a case study of a Finnish online marketing company Hopkins Oy and their B2B marketing and selling efforts on LinkedIn in the context of social selling, and more specifically, thought leadership. The main research question is, “does thought leadership function as a driver of sales?”. The coming of social media has changed the world of marketing and selling. Customers are more knowledgeable than before about their options and are able to search for information in an unprecedented manner. To respond to this change in demand and business environment, salespersons and organizations have adopted practices of social selling. Going beyond adjusting the parts of the sales process from prospecting to closing, social selling focuses on listening and engaging with potential customers on all new platforms offered by social media. Part of this social selling is building a personal brand through for example conversing and sharing information. In the long run, this can result in achieving thought leadership inside one’s function or industry. While thought leadership as a generator of leads and sales has been studied to some lengths, a gap was discovered in academic research. Most studies on the subject are industry reports or practitioner thought papers. No academic, exhaustive studies exist on the effectiveness of thought leadership. Hopkins’ consultants were interviewed to gain insight into how valuable they perceive thought leadership to be for their company and in general. Interviews also touched on the themes of social selling in a broader context. Sales and LinkedIn contact data was gathered from the consultants to assess whether quantitative proof could be established about the effectiveness of social selling. Interviews revealed that the consultants felt that Hopkins Oy had profited significantly from the thought leadership possessed by their consultants. This thought leadership was seen to be the direct reason for several requests-for-proposals, leads and closed deals. Interviews revealed that achieving thought leadership is an effort that takes years. Moreover, the sentiment among interviewees was that thought leadership is harder to achieve than before, due to increased competition and how LinkedIn has restricted the organic visibility of users’ posts. The examination of sales and contact data revealed some patterns in the formation of a closed deal between the company and a client. However, the data was inconclusive regarding how many leads, RFPs and deals the company had gained through the proclaimed thought leadership. Attribution was unsuccessful due to the data provided by the company’s CRM system being inadequate. Our recommendations for further research are twofold. Firstly, research on a larger, industry-wide scale should be conducted to assess the sentiments about the effectiveness of thought leadership as a generator of sales. Secondly, quantitative methods must be devised to reliably assess the validity of these sentiments.Description
Thesis advisor
Gorskikh, OlgaKeywords
social selling, sosiaalinen myynti, thought leadership, ajatusjohtajuus, LinkedIn, B2B sales