Sales Revenues are Up – Sales Performance is Not

CSO Insights Global Sales Productivity Research

Research Review by Michael J Griffin

Last week at the Microsoft Indonesia Innovation Conference,  I presented the latest sales research from CSO Insights a division of MHG, the largest sales consultancy and training company in the world. The main message is customers are transforming the B2B sales landscape making it imperative that sales people up their knowledge, skill and processes to meet ever demanding customer needs. Only 23% of B2B customers believe that sales people are their first “go to” for information and solutions of their business problems! So it is not surprising that sales people on average are only achieving 47% of their projected sales revenue.

B2B customers are telling us that they want 4 behaviors from the sales people they interact with:

• Understand my Business well
• Be an Excellent Communicator
• Focus on Help Post Sale
• Give Insights, Thought Leadership to Support My Success

Secondly, CSO Insights was able to identify gaps in sales processes that are putting a lid on sales people productivity. The solution to these gaps is across four sales process areas:

• Marketing and Sales must get out their silos and align their processes to generate leads and prospects.
• Improving key account planning and opportunity management leads to closing more accounts and increasing revenue from existing accounts
• Focus on increasing revenue from hunting new accounts. Farming isn’t enough.
• Improve Forecasted Win Rates by more effective coaching your sales people.

CSO Insights has created a  summary of their B2B sales research findings “Selling in the Age of Ceaseless Change” that you can download here.

An infographic of called “Four Keys to Unlock Sales Growth” visually addresses the 4 sales process gaps and advice on increasing B2B sales productivity by focusing on improving these sales process areas. You may download it here.

The 1^st Quarter is over. How is your sales revenue against plan? Read these two insightful CSO Insights research documents and learn how to drive sales performance for the remainder of 2019!

Have a Great Week!

Michael J Griffin

ELAvate Sales Productivity Consultant

MHG Sales Trainer