Qvidian has published their Sales Execution Trends report for 2015 and it’s full of stats across sales departments that should help you benchmark your own sales performance against the findings.
Organizations in 2015 are making a fundamental shift toward aggressive growth. Sales leaders must refocus on making their teams more successful by looking beyond tactical sales enablement and empowering sales forces with strategic end-to-end-sales execution.
As sales departments are pushing for increased win rates and improving quota attainment, 5 key reasons for not reaching quotas exist:
- 42% of opportunities ended in no decision.
- 41% of opportunities ended because sales was unable to effectively communicate value.
- 36% of opportunities were lost because sales was burdened with other administrative tasks and not spending time selling.
- 36% of opportunities were lost because ramping up the reps takes too long.
- 30% of opportunities were lost because because sales managers weren’t able to effectively able to coach reps.
There’s some great insight behind these numbers!
- If companies aren’t ending in a decision, then further nurturing of that relationship with marketing automation, email marketing, and event and other relationship building opportunities are necessary.
- If sales is unable to effectively communicate value, primary and secondary research combined with white papers, case studies and testimonials are a necessary marketing initiative.
- If sales is burned with other tasks, sales automation is critical – from auto dialing through to proposal management.
- And if ramping up sales reps and coaching points to some human resource and coaching opportunities within the organization.
The infographic has other finds that sales and marketing should be paying close attention to – especially understand the customer buying process. While most customers look at the funnel, I believe they miss out on the number of environmental factors that influence a buying decision – all centering around building both trust and authority with the prospect.
From Qvidian
The Sales Execution Trends report illustrates that while most organizations today are making the move from prudent to aggressive growth, obstacles such as rep ramp up, a lack of tailored buying process and content, and disconnected systems with limited analytics are all working together to damage the bottom line, hinder quota attainment, and prevent sustainable growth. To rise above these challenges, organizations must improve key areas of the sales cycle to successfully build, execute and optimize on sales initiatives.
Related Martech Zone Content
