The last two decades have witnessed many studies that tracked the impact of social media technology in the B2B sales domain. Social media has been touted as a primary tool for collecting business information and facilitating information communication between buyers and sellers. However, the use of social media to collect non-business information and facilitate small talk and its significance has gone largely unnoticed in sales literature. Using the Similarity-Attraction and Task Technology Fit theories, we examined a theoretical framework in which a B2B salesperson’s social media usage impacts salesperson performance indirectly through small talk. We conducted two empirical studies to utilize multiple sources for the examination of our model. The first study constituted a structured survey with data gathered from 276 B2B sales professionals, and the second used vignette-based structured surveys with data gathered from 41 sales leaders and 30 B2B buyers across India. Our research provides evidence that salespersons’ social media usage helps them strike small talk, leading to securing customer-based salesperson competitive intelligence, which thereby impacts creative and sales performance. We also found these results to be true for salespeople selling services or a combination of services and products, but not for those selling only products. This research is truly one of a kind in B2B sales, providing evidence of how technology usage enabled touch leading to performance outcomes.

Highlights

• B2B sales literature misses out on social media usage, enabling light, informal talks.
• Examine how social media usage increases sales performance through small talk.
• Conducted first empirical study with sales professionals, second with sales leaders and buyers
• Small talk leads to customers sharing tactical competitive intelligence, resulting in sales performance.
• Examined ‘type of customer offering’ as a moderator.