The CSO Insights 2009 Sales Performance Optimization Report is out, and the results of their annual survey of 1,800 firms are not pretty:
- 41% of sales reps are failing to make quota
- Companies on average are hitting 86% of plan
- 15% of reps are turned over
- 70% of reps are taking 7 months or more to ramp up
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86% of companies have higher sales targets in 2009
You can get a copy of the report here.
Here's a great excerpt from the executive summary:
We do not believe that success in 2009 will be achieved by making more sales calls. The number of calls—face-to-face meetings or on the phone—has already been increasing over the past few years with minimal impact on sales results. The real objective is going to be how to make great calls: motivating stakeholders to meet with you; creating a sense of urgency that moves evaluating your solutions to the top of their priority list; differentiating yourself from the competition; selling value (so you can avoid discounting); creating a compelling business case to get the project approved now.
These will require your salespeople to be more effective at selling than they were in 2008. So what are you going to do to support them in this endeavor? You may think you can cut your way to sales effectiveness: spend less on sales training; get by with fewer sales support personnel; avoid investing in CRM technologies; ask each of your sales managers to take on managing more reps and/or reduce travel budgets. Think again. You may reduce expenses, but you will see revenues and margins fall as well.
2009 needs to be about investing your way to sales effectiveness. If freeing up more money to support sales is not an option, then look at how you are investing the current dollars you have allocated. For example, if your budget calls for adding five salespeople, consider hiring one or two, and investing the rest of the budget in making the people you already have much more productive.
