22 B2B Sales Management Statistics, And The Processes You Need To Survive

How many of you would trust a product that is not tested? So why would you implement a sales management strategy that is not proven? A good strategy needs a lot of research to ensure that it does good for your business.

It may not be possible for everyone especially smaller companies to always do their own research and figure out what works and what doesn’t but thankfully there are companies such as Salesforce, SPI, or Brainshark that are continually carrying out research and publishing it to help those businesses that cannot. These reports are most often packed with the latest trends, statistics, and predictions that can help other companies meet their targets. This information has been able to change the face of B2B sales all over the world.

If you are in the B2B business, it is your duty to read all of these reports and so that your sales team is not left in the dark about what is going on.

Having all of the best facts and figures are usually useless unless you are able to act on it which is not as easy as it sounds. So here are a few pre-made process solutions that can help you change your sales management strategy for the better.

Why is it essential to have a sales process?

The world is moving from an untrackable, paper-based, informal business world to another one that is empowered with the help of technology such as CRM tool. It has become apparent to almost everyone that these technologies have allowed businesses to improve their processes and in turn makes it easier for startups and SMBs to monitor and optimize their company’s growth.

When asked how structured their sales process was most companies had different answers to give. Almost 50% of companies that have a high sales performance said that they had sales processes that were automated, closely monitored, and strictly enforced, on the contrary only 28% of companies who were underperforming showed had such processes.

At the same time, it was also found that 48% of the companies that underperformed had either an informal or nonexistent sales process.

A clear distinction can be seen between the processes and sales performance. However, there are still a few companies that are inactive in the industry and hence underperform. Research done by LevelEleven suggests that a mere 65% of sales reps are able to reach their required quota surprisingly this is true even if they work under the 25% of sales managers that have top performances.

Almost 44% of the sales executives are under the opinion that their company is ineffective when it comes to managing a formal sales process.

Almost half of the executives feel that their company will fail to manage a formal sales process no matter how much in-depth research is done.

44% of current organizations are unable to answer the all-important question of “How are the sales managers expected to do something well if they haven’t prepared for it?”

A company that has a formal sales process sees a 28% increase in revenue as compared to a company that does not. Is the 28% increase in revenue worth stretching your budget to create and roll out the new methods and sales processes that you will use.

Almost half of all sales teams do not have a sales playbook. The concept of a sales process is still not very clear for many companies. It refers to the entire back-end management of the sales pipeline right up to the point of fine tuning the sales script. However, having a sales playbook means it is a concrete procedure of what needs to be done.

It was found that two-thirds of companies that had a set procedure were able to increase their deal win rates by almost 50%. In addition, solving the problems related to an inadequate sales process resulted in a 17% increase in sales.

The Forbes Insights Report says that most organizations have ranked sales productivity as one of the most critical areas of focus. While 52% of organizations agree that the marketing team owns sales productivity. However they usually only allot 4% of their budget to that department.

It was found that sales representatives spend only 32% of their time making sales while the other time is spent doing admin tasks that could have been avoided with the help of the best CRM. This is a significant concern as 45% of the sales teams blame these admins tasks as a hindrance to their productivity.

Everyone knows the importance of content marketing. However, only 35% of the organizations are making efforts towards improving his or her content and its utilization.

It was found that if a company onboard their sales rep within three months or less there was a 29% increase in their PPS. At the same time, if the companies take up to a year to onboard their sales rep, there can be a 60% negative impact on companies that are not onboarding soon enough.

Without ensuring that your team is continually learning you may find that 84% of the sales training will be forgotten within the first 90 days.