Over Half the Salespeople in the US Aren’t on LinkedIn

Wait, What?

This seems like a crazy claim. How could salespeople in today’s sales environment not be on LinkedIn? I mean if half were on Twitter, that would be a good number, but not to be on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn isn’t Facebook in its reach – 400 million members versus over a billion for Facebook – but it’s extremely unusual for me to meet a business professional who isn’t on the site. For some reason even my long retired, great Uncle Joe is on LinkedIn.

(I would say that the people not on Linkedin are the same people who aren’t using a sales automation CRM yet)

Do Statistics Lie?

As I discussed in a post about the lies that are spread about salespeople , you should always check anyone pushing statistics very carefully.

Here is why I think only half of the salespeople in the US aren’t on LinkedIn:

• Data from US Bureau of Labor Statistics website shows that there are 14 million non-retail sales jobs in the US.
• Data from LinkedIn advertising targeting website shows that there were 6,495,834 people who listed their primary job function as ‘sales’ on LinkedIn:
• That leaves us with 7.5M US based salespeople who aren’t on LinkedIn, which is 53% of the total.

Who Are These Salespeople?

Of the 7.5 million salespeople who aren’t on LinkedIn, I guess some of them might have filled out their profile wrong and listed their job function as accounting or customer service or something, right? But wouldn’t you expect the same number of accountants to make the same mistake?

Let’s assume one million salepeople filled out the form wrong.

What of the other 6.5 million? Perhaps they’re just not up on all this new Internet stuff? They’re the guys still sending faxes and urging the marketing department to use direct mail campaigns. I just can’t believe that.

Maybe the government statistics are wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. Somehow I trust the LinkedIn numbers more.

What do you think is going on here? Let me know in the comments.