10 key statistics for Sales managers

Create changes, with 10 good to know statistics for each sales manager / director to drive successful sales growth

For hunting new opportunities and clients:

1. It takes an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect (source: SalesForce)
2. 30-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first (Source: Inside sales)
3. 80% of sales require 5 follow-up calls after the meeting. 44% of sales reps give up after 1 follow-up. (Source: Inside sales)
4. In a typical firm with 100-500 employees, an average of 7 people are involved in most buying decisions (Source: Gartner Inc.)
5. Only 13% of customers believe a sales person can understand their needs (Source: Josiane Feigon)

For farming, repeatable business and growing the share of wallet:

1. Salespeople who actively seek out and exploit referrals earn 4 to 5 times more than those who don’t (Source: Top sales world)
2. Continuous training gives 50% higher net sales per employee  (Source: ATD Sales enable)
3. Retaining current customers is 6 to 7 times less costly than acquiring new ones (Source: Bain alerts)
4. 70% of consumers make purchasing decisions to solve their problems. 30% make decisions to gain something. [Impact Communications] 
5. Customers believe that salespeople are 88% knowledgeable on product and only 24% on business expertise. [Corporate Visions] 

It is always good to challenge your thoughts on the sales performance of a company. Last week we had a meeting with one of the main global Venture Capital organisations. The senior investment officer shared with us that he was very comfortable with improving the performance where it comes to process, alignment, cost savings and financial engineering. More troublesome is getting grip on sales growth and the commercial teams. He also stated, he believed, that Sales Excellence could be improved in many of the the companies they invested in and often is a missed opportunity to get that on the same level of all the other business functions.

At !youlead we believe it is very well possible to engage the sales teams for sustainable growth, if you just apply a couple of  key success factors such as:

Let the sales force analyze (based on data) their performance themselves, find and focus on the right choices for growth, allow them to write their own change plans and support them in the “HOW” to realize these plans. In the end your team will love to sit on the driving wheel and achieve better results with less effort!

You want to know more: Contact us 😊