It is a transformative time to be in sales. Recent research reveals that despite the explosion of sales tools, it is still challenging to achieve sales productivity and results. The average sales rep uses between 5-8 different tools every day, but having more tools hasn’t necessarily led to better results. It’s still difficult to onboard and ramp reps, forecasting is as hard as ever, reps don’t get to spend enough time with customers, managers don’t have the bandwidth to coach effectively, and marketers struggle to understand content effectiveness.

Below are 14 sales stats that you can use to benchmark whether you’re on the right track – or use as a call to action for your organization. I shared many of these stats at the Sales 2.0 Conference: San Francisco on July 19, 2016. Here’s a link to the presentation.

1. 60% of Sales Leaders find that lack of proper tools leads lengthens sales cycles (CSO Insights)
2. 58% of forecasted deals slip out of the quarter (CSO Insights)
3. 75% of deals in sales pipelines never close (Accenture)
4. 80% of CFOs don’t have high confidence in sales forecasts (ClearSlide)
5. 70% of sales reps don’t validate prospect interest during the sales cycle (CSO Insights)
6. 93% of organizations don’t track content used by sales reps (CSO Insights)
7. Sales reps spend on average 440 hours per year searching for the right content (Aberdeen Group)
8. 55% of sales content is created by sales rather than marketing (CSO Insights)
9. 65% of content created by marketing for sellers never get used (Sirius Decisions)
10. 90% of B2B sellers don’t use sales content because it is irrelevant, outdated and difficult to customize (Forrester)
11. Sales teams experience 22% annual turnover (Accenture Interactive)
12. 71% of Companies take 6 months or longer to ramp new sales reps to productivity (CSO Insights)
13. 65% of a salesperson’s time is spent on non-selling activities (CSO Insights)
14. Only 20% of Sales Leaders time is spent helping their teams sell (CSO Insights)

In addition, Aragon Research just published a new report on Digital Selling that outlines how to leverage Sales Engagement Platforms for competitive advantage. You can download the report for free.
By: Michael Schultz, VP Marketing and Business Development