Leveraging social media in B2B sales: impact on in-role and customer relationship performance

Purpose This study aims to investigate how business-to-business (B2B) sales professionals use social media in their roles, focusing on its impact on personal branding, customer relationship management and sales performance. It fills gaps in social selling literature by exploring new variables and relationships. Design/methodology/approach A quantitative method was used, with 276 valid responses from salespeople across sectors, collected through snowball and purposive sampling. The analysis examined how job-related social media usage (SMU) and personal branding SMU affect in-role performance, customer relationship performance and overall sales outcomes. Findings Findings reveal that job-related SMU significantly boosts in-role performance, with online social capital enhancing this effect. While job-related SMU does not directly influence sales performance, it indirectly affects it via improved in-role performance. Personal branding SMU positively impacts customer relationship performance, further amplified by online social capital. Both in-role and customer relationship performances strongly predict sales success. Practical implications This study uniquely integrates personal branding and job-related SMU in the B2B context, offering new insights into how social media influences sales. It also provides practical recommendations for sales organizations to enhance social media skills, emphasizing relationship-building and online social capital to drive better sales performance. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to integrate SMU for personal branding with job-related tasks in the B2B sales context. By highlighting the mediating role of in-role performance and the amplifying effect of online social capital, the research introduces new perspectives on the relationship between social media and sales performance.