A Guide to Sales Success with Smart Sales Math

How to effectively apply benchmarking statistics to evaluate the sales process across the pipeline.

CUSTOMER JOURNEY: BEFORE IT BEGINS

Focus on social media and mobile engagement. New business is found on smartphones and tablets, which are increasingly responsible for the greater part of all time spent online.

The increase in the number of marketers who see social media marketing as a critical enabler for product or service development (from 25% in 2014 to 64% in 2015) proves that it works. Invest more resources to take advantage of social channels.

Aberdeen Research reports that companies that use marketing automation have 53% higher conversion rates (from first contact to MQL) and 3.1% higher annual revenue rates than companies that do not use automation.

Over the past decade, digital channels and tools have evolved at rocket speed. This has affected every industry and it will not be an exaggeration to say that now the customer rules and speed is the new currency in business. With an ever-increasing number of responsibilities and tactics to test, marketers must strictly focus on metrics that affect both revenue and customer satisfaction.

Statistics:

• 13-22% MQLs are consequently converted into qualified sales leads
• 30% marketers claims that customer satisfaction is one of their most important measures
• Customer retention rate is one of the top 5 digital indicators for modern marketers
• 70% of the purchasing process is currently completed at the moment when the potential customer is ready to engage in sales

Hint: Another reason to invest in a marketing automation system is lead scoring. These tools score specific criteria that include demographic factors and other parameters that are consistent with the target market of the company or the profile of the ideal customer. When leads are objectively scored to indicate when they are ready to sell, marketing communicates better-qualified leads to sales. By eliminating low-quality leads, sales efficiency increases. For example, recent studies have shown that a 10% increase in lead quality generates a 40% increase in sales productivity.

PIPELINE CONSTRUCTION: KEY INDICATORS TO CONSIDER

Insightful Insights

Fast response time can greatly increase the efficiency of your sales team.

The automation of key sales processes and the use of data science will pay off, allowing sales representatives to respond quickly and efficiently to inquiries.

Companies that have automated lead management experience a 10% increase in revenue in 6-9 months.

Today's competitive sales environment dictates the need to pay particular attention to all sales indicators. However, not all organizations track the number of phone calls and emails, response and response times, and other actions of sales representatives. With such data, companies could be more successful in expanding their sales lines and achieving their goals. Here are the stats every sales professional needs to know to increase response and conversion rates.

Statistics:

• A best-in-class telesales representative is rated as someone who has 15 meaningful conversations for every 100 outbound activities.
• The average sales development representative makes 52 calls a day.
• Making contact with a customer at least 6 times can increase the contact rate by 138%.

Hint: Contact the prospect within an hour of the first inquiry. Companies that contact a potential customer within an hour of the first inquiry are seven times more likely to qualify them as a target audience than those who wait up to an hour longer. Companies that wait a full 24 hours before contacting a lead are 60 times less likely to qualify as a target audience than those who respond within the first hour.

METRICS TO FOCUS ON IN THE INITIAL PHASE

In the early stages of the sales process, if you want to be successful, you need to measure the actions performed by your reps within a specific time frame. Pay attention not only to the number of actions taken to generate opportunities, but also to whether these actions effectively lead to the closing of the sale.

Statistics:

• 44% of traders Resigns after one follow-up interview.
• 65% of representative time Sales are spent on activities that do not directly generate new sales.
• Only 2% of sales It takes place during the first meeting.

Hint: Monitor and reward sales reps for actions taken early in the sales funnel to ensure a healthy, long-term stream of transactions and predictable revenue. The criteria that matter most in the early stages are the speed of contact, the qualification of the opportunity, the estimation of the purchase cycle and the planning of the correct sales strategy.

PUSHING TRANSACTIONS THROUGH THE SALES FUNNEL

Carefully monitor your sales cycle and sales funnel conversion. Compare your indicators with market averages. Historical trends in your company's pipeline will help you identify and eliminate bottlenecks, as well as provide data to make well-balanced and timely decisions.

Once you understand how effective and efficient your reps are in creating a pipeline in the early stages of the sales process, it's time to convert that pipeline, which means identifying buyer behavior while understanding which opportunity should be first in line.

Statistics:

• Average sales cycle increased by 22% in the last 5 years due to more decision makers involved in the purchasing process.
• Probability of successful closing of sales at the “presentation” stage does not exceed 30%. This stage reaches 10% of SQL

Hint: If you want to optimize the performance of your team and increase the number of wins, you need to know where your reps have the most difficulty converting chances to the next stage. A stage-by-stage analysis of the sales pipeline shows exactly where the opportunity leak is occurring, so you can pinpoint exactly where sales reps need to improve.

MAINTAINING A HEALTHY SALES FUNNEL

Encourage your sales reps to keep their production line data clean and accurate. Increased data accuracy is essential to build accurate sales forecasts and make better business decisions.

In addition, a clearer picture of the production line will help increase the conversion rate and generate more revenue.

A deeper look at the pipeline allows you to determine how it has changed over time, whether it is growing in line with growing revenue targets, and exactly how much revenue can be expected from it. A shrinking pipeline needs to be assessed quickly, and this can only be achieved if the net flow of opportunities in the pipeline is carefully tracked.

Statistics:

• only 46% of representatives believes that their pipeline accurately reflects the future business.
• 80% of representatives believes that he copes well with the qualification of opportunities.
• The average slip in the pipeline is 21%.
• 51% of forecasted transactions are not closed.
• Companies that successfully manage the pipeline have 15% faster growth revenues than those that do not manage effectively.

Hint: Leverage dynamic processes in your CRM to help sales reps keep their pipeline clean. The automated process guides users through the next steps, warns them of pending tasks and notifies them of any information required at a given stage.

RESULTS-BASED LEARNING: SALES PERFORMANCE METRICS

Analyze the buying cycle of the customers you have acquired to understand in depth their journey, the main points of contact and the main reasons why they decided to work with you.

Analyze your churn rate and identify the sales cycle that best correlates with a high level of customer satisfaction.

At this stage of the sales process, you should already measure the activity of your reps, build and analyze their sales pipeline based on historical data, and track how the pipeline has changed over time. Based on this information and other analyzes, you can evaluate your strategy.

Statistics:

• Lost sales productivity and wasted marketing budget cost businesses at least 1 trillion dollars annually.
• Sales teams that held at least 3 hours of meetings per month saw revenue increase by more than 11%.
• Sales teams that implement best practices in their organizations achieve nearly 90% of quota realisation — almost twice as many as organizations that neglect best practices.

Hint: Share insights gained during the sales process with your marketing team. This will help the marketing team use these insights to further improve their campaigns, messages, and resources. Better alignment of sales and marketing will help you achieve your revenue goals. Recent research shows that organizations that are matched together achieve an average of 32% annual revenue growth.

CUSTOMER RETENTION IS A REWARDING ART

Take a proactive approach to customer service. Instead of waiting for problems to appear, a company that implements anticipatory support can eliminate problems before they arise.

Implement a relationship-based marketing strategy. Use marketing automation tools to deliver personalized messages to maintain strong customer relationships after sales.

There is a saying that the rule of retaining a customer is that you must be willing to spend as much to keep it as you spent to acquire it. A successful transaction is not the end of the story, but rather its beginning. Customer retention, re-sales and referrals are the holy grails of any business. Effective customer retention begins with the organization's first contact with the customer and continues throughout the duration of the relationship.

Statistics:

• 2% increase in retention customers have the same effect as cost reduction by 10%
• Decrease in customer churn rate by 5% can increase profitability by 25%.
• A partir de 40% a 62% se les clients rémarque si sont désatisficés avec l'servicio al cliente, también se son satisficados con el produit

Hint: 88% of customers will not make a purchase again from a company that ignores their comments or complaints made through social channels. Çêkirina karûbarê xerîdar beşek sereke ya stratejiya karsaziya we dişibihe bêkêmasî, lê ew her gav nehatiye pratîkkirin. Taking CRM as the foundation of business development and a key element of strategy can potentially increase customer retention rates up to 90%.

PROCESS OPTIMIZATION BASED ON SALES MATHEMATICS

Why effective sales processes are important:

• 53% increase in the number of winning forecasted trades
• 65% increase in the number of sales representatives redeeming their amounts
• 88% increase in the number of companies meeting booking targets

A sales process consists of the steps that sales representatives must take to sell the product and should be mapped as a complete customer journey. This will help to identify the actions that sales reps need to perform in order to effectively move the opportunity from one stage to the next. Therefore, a sales process must be created and formalized, while providing representatives with a clear understanding of all the steps in the process, so that they can determine what actions they need to take to successfully close the transaction.

Desarrolling a formal sales process means having clearly defined stages and milestones that are understandable to all sales representatives. Your sales team should not guess at what stage a transaction is at or how they should manage opportunities at each stage.

Statistik:

• Winrate Exceeds 50% for 2/3 of companies that have a defined sales process
• Companies that use a well-defined sales process have 33% more likely to achieve high results
• Companies that claimed to have a formal sales process achieved a 18% higher revenue de los que se usa un processo informativo

Hint: In order to make gradual changes in the sales process, a thorough analysis and understanding of important factors is necessary. Use sales metrics Tip: as a foundation to create a dynamic and flexible sales process that will help you improve your results and achieve your sales goals.

SUMMING UP

With more than a trillion dollars spent annually on sales teams, maximizing sales performance is a key goal per ogni azienda. Albeit all sales organizations are different from each other, it is always important to measure KPIs and performance at every stage of the process salg.

Selling is a numbers game. Having benchmarks to measure performance makes companies better prepared to work in the new sales environment. In addition, a process-based sales automation tool can help you manage sales metrics to achieve the higher win rates that every business strives for.

There is no magic or quick method to improve sales metrics — it requires careful analysis and understanding of important factors. Tracing the indicators described in this ARTICLE will help you create a dynamic and flexible sales process so that you can improve your results and achieve your sales goals.

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