Sales Stats

61% of marketers rank lead generation and traffic as their number one challenge.

Just 8% of salespeople say that their marketing teams generate high-quality leads.

More than 75% of companies are providing more than 25% of their sales reps’ leads.

The best-performing sales reps use LinkedIn 6 hours a week for prospecting and connecting with peers.

Outsourcing lead generation generates 43% better results than in-house lead generation.

In 2019, companies in the U.S. spent $2.6 billion on digital lead generation advertising spending.

Companies that excel at lead nurturing have 9% more sales reps making quota.

Businesses that use marketing automation to help nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads.

Nurtured leads tend to result in an additional 20% more sales opportunities.

Nurtured leads spend 47% more than non-nurtured leads.

78% of decision makers report having arranged an appointment or attending an event as a result of a cold email or call.

High-growth organizations report an average of 16 touch points per prospect within a 2–4 week span.

63% of prospects who request information today will not buy for at least three months. 20% of them will take more than 12 months to buy.

Buyers state that 58% of sales meetings aren’t valuable, and that there should be a greater focus on the value you can deliver them.

69% of buyers state that providing primary research data that’s relevant to their business influences them to connect with a sales rep.

54% of buyers want a product demo on the first call.

According to buyers, the three most important elements of a positive sales experience are a sales representative who 1) listens to their needs, 2) isn’t pushy, and 3) provides relevant information.

Sales teams are two times as likely to prioritize leads based on data analysis of “propensity to buy” rather than on intuition.

70–80% of B2B buyers prefer remote meetings or digital self-service over in-person meetings.

Half of buyers say that working remotely has made the purchasing process easier.

Inside sales roles increased by 7% from 2015 to 2019.

Almost 60% of salespeople think it’s harder to sell virtually than from an office.

41% of sales leaders report that their customers desire more digital communication.

Outside sales calls cost $215–$400 per call on average, while the average inside sales call costs $50.

Field reps spend 3% more time selling than their inside sales counterparts.

87% of salespeople say it’s still critical to connect with customers in person.

72% of outside sales representatives are men and 29% are women.

40% of sales reps say that prospecting is the most challenging part of their job.

While 50% of sales reps state they avoid being pushy when approaching buyers, 84% of buyers felt this wasn’t the case.

9 out of 10 of companies use two or more sources of contact data to learn more about prospects.

Only 19% of buyers want to connect with sales reps during the awareness stage of the sales cycle; 60% of them want to wait until they reach the consideration stage.

50% of prospects aren’t a good fit for what you sell.

Only 24% of sales emails are opened.

77% of respondents said that their company provides at least a quarter of their leads.

3 out of 4 top sellers always conduct research before reaching out to prospects.

In one study, using a CTA button in place of a link increased the CTR by 28%.

Including questions in emails increases response rates by 50%.

47% of emails are opened or discarded based solely on their subject line.

Personalizing subject lines can increase open rates by 50%.

Less is more — one study found that click-through rates increased 42% when the number of CTAs in an email decreased from four to just one.

Shorter subject lines are better — the average open rate for a subject line longer than 5 words is less than 50%.

Writing your subject line entirely in upper case significantly reduces response rates by 30%.

Offering recipients a way out doubles the chance of them saying yes.

Writing at a third-grade reading level increases response rates by 36%.

Personalized emails with custom snippets have a response rate of 17%, while those that don’t have a response rate of 7%.

Based on various studies, the best times to send an email are between 6 and 10 a.m., at 2 p.m., or at 8 p.m.

Email marketing yields an average ROI of 4,300%.

8 out of 10 prospects want to talk to sales reps via email over any other medium.

The best day to send an email is Tuesday.

The average open rate for emails across all industries is 37%.

Email is almost 40 times more effective at acquiring new customers than Facebook and Twitter combined.

B2C sales emails see higher open rates than B2B sales emails. B2C open rates are between 31% and 35%, while B2B emails have an average open rate of 30%.

Consumers aged 25 to 34 spend the most time in their inboxes (6.4 hours per day).

81% of people prefer to open emails on their smartphones.

The average email open rate across different industries is 21%.

Prospect lists with 1–200 people lead to a higher average response rate than longer lists.

Email marketing has a two times higher ROI than cold calling.

The best time to call your prospects is between 4 and 5 p.m.

88% of sellers engage in warm calls, and 46% conduct cold calls.

85% of prospects are dissatisfied with their experiences of talking to sales reps on the phone.

The ideal length of a voicemail message is between 20 and 30 seconds.

92% of all customer interactions take place over the phone.

75% of prospects in the C-suite are happy to take sales calls (compared to 64% of directors and 59% of managers).

You’re 46% more likely to successfully connect with a director when dialing a direct dial number…

82% of buyers accept meetings with sellers who proactively reach out to them.

80% of sales require five follow up calls.

In one study, 41% of salespeople said that the phone is still the most effective tool in sales.

In successful cold calls, reps spend 55% of the time talking and owning the conversation, while in unsuccessful calls, reps spend 42% of the time talking.

47% of top sales performers ask for referrals consistently, while only 26% of non-top performers ask for referrals.

Referral leads have a 30% higher conversion rate than leads from any other channel.

92% of consumers trust referrals from people they know.

People are 4 times more likely to buy when they are referred by a friend.

65% of companies’ new deals come from referrals.

84% of B2B buyers start the purchasing process with a referral.

58% of salespeople ask for fewer than one referral per month, while 40% rarely ask.

82% of buyers are more likely to consider a brand if their salesperson has a built out LinkedIn profile.

74% of sellers said they wanted to expand their LinkedIn network in 2021.

70% of sales professionals are most active on LinkedIn compared to other social media.

73% of sales reps that leverage social selling exceed their quota 23% more often than their counterparts.

75% of B2B buyers and 84% of C-level executives use social media to make purchasing decisions.

48% of salespeople never make a follow-up attempt.

90% of emails that received replies were replied to within one day after they were opened.

Email campaigns with 4–7 emails in a sequence have a response rate that’s three times higher than campaigns with 1–3 emails.

Follow-up emails often get a better response rate than the initial email. One study saw a 30% response rate to the first email and 14% to the 4th. Even the 10th email in the sequence got a 7% response rate.

Jason Zook, founder of the now-dissolved IWearYourShirt, generated about 75% of successful deals from follow-up emails.

75% of buyers want to receive 2–4 phone calls before a company gives up. Only 12% would want a company to try as many times as it takes to get a hold of them.

92% of salespeople give up after four “no’s,” but 80% of prospects say “no” four times before they say “yes.”

Best-in-class companies close 30% of sales qualified leads while average companies only close 20%.

Between 30–50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.

38% of salespeople say getting a response from prospects is becoming increasingly more difficult.

The average salesperson’s close rate is less than 20%.

35% of sales reps say the same about closing a sale.

71% of sales professionals’ top priority is to close more deals.

55% of sales reps say budget is the most common reason a promising deal falls through.

88% of B2B customers only buy once they see the salesperson as a trusted advisor.

B2B customers use 10 different channels during their decision-making process.

In 2021, 41% of respondents said that effective outreach was the main factor behind successful qualified lead generation for their B2B business.

55% of B2B buyers search for information on social media.

84% of B2B buyers start their buying search with a referral.

50% of B2B sellers say that ease of use is one of the most important factors when selecting online sales channels.

77% of B2B decision makers prefer meeting via videoconference than over the phone.

B2B buyers rated competitive pricing as the top factor of importance.

53% of marketers reported that inbound marketing gave a higher ROI, while only 16% reported that outbound did.

Inbound marketing provides 59% of the highest-quality sales-qualified leads.

Over half of B2B buyers rely on content to research their buying decisions.

47% of buyers view 3–5 pieces of the company’s content before talking with a sales representative.

81% of marketers who think their company’s marketing strategy is effective primarily rely on inbound marketing.

73% of B2B buyers viewed a case study during their research.

56% of businesses wanted to increase their spend on content creation in 2018.

Only 18% of marketers say that outbound practices provide the highest quality leads for their team.

83% of salespeople still think it’s critical to connect with customers over the phone.

It takes an average of 18 calls to connect with a buyer.

The best-performing sales organizations are twice as likely to provide ongoing training for their sales teams compared to low-performing ones.

The most sales training time is spent on knowledge training (39%), followed by strategy training (22%), skills (20%), and tools training (19%).

In the U.S., companies spend $15 billion each year training sales employees.

The average company spends $10–$15K hiring a sales rep but just $2K a year training them.

The product-based sales training market share is expected to increase by $1.66 billion USD from 2020 to 2025.

For every dollar a company invests in training, they receive around $4.53 in return — an ROI of 353%.

It takes at least 10 months for a new sales rep to reach their full potential.

8 in 10 high-performing sales teams rate their sales training process as outstanding or very good.

17% of salespeople did not attend college.

The top 3 metrics used to measure salesperson performance are activity quantity (37%), customer satisfaction (33%), and team quota met (32%).

The number of Sales Ops professionals worldwide increased by 38% between 2018 and 2020.

Customer success and sales enablement roles have grown more than 200% in the last two years.

According to Indeed, the average base salary for sales representatives in the U.S. is $69,754.

Over half (52%) of sellers say that they want to work remotely 50% of the time.

In one survey, 24% of salespeople reported that they majored in business in college.

Successful door-to-door reps canvas a neighborhood 3 times and talk with 90% of the residents.

More than half of door-to-door sales people stay at their job for less than a year.

Door-to-door sales is still a $28.6 billion dollar industry.

The top sales tech sellers are using customer relationship management (CRM) tools (50%), sales intelligence (45%), and sales planning (42%).

18% of sales reps do not know what a CRM is.

83% of salespeople say that an integrated CRM makes sales a more appealing career path.

91% of sellers use sales tech once a week.

Nearly half of salespeople say that incomplete data is one of their biggest challenges.

91% of organizations with more than 10 employees in their workforce use CRM systems.

26% of buyers also want pipeline and funnel monitoring from their CRM software.

The top desired CRM features are contact management, tracking interactions, and scheduling.

Less than half of sales reps have access to data insights on customer propensity to buy but 85% of those who do say it makes their job more effective.

25% of data in a typical sales database is inaccurate.

High-performing companies are twice as likely as underperforming companies to describe their sales processes as automated.

45% of sales teams state excessive administration tasks hinder their productivity.

Sales teams spend 64% of their time on non-selling tasks like administration, service, travel, and training.

Inaccurate contact data wastes 27% of sales reps’ time each year.

40% of sales reps still use tools like Outlook or Excel to store customer and lead data.

Data decays at around 2% a month. This means that 20% of your data will be unusable within a year.

The average company loses 12% of its revenue as a result of inaccurate data.

32% of sales reps spend an hour or more on data entry every day.

63% of sales team leaders say that virtual meetings are just as or even more effective than face-to-face meetings.

63% of sellers say that they always put the buyer first, but only 23% of buyers agree with that.

60% of sales professionals say that collaborative selling increases productivity by over 25%.

89% of salespeople say that today, sales is more about listening to the customer than talking to the customer.

61% of sales reps believe selling is harder than it was 10 years ago.

66% of sales teams track customer satisfaction as their top KPI.

86% of sales managers say that the ability to cope with change is more important than it was five years ago.

AI adoption in sales teams is forecasted to grow 139% over the next three years.

51% of sales leaders focus on increasing customer retention through deeper relationships.

Buyers’ top 3 deal-killers from sales reps are: misleading information (48%), not understanding their company’s needs (44%), and not understanding their own product or service (43%).

91% of companies agree that their current sales model is as effective or more effective than it was before the pandemic.

77% of salespeople say that collaborative selling with other departments (marketing, service teams) is important.

67% of managers say that managing a remote sales team is more challenging than expected.

50% of sales teams leverage data to produce timely, accurate forecasts — only 16% rely on gut feelings.

Almost 90% of buyers are more likely to consider a brand if the salesperson challenges their way of thinking.