The ability to write sales plans relies most often on crucial sales statistics to validate and define the pathway forward. With the best of intentions and relying on past performance to predict the future can be volatile, undermining the sales planning process.
Top-performing sales leaders look outside the business for trends that will affect their business and balance those with internal statistics available to them. They consider the trends of underperforming sales teams and those that excel in hitting sales goals and taking market share.
One of the most concerning statistics available is this. 72% of sales representatives and professionals do not expect to hit their annual sales quota. Why? Challenges like inflation, lingering health scares, and supply chain breakdowns are ever-present.
This number was uncovered in a recent State of Sales survey with insights from over 7,700 salespeople, showing how teams maximise value amid economic headwinds.
The report uncovered good news, too, with sales leaders finding ways forward by maximising efficiency, cutting costs, and boosting sales productivity.
Here are 11 crucial sales statistics that sales leaders need to know.
1. 94% of customer interactions happen over the phone.
With many decisions now pressed for time, the telephone has become a main source of communication rather than face-to-face meetings. The top performing salespeople spend 2-3 hours daily making “check-up calls” to nurture leads, maintain relationships and learn about developments that can open opportunities. This communication directly affects customer retention and customer satisfaction statistics.
2. Cold Calling now takes an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach a prospect.
Prospecting is time-consuming, and cold calling has become even harder. Sales leaders need to question their sales team structure if they have their best sellers spending extensive time cold calling. Is this a function that should be delegated to a specialist team? That will all depend on the balance between existing customers and the new business forecast you require in your sales plan.
3. Closing sales is harder, with 80% of sales requiring five follow-up calls after the initial meeting.
Getting the initial meeting does not mean sellers will succeed and close a deal. There are often multiple decision-makers to work through to bring your sales opportunity to a win. Regrettably, 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up call. How much time are you leaving for salespeople to sell and follow-up calls before moving them on to the next one?
These first three points provide crucial sales statistics that affect sales planning.
4. Companies with 100-500 employees typically involve five people in most buying decisions.
Salespeople are dealing with more decision-makers than ever, with collaborative decision-making on the rise. They rarely find themselves dealing with just one potential buyer in the sales process. This is a time-hungry process within each sales opportunity.
5. Understanding Customer Needs – Only 13% of customers believe a salesperson can understand their needs.
A salesperson’s ability to fully understand customer’s needs is still an issue for many customers. As industry verticals become more complex and information is readily available on the internet, customers are smarter. Top-performing salespeople are informed and educated in selling, product, and, most importantly, business-related issues. A salesperson’s credibility is improved by the quality of questions they ask, their ability to uncover your customer’s problems and needs, and a solution.
6. Continuous coaching gives 46% higher net sales per employee
Sales coaching, unlike sales training, is a persistent process of incrementally improving sales skills over time. Getting the right foundations in place and then building capabilities from that point. Sales leaders capable of coaching their sales team deliver greater returns. This directly affects your conversion rates and average sales order value.
7. In 2023, salespeople are spending only 28% of their week selling
Salespeople are being drawn into too much manual work. Sellers want to be in the field selling, but they consume over two-thirds of their time distracted by record keeping, broken processes and tasks like data entry and lead generation. This crucial sales statistic shows changes are required to increase salespeople’s selling time each week.
8. 66% of salespeople say they are drowning in technology tools
Sales teams can use up to 10 tools to close deals. Many of these tools have a role to play in the sales process, but they can be time-intensive, create click overload, and remove salespeople from connecting with prospects and customers to move deals forward. A major problem is that with multiple tools, data is not housed in a single source of truth. This can mean deal decisions may be made with faulty or dated information.
9. 81% of salespeople say company team selling assists them in closing deals
With buyers ever more savvy, salespeople adapt to selling to buyers who have done extensive research before reaching out or conducting meetings. This requires sellers to pool their resources and knowledge to answer questions beyond fundamental product functionality.
Companies inexperienced in cross-functional alignment in meetings can be disruptive. Teams need to be better with everyone syncing up. Sales leaders managing cross-functional alignment say it will be the #1 tactic for driving growth.
10. Restricted headcount or resources have 85% of sales leaders saying they are struggling
Sales leaders are increasingly struggling with restricted budgets for hiring headcount or resources. Teams are being asked to hit sales goals whilst taking on more responsibilities in the sales process without extra headcount or resources. This leads to frustration and, sometimes, turnover.
Sales leaders are responding by keeping employee experience and engagement at the forefront of their minds, offering regular one-on-one coaching, increasing tool training, upping benefits and prioritising work-life balance.
11. 18% of salespeople believe they get coaching from their manager
Salespeople report the coaching is infrequent and often lacks the quality to make a real difference to their sales capability. There is a lack of sales playbooks and culture in how the company sells, with most people adopting their methodologies based on experience.
Sales leaders adopting a sales playbook and coaching culture in their sales team deliver much higher sales levels and experience a lower turnover of team members.
Crucial Sales statistics assist in driving success and sales planning
Top-performing sales leaders know they can excel in lean times if they lean into efficiency and productivity. Sales leaders must consider why salespeople are doing tasks that can be delegated to less costly resources with the time to focus on specific tasks.
As part of their sales planning, are they making structural adjustments to the team, realigning their resources and embracing hybrid and virtual selling for more flexibility and productivity? Does the plan include improving cross-functional alignment for larger deals? Are the technology and sales tools established to increase effectiveness and reduce click stress and multi-platform data entry?
These efforts will be key to your sales planning — and are instrumental in ensuring success now.
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— Real Cost of Sales Growth Strategies
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