Sixty-four percent of sellers are not effective in engaging customers over the phone.
For inside sales professionals, whose core job function is to remotely connect with prospects, this news is disconcerting.
But that’s not all.
ClearSlide recently partnered with CSO Insights to present this new research and more in a recent AA-ISP webinar with Jeff Schmidt, the SVP of global sales and services for ClearSlide. The rest of their insights might surprise (and unnerve) you.
Here are the most noteworthy statistics, followed by some insights from Jeff:
7 Alarming Inside Sales Statistics
1. Companies surveyed in this research showed that annual turnover rates they were facing came in at 20%, and they were the highest they’d been in years.
- “It starts with people. Good salespeople are hard to find, and these days even harder to keep.”
- “Good salespeople have lots of options, and hiring smartly is an important area for good sales leaders to focus on.”
2. 33% of companies surveyed indicated that it takes more than 9 months to ramp new hires, and less than 13% of organizations can get their reps up to speed in less than 4 months.
- “Between the high turnover rate and the long ramp to productivity, sales leaders are forced to function with a handicapped sales force.”
3. Less than 20% of time from sales leaders is actually spent on proactive coaching.
- “The majority of their [sales leaders’] time is spent on administrative tasks and attending internal meetings, and this leaves them very little time to make sure the team is actually achieving their goals.”
- “The time to coach, the commitment to coach is actually analogous to a salesperson finding the time to prospect. It’s really a fundamental requirement, but it takes commitment and focused efforts and it’s really got to be done outside of the forecasting cadence to lend truly effective impact to the seller.”
4. Over half (58%) of deals forecasted slip from the period that they are reported to be ready to close in.
- “One of the biggest challenges sales leaders face across the board is forecasting accuracy.”
- “Part of setting up whether a deal is ready or not to forecast is really validating prospect interest. And disqualifying deals can have more importance than qualifying them. Getting to no more than managing maybes.”
5. 70% of reps don’t validate prospect interest during the sales cycle.
- “In my experience, ‘maybes’ are deal-killers, because they neither inform nor instruct. They continue to encourage sales professionals to spend time trying to determine whether a deal is truly ready to be forecasted or not.”
- “One of the major reasons deals do slip and numbers aren’t met is because salespeople don’t really effectively validate a prospect’s interest throughout the sales cycle. Qualifying out is a critical practice and will lead to better pipeline conversion and deal visibility.”
6. 30% of sellers are still having trouble scheduling, starting and running web-based meetings.
- “Selling is really a multi-channel and multi-tool profession.”
- “For a tool that 76% of sales leaders recognize improves the quality of their interactions, the lack of of seller’s ability to leverage this is really alarming.”
7. Only 12% of sales leaders are able to access materials via mobile devices.
- “Having full access to content on a mobile device is incredibly important to be able to respond to customers with the right content at any time. Being able to respond at any time with timely and relevant information is key to progressing a deal.”
Want more inside sales stats? This new KPI report has a breakdown on inside sales metrics.
