Revealing facts about sales

Of all the major business disciplines, sales has probably received the least attention from academics, senior management and the business press.

The following facts may shed a little light on the subject.

• Harvard research shows that, across a range of industries, there is a direct and consistent correlation between the calibre of the sales force and organisational growth.
  
• A world class sales benchmarking study reveals that the calibre of the salesperson, in the B2B environment, is the most important factor influencing customers’ decisions to buy.
  
• In many sales forces, 20% of the sales force deliver 80% of the revenues. This means that hiring talented salespeople is essentially a random event. Tossing a coin would be as effective.
  
• 64% of salespeople who fail, do so because they are in the wrong job, not because they cannot sell.
  
• Top sales producers outperform average producers by two to one and outperform low producers by 10 to one.
  
• Caliper Corporation reports that 55% of people making their living in sales should be doing something else.
  
• Sales is a talent-based profession and training can only improve this by 20%. So a 5% can become a 6%, but an 80% can become a 96%.
  
• Replacing your bottom 20% of salespeople with only average performers would improve sales productivity by nearly 20%.
  
• Over 50% of sales managers are too busy to train and develop their sales teams.

Sensible investment in recruiting and developing real sales talent yields wonderful returns.