The Sales Management Association shared the results of a 2018 research. Over several LinkedIn posts so that each idea sinks in, we will have a look at 6 statistics that hopefully show what good looks like:
#1 : Firms that have still not implemented any sales technology saw their goal achievement drop by 12% last year. Those who consider themselves on par with common practice improved their goal achievement by 11%.
This does not come as a surprise: if you cannot track your activity, optimise your chances of success and have the metrics telling you which opportunities you should go after and which ones you should drop, that will be at the benefit of your competitor. No point burning yourself, from a time and CAPEX point of view, on what you can’t win. But how would you know if you can’t measure.
Another point is being on par with common practice. Common practice does not mean having invested in a CRM for the sake of it and end up with a usage which is time consuming yet not serving anyone (which seems to be the case 74% of the time according to Salesforce). Having metrics that are useful to both sales executives and managers, being able to remove subjectivity from pipeline and forecasts is common practice. Or at least should be.
