To help you the next time you’re trying to motivate your sales team, report findings to your CEO or lobby for better tools and quoting solutions, here are 31 flavors of sales statistics to back you up. Put them on your sales leaderboard, include them in your reports and keep them in mind when you’re planning your next sales initiative.
Sales Statistics Your Team Needs to Know
The Only Constant is Change
- 71% of salespeople believe that their role will be radically different in 5 years.
- 69% of sales executives believe that the buyer process is changing faster than organizations are responding to it.
- The average sales cycle has increased 22% over the past 5 years due to more decision makers being involved in the buying process.
Customers Need Content
- On average decision-makers consume 5 pieces of content before being ready to speak to a sales rep.
- B2B buyers complete 57% of the buying decision before they are willing to talk to a sales rep.
- 77% of B2B buyers said they did not talk with a salesperson until after they had performed independent research.
- Gartner predicts that by 2020, customers will manage 85% of their relationships without talking to a human.
The Need for Sales Quoting
- CPQ users perform better on quota attainment and proposal volume. CPQ enables sales to send prospects and customers 49% more contracts, proposals, quotes and RFP responses.
- Companies using a CPQ solution experience a 105% larger average deal size.
- Sales teams have a 28% shorter sales cycle when using a CPQ solution.
- Using CPQ software results in a 17% higher lead conversion rate for sales organizations.
- 26% more reps achieve their quota when using a CPQ solution.
Don’t Forget to Follow-up
- It takes an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect.
- 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting. 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow up.
- Salespeople who actively seek out and exploit referrals earn 4 to 5 times more than those who don’t.
- It takes 10 months or more for a new sales rep to be fully productive.
Lead Nurturing
- Only 1 in 2 companies say sales and marketing have a formal definition of a qualified lead.
- Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.
- Marketing automation drives a 14.5% increase in sales productivity and a 12.2% reduction in marketing overhead.
- Email marketing has a 2x higher ROI than cold calling, networking, or trade shows.
- 89% of marketers said email was their primary channel for lead generation.
Social Selling is for Real
- 54% of social salespeople have tracked at least one closed deal back to their social selling.
- 6% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often.
- 1% of social salespeople spend between 5% to 10% of their time on social media.
- 96% of sales professionals use LinkedIn at least once a week and spend an average of six hours per week on the professional networking site.
- 53% of salespeople want help in understanding social selling better.
When and Where
- Thursday is the best day to prospect. Wednesday is the second best day. Tuesday is the worst day.
- The best times to email prospects are 8:00 am and 3:00 pm.
- The best time to cold call is 4:00-5:00 pm. The second best time is 8:00-10: 00 am. The worst times are 11:00 am and 2:00 pm.
- The early bird gets the worm. 50% of sales go to the first salesperson to contact the prospect.
- An average sales rep spends only about 22% (or 10.8 hours a week) of his time selling and 23% of his time on administrative tasks.
Which sales statistics do you think are the most compelling? Let us know in the comments section below.
Is your sales team achieving the level of success that you know they are capable of? It may be time to take a look at your sales process.
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