Following a recent bout of research, sales execution and analytics firm Qvidian has released its findings on the efficacy of salespeople. If the research is accurate, nearly two-thirds of salespeople fail to meet their quotas. Subsequently, nearly 90% of businesses polled say that improving overall quota attainment is their biggest priority, ranking only behind increasing lead win rates.
Sales Take Time, Persistence
For salespeople, the biggest cause of failure is lack of persistence. Most leads aren’t going to be converted on the first sales call, yet 48% of salesmen and women give up after the first phone call. A whopping 72% give up after the second phone call. In short, most salespeople are not giving leads the time to mature that they so badly require. This undoubtedly plays a role in the huge number of salespersons failing to meet their quota on a regular basis, not to mention the minimum 10% turnover rate most businesses see every year among their sales staff.
The Emerging Role of Customer Relationship Management
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems are quickly becoming one of the most powerful tools for businesses looking to help their salespeople capitalize on leads. CRM software and web analytics programs are proving extremely useful, both for the business owner looking to get an idea of how effective his or her sales team is and for giving salespeople the tools they need to follow up on leads.For the salesperson, CRM systems work by congregating client and prospective customer information, leads, sales, accounts, and more in one location, making it simple to track the status of each in real time. While convenience is by no means a panacea that will drive quota fulfillment to 100%, CRM systems are proving to be a powerful tool for ridding sales teams of one of their biggest hurdles.