A pragmatic path to resounding sales results

[mouakter13]

When prospecting for leads, you may be 'actively' working on referrals from your sphere of influence, lists of marketing qualified leads, additional sales to existing customers and other sales opportunities you have generated yourself. Some of these leads will result in a concrete sales opportunity (i.e. they have been qualified as ready to buy). According to our study 2 , around 25% of these concrete sales opportunities will result in a deal; another 25% are lost from the start and 50% are open to all odds . They can lead to success if...



insights into sales performance
According to our study 2 , less than 22% of sales professionals consider time to be a key performance indicator (KPI). However, more than 25% of all concrete sales opportunities are lost due to a sales cycle that is too long. According to CSO Insights, 21.3% of sales do not reach a decision. In addition, at least 60% of sales professionals fail to achieve their sales goals. 60% of them are unable to effectively identify potential new customers and find enough concrete sales opportunities.

The following figures from other industry experts 3 support our findings:

Only 17% of sales professionals can convince a lead who is japan cell phone number considered ready to buy to a second meeting.
Without help in finding leads, only 52% of sales professionals manage to engage with key stakeholders and decision-makers in companies.
The success rate of an average salesperson is less than 47%; that of a “high performer” 1 is more than 70%.
How many interested parties should you actively work with?

The above numbers raise the most frequently asked question in sales: “How many prospects do I need to ‘actively work’ with to achieve my annual sales goals?”

You can easily find the answer in two steps:

Step 1: Determine how many concrete sales opportunities you need to achieve your goal.

Suppose you have:

a sales velocity/target of €12 million (around €1 million per month)
a success rate of 50%
an average order volume of €1 million
a sales cycle of 45 days (1.5 months)