A Case for Statistics

I'm always intrigued and even amused at times by statistics - particularly when the subject is sales data! We've all heard the stories about the validity of statistics, especially those related to the performance of sales professionals.

I believe there is good value - and certainly good discussion material - to be gleaned from most of these findings. Occasionally, I discover data from outside sources which correlates strongly with data collected here at The Brooks Group.

Take, for example, data drawn from the 1500 firms included in CSO Insight's Sales Performance Optimization - 2008 Survey Results and Analysis. Their reports indicate:

• 64.7% of firms plan to increase the size of their sales team.
• Hiring ‘new' or ‘raw' grads pays off with 64% quota attainment vs. 62% prior- quota attainment among prior salespeople.
• Only 61.2% of salespeople make or exceed quota for the year.
• 46.9% of salespeople accrue 40% or more of their compensation in variable pay.
• 63.5% revenue comes from existing business; 36.5% from new business.
• 63% of revenue is earned by the top 20% of reps.
• 55% of sales professionals have closing rates of 50% or less; 26% have closing rates of 50-75%.
• 51.5% find that leads their existing lead-qualification standards need improvement.
• 57.7% have an average deal size less than $50,000.
• The average number of calls required to close in an average sales cycle: (1-5 calls) 56.2%; (6 or more calls) 43.8%.

This data definitely supports the information The Brooks Group has gathered internally for the purposes of developing our existing training programs. How about your sales performance data - what's your picture look like, and what are you doing to shift your numbers?

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