What’s Your Sales Focus for 2018?

Looking forward to the New Year, I’m thinking about the most important areas to focus on for my clients’ sales teams.

Prospecting is always tough, closing is a priority, new business development is critical—what’s your data telling you to focus on?

If you’re looking for specific places to focus on development, training, or coaching, take a look at these:

Sales Statistics You'll Recognize for Your Organization

• At any given time, only 3% of your market is actively buying. 56% are not ready, 40% are poised to begin

Focus: Get out in front of those poised to begin with effective outbound prospecting!

•  An average buyer gets 100+ emails a day, opens just 23%, and clicks on just 2% of them

Focus: Get better at email but include phone calls in your prospecting strategy too.

• 40% of emails are opened on mobile first–where the average mobile screen can only fit 4-7 words max.

Focus: Create STRONG subject lines and concise, compelling content in email.

• 46% of salespeople didn’t intend to go into the sales profession. And those who did not intend to pursue sales are less likely to seek training outside of work. 

Focus: Invest in continuous training and coaching for your sales force.

• Sales reps can spend up to 40% of their time looking for somebody to call 

Focus: Have your sales team work smarter using Micro Campaigns.

• 79% of all marketing leads are never converted to sales.

Focus: A Big red flag that sales and marketing are not aligned as to what is an ideal customer, a qualified lead, and/or how to hand it off and follow up. Inbound leads are great but if this investment isn’t converting – switch to smarter outbound efforts or re-consider who you’re marketing to.

• Sales development reps who make 12 contact attempts (instead of the average 8) perform 16% better. 

Focus: Reinforcing “grit” and “tenacity” over the long term with training and tools.

• 58% of buyers want to talk about pricing in the first sales call, while 65% of salespeople want to keep the conversation on goals. 

Focus: Train on how to address this head on when the buyer wants to introduce it early and practice those conversations and encountering push back.

• Only 29% of people want to talk to a salesperson to learn more about a product, while 62% will consult a search engine.

Focus: Build an effective referral strategy to leverage how buyers search for solutions.

• The impact of one-off seminar-style training sessions tends to drop off after 6-8 weeks, whereas sales coaching and mentoring have longer-term effects.

Focus: Invest in training partners that will create comprehensive strategies with coaching to reinforce new habits (*wink wink).

Put Data in the Driver Seat!

Which statistic here grabbed you, maybe made you physically nod your head?

If growth, expansion, market share, or scaling are in your plans for next year, start planning your strategy now and include training and coaching as a critical part of the execution.