As part of our series “How to win the digital race?”, we are going to observe, today, some crucial statistics in Sales for 2019 and some of the predictions for the upcoming years. At Saycle, we are heavily involved in the selling process, so we decided to share with you some market insights we use daily to stay tuned. These facts will help you remain on top and synchronize your sales pipeline with the existing trend

Successful Sales

• What do buyers want from sales pros? 69% say, “Listen to my needs.”

• What else are they saying?  61% say, “Don’t be pushy” and “give me relevant information.” 51% want salespeople to respond in a timely manner. (Hubspot)

• You can get anything you want if you help enough other people get what they want. (Zig Ziglar)

• Asking questions about your buyer’s goals and pain points leads to better sales success. (Gong)

• For better sales success, space your questions evenly throughout each sales call. (Gong)

• Successful reps are 10x more likely to use collaborative words like “us,” “we,” and “our” and avoid words like, “I” and “me.” (Chorus)

• Most sales reps spend the equivalent of at least 50 full days away from core selling activities each year.

• The most successful sales pros use confidence-boosting lingo like “definitely,” “certainly,” and “absolutely” 5x more than low performers.

Sales Automation

• By 2020, customers will handle 85% of all business contact without ever interacting with a human. (Gartner Customer 360)

• Tools for success. 75%–85% of top salespeople value CRMs, productivity apps, email marketing, and social selling as key factors in their success. (State of Sales, LinkedIn)

• Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads (Annuitas Group).

• 46% of companies say that marketing and sales are the area where they are mostly investing in AI adoption systems. (Forrester)

• AI is the top growth area for sales teams — its adoption by sales teams is forecasted to grow 139% over the next three years. (Salesforce)

• By 2020, 30% of all B2B companies will employ AI to augment at least one of their primary sales processes. (Gartner)

• Currently, 40% of sales tasks can be automated, but by 2020, 85% could be automated. (McKinsey)

• 56% of customers actively seek to buy from the most innovative companies

• By 2020, 75% of business buyers expect companies that can anticipate their needs and make relevant suggestions before they initiate contact, while 73% expect that products they purchase will self-diagnose issues and automatically order replacement parts or service

B2B Sales

• Your buyers are savvy. 74% of B2B buyers do half their research (or more!) online before they buy. (Forrester Research)

• Get active on LinkedIn. More than half of all B2B buyers use LinkedIn to support purchase decisions. (Social Buying Meets Social Selling)

• Get technical. By 2018, 20% of B2B sales teams will transition to virtual sales reps. (TechMarketingBlogSpot)

• Your competition? Weak. 46% of customers strongly agree B2B businesses follow through on promises. (Gallup)

• Your customers? 60% of B2B customers are indifferent. 29% are engaged. The rest? Actively disengaged. (Gallup)

• 20% of B2B customers have experienced a problem with a supplier. Only 40% of those feel the B2B resolved the problem. (Gallup)

• Fight for engagement. B2B customers with high engagement scores get 50% more revenue and 34% higher profitability. (Gallup)

• Go formal. B2Bs with formal sales processes generate 28% more revenue. (Harvard Business Review)

• Make it personal. 84% of B2B buyers start their buying search with a referral. (Superoffice)

Sales Email

• Email use will top three billion users worldwide by 2020, and 2.9 billion email users worldwide in 2019

• Tuesday is the best day of the week to send email, followed by Monday and Wednesday (tied for second-best)

• 91% of cold emails are opened the day after they’re sent. (YesWare)

• 70% of salespeople stop at one email. Yet if you send more emails, you’ve got a 25% chance to hear back. (YesWare)

• The best times to email prospects are 8:00am and 3:00pm (GetResponse).

• Email marketing has 2x higher ROI than cold calling, networking or trade shows (MarketingSherpa).

• More than one-third of email recipients use the subject line alone to determine if they will open the email (Convince and Convert).

• 43% of email recipients click the Spam button based on the email “from” name or email address (Convince and Convert).

• People who buy products marketed through email spend 123% more than people that do not receive email offers (Convince and Convert).

• Email is 40 times more effective at reaching new customers than social media giants, combined (McKinsey, 2012).

• Use your recipient’s name in the subject line and they will be more likely to open the email (Retension Science).

• Using dry language in your subject line means the recipient is less likely to open the email (Adestra).

• Only 24% of sales emails are opened (Topo Blog).

• 57% of email recipients consider a message to be spam if it isn’t relevant to their needs, even when they know the vendor well (Adobe).

Sales Calls

•  92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone.

• The average sales conversion rate across all industries is 2.46%–3.26% (Statista)
• Don’t give up. 50% of all sales happen after the 5th contact, but most reps give up after just 2. (InsideSales)

• It takes 8 cold calls to reach a prospect. 72% of all sales calls aren’t answered. (Baylor University)

• 92% of sales pros give up after the 4th call, but 80% of prospects say no four times before they say yes. (MarketingDonut)

• 80% of sales are made by 20% of salespeople. The winners sell to the prospects the losers give up on. (Bill Corbin on LinkedIn)

• Increasing customer retention by 5% boosts profits by 25%–90% (Harvard Business Review)

• Acquiring a new customer costs 5–25 times more than keeping an existing customer. (Harvard
• Only 2% of sales happen at the first meeting. (MarketingDonut)

• Stay vigilant. 83% of prospects who request info don’t buy for 3–12 months. (MarketingDonut)

• The best time to call a lead? 4–6pm on a Thursday, or 5 minutes after their inquiry.

• The average inside sales rep can make 33 cold calls per day. (For Entrepreneurs and The Bridge Group)

• More conversations per day correlate directly with higher quota attainment. (For Entrepreneurs and The Bridge Group)

Sales Results

• 90% of CEOs say they never return cold calls or cold emails. (InsideView)

• The average salesperson generates roughly one appointment or referral from every 209 cold calls. (Baylor University)

• About 72% of all cold calls don’t get through to a human being. (Baylor University)

• The average sales pro will spend 7.5 hours cold-calling to secure one appointment or referral. (Baylor University)

• 1 in 59 calls actually answered generates an appointment or referral. (Baylor University)

• The most effective time to cold-call is from 10am–2pm. Least effective? After 5pm. (Baylor University)

• Prospects who are asked to take just a small step are twice as likely to spend. They spend just as much as those asked to spend a lot. (Cialdini)

• Curiosity, intelligence, and an agile mind are the biggest predictors of sales success. (Harvard Business Review)

• The most successful salespeople have aligned their personal goals with work goals. (Harvard Business Review)

• Optimistic sales pros outperform pessimists by 57%. That’s even true when pessimists have better selling skill sets. (Forbes, Seligman)

Social Selling

• 78% of salespeople engaged in social selling are outselling their peers who aren’t.

• 31% of B2B professionals say that social selling has allowed them to build deeper relationships with clients.
• More than 10% of social sales reps have closed 5 or more deals due to being active on social media.

• 76% of buyers are ready to have a social media conversation with potential providers.

• 92% of B2B buyers are willing to engage with a sales professional who is a known industry thought leader.

• 53% of customer loyalty is driven by a salesperson’s ability to deliver unique insight, easily done through social media.

• A full 71% of all sales professionals and 90% of top salespeople are already using social selling tools.

• That percentage gets even higher with the younger generation. 78% of Millennials say they use social selling tools.

• On top of that, 63% of those Millennials say social selling is crucial for their business.

• Social sellers are 51% more likely to achieve sales quotas.

• Companies with consistent social selling processes are 40% more likely to hit revenue goals than non-social sellers.

• 39% of B2B professionals said social selling reduced the amount of time they had to spend researching potential leads.

• 84% of C-Level executives use social media to make purchasing choices.

• 33% of users prefer to contact brands using social media instead of making a phone call.

Sales Closing Rates

• The average close rate for electronics sales pros is 22%. (HubSpot)

• 63% of all sales interactions end with the sales pro not asking for the sale. (Zig Ziglar)

• 96% of salespeople quit after four attempts, but 60% of sales happen after the 5th attempt. (Variation on a popular sales stat, originally by Zig Ziglar)

• Best-in-class companies close 30% of sales qualified leads while average companies close 20%.(Point Clear).

• 50% of sales go to the first salesperson to contact the prospect (InsidesSales).

• 70 percent of companies say closing more deals is their top priority (Hubspot).

• The phrase, “Show you how” lowers closing rates by 13% if it’s used more than four times in one sales call. (Gong)

• “Discount” lowers close rates by 17%.

• Go easy on your company name. If you use it 4+ times in one sales call, you’ll hurt close rates 14%.

• The average newly-hired salesperson has 2.6 years of prior experience.

Recruiting New Customers VS Retention Sales

• Recruiting new customers costs five times as much as retaining current customers (Forrester).

• It is 16 times as costly to build a long-term business relationship with a new customer than simply to cultivate the loyalty of an existing customer (Martech Zone).

• Customers that continue to support your brand over time will spend 67% more than new customers(Edelman).

• Experiences that would make customers take their business elsewhere include unfriendly service (60%) and employees’ lack of knowledge (46%) (PWC).

• It is 16 times as costly to build a long-term business relationship with a new customer than simply to cultivate the loyalty of an existing customer (Martech Zone).

• Customers that continue to support your brand over time will spend 67% more than new customers(Edelman).

Fun Sales Facts

• 48% of sales statistics have no basis in reality and don’t cite a reliable source for where they got their data (Santa Claus)

• Are you neurotic and introverted? Take heart. Introverts and neurotic personalities do just as well in sales jobs as their extroverted, confident counterparts. (Furnham & Fudge)

• More than 1 in 10 jobs in America are full time sales jobs. (Salesforce)

• Top sales pros outperform low performers by 10:1 and average ones by 2:1. (Salesforce)

• Companies spend $1 trillion a year on their sales forces. (Salesforce)

• 80% of all salespeople a customer interacts with are incompetent. (moveyourcompanyforward)

• “Prospecting” is finding someone with the right problem. (workwisellc)

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