Today’s post is by Jim Dickie, partner at CSO Insights. To take part in this year’s CSO Insights study on sales performance and receive a free download of the 2014 Sales Management Optimization Study Key Trends Analysis, click here.
Today, in many companies around the world, senior management is focused on determining what the firm’s sales goals will be for 2015. Let me take some of the mystery out of the process: the revenue targets will be higher. They always are. Raising the performance bar year-over-year is something we have come to expect in sales, but let me raise a yellow flag of caution.
Last year, the CSO Insights survey of more than 1,200 firms worldwide found that the percentage of sales professionals achieving quota dropped to 58 percent from the 63 percent reported a year earlier. When we look at what the study participants shared with us regarding the outcome of forecast deals, we uncover a key contributor to this drop in sales performance. As seen in the following chart, the average win rate across all the firms surveyed was a lackluster 45.9 percent. Put that into perspective: the odds of winning at the craps tables in Las Vegas are 49.3 percent.
If we are going to raise quotas yet again for 2015, what can sales organizations do to help their sales teams meet or beat those higher expectations? To start providing answers to that question, CSO Insights is conducting its 21st Sales Performance Optimization study. We will be collecting more than 100 metrics to help identify the challenges facing our sales teams, why those problems exist, and more importantly, how companies are effectively leveraging people, process, technology, and knowledge to successfully address those issues.
As always, if sales executives are willing to take part in the study, CSO Insights will analyze the data, surface the key insights into how to optimize sales performance, and send back a complimentary copy of the analysis (more than 150 pages). You can leverage current metrics and best practices surfaced from the study data to fine-tune your sales and marketing strategies for 2015 and maximize your ability to meet or exceed plan.
To take part in this year’s study, simply click on the following link: https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/WPBM6LN
As an immediate thank-you, you will be able to download the 2014 Sales Management Optimization Study Key Trends Analysis upon completing the survey.
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