A review on social media and implications for the sales process

Innovation research has a long, historic history in the sales discipline. Starting with the role of desktops to tablets, continuing to the impact of the Internet, forward to customer relationship management and marketing force automation programs, and now to the function of social media, sales research is being shuttled into a new technology paradigm. The aim of this article is to examine the function of social networking in the sales team and the sales process. We begin the article by giving definitions of social media and examining the function and significance of social media in business. An analogy between the growth of Internet use in the sales force and the emergence of social media is shown and explored. Next, we examine the difficulties of social media in the sales and marketing interface and analyze four distinct business methods to identify who "owns" social media inside a company. We continue with a review of the various phases in the sales process and provide ways in which social media affects each individual step, thus identifying future study possibilities.