One point that may arise out of comparing your sales team to a health issue is that behind a doctor’s diagnosis there is scientific data, information based on research.
You may think “how can I really review my sales team performance when there are so many immeasurable factors?”
Well the good news is, there is a science that can be applied to the sales industry. The research has been done (and is always ongoing) and you are able to use it to evaluate all areas of your team’s performance.
Distilling information from a number of large studies, data has been collected from over 750,000 salespeople, 10,000 companies and more than 400 industries around the world.
These are key critical findings from the research, which support the following insights into the sales industry:
- Only 6 per cent of newly hired sales reps exceed expectations while 48 per cent fail to succeed at selling.
- Sales training (on its own) doesn’t work. Only 9 per cent of companies will see behavioural changes, and 85-90 per cent of sales training will show no positive impact after 3 months without implementing other key criteria.
- 48 per cent of deals in a pipeline won’t close.
- Traditional CRMs were never designed for salespeople and are not effective at managing opportunities, holding reps accountable to the right activities and providing accurate probability forecasting. As a result, 14 per cent of reps never log their calls, 22 per cent admitted they withheld information and 20 per cent of contacts are no longer valid.
- Almost 50 per cent of companies have got nonperforming sales reps in their team that have been with them for 12 months or more.
- Mind-set is responsible for more than 80 per cent success in sales – sales development programs that incorporate mind-set training produce significantly better results.
- New sales processes are not matching new buying behaviour, and as a result old world companies are suffering.
- Most companies don’t have a powerful unique value proposition and struggle to prospect effectively and up hold margins.
- Sales managers aren’t holding their team accountable to the right activities.
So why does this research matter?
Because it means there is an actual science behind selling, backed by data, and a way to follow best practice in order for an organisation to achieve increased profitability.
These studies provide business owners and CEOs with the ability to evaluate their own sales performance against fact-based information that relates to all aspects of sales functionalities.
And why wouldn’t you rely on that, instead of guessing.
