10 Surprising Sales & Prospecting Statistics

Whether you are selling your business, your services, a product, an idea, collaboration, or yourself, marketing alone doesn’t bring in the results. Selling—asking for business, reaching out to build relationships—is what brings business through your door.

If you’re not getting the results you want, take a look at what you’re doing. Do you have a process? How are you following up with leads? Are you actively prospecting?

If you think one contact, one email, one phone call is enough to create a customer, you might be surprised to see some real, hard sales statistics.

Here is some insight into sales results that can give you a new perspective on your sales efforts.

Ten Surprising Sales and Prospecting Statistics

1. Best time to cold call prospects is 4-5 PM; 8-10 AM second; 11AM-2PM worst
2. Best time to email prospects is 8AM and 3PM
3. Eighty percent of sales require five follow-up calls after the first client meeting
4. Email marketing has two times higher return than cold calling
5. It takes an average of eight cold call attempts to reach a prospect
6. Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment
7. Only 11% of salespeople ask clients for referrals
8. Seventy-percent of prospects make purchasing decisions to solve problems
9. Thursday is the best day to prospect; Wednesday is second best; Tuesday is the worst
10. Top sellers use LinkedIn six or more hours per week

Pick one statistic and build strategic action around using this to your advantage.