One of the keys to sales success is learning how to shape your own strategy from your peers.
Data-driven decisions help your sales teams to succeed at their jobs, and keeping their sales stats high. With them, you and your sales professionals can improve on your sales process, and know how to improve your sales performance.
Ready to pick up some amazing insights that you’ll be able to share with your sales team?
These 100+ sales statistics can help you and your sales teams guide your ever-evolving sales strategies.
100+ Most Important Sales Statistics in 2020
We’ve compiled a huge list of more than 100 sales statistics we want to share with you.
Sales Call Statistics
1. According to Salesforce, 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone. And 85% of customers report they are dissatisfied with these experiences.
2. HubSpot Research found that 58% of buyers want to talk about pricing on the very first call.
3. Marketing Daily Advisor suggests that the best time to cold-calling a business is between 8am and 9am.
4. 44% of salespeople give up after a single “no” from a prospect. Meanwhile, only 8% of salespeople engage within five calls.
5. According to Baylor University, the average salesperson is able to generate one appointment for every 209 cold calls.
6. Cold calling isn’t dead yet. The Rain Group found that 69% of buyers accepted cold calls from salespeople during 2018.
7. 80% of calls go to voicemail, according to a piece of research by RingLead. The same research recommends that 18-30 seconds is the optimal voicemail length.
8. Charlie Cook suggests that cold calling has quite a low success rate (2%). But it’s still an important channel for many businesses.
9. Sales reps still have faith in the power of cold calling, given that over 27% of sales reps still believe it’s extremely effective.
10. Are your sales reps active enough? According to The Bridge Group, the average salesperson will have 6 conversations each day.
11. According to Close, an amazing 93% of potential cold-call success is attributed to the tone of the caller’s voice during the conversation.
Direct Sales Statistics
12. According to Brandon Gaille, around 74% of Americans have purchased either goods or services through a direct-sales company.
13. Numbers from Statista show that worldwide retail sales associated with the direct-sales market total approximately 9 billion USD.
14. According to VictoryGuide, a typical door-to-door salesperson should be able to knock on around 20 doors per hour.
15. Leadheroes found that around 25% of every 16 to 20 prospects will listen to a door-to-door pitch or presentation.
16. Salesforce found that despite the popularity of phone conversations, 85% of potential customers are dissatisfied with their experience.
17. Direct mail can still drive results to businesses. 41% of Americans (of all ages) report that they look forward to checking their mail.
18. If you decide to send direct mail, you’ll want to try and find a way to stand apart from the crowd. According to the U.S. postal service, the average American household receives an estimated 454 pieces of marketing mail each year.
19. Print ads and catalogs might seem quite old-school today, but 18% of average B2B marketers’ budgets is spent on direct mail and print advertising.
20. According to Mailmen, the average piece of advertising mail is kept inside a household for 17 days. So the messaging has plenty of time to soak in.
21. In its latest direct mail statistics, Marketing Charts suggests that this technique can bring a 29% ROI to marketers and sales professionals.
22. Direct mail pieces are more popular with some demographics. 1% of consumers aged 45 to 54 will respond to direct mail.
Sales Cold Mailing & Email Statistics
23. When it comes to customer acquisition, research from McKinsey shows that email is almost 40 times more effective than Facebook and Twitter combined.
24. According to Topo, only 23.9% of sales emails are opened. So it’s very important to craft an unbeatable subject line.
25. Figures from HubSpot show that 86% of professionals prefer to use email for business communications.
26. A survey from eConsultancy found that 74% of marketers believe targeted personalization can increase overall customer engagement rates.
27. According to Statista, an estimated 347 billion emails will be sent each day by the time we reach 2022.
28. Research from Fluent found that 9% of people check their email more than five times each day.
29. The growth of marketing automation means that an estimated 49% of businesses now use some form of email automation.
30. Each week, the average person will spend about four hours opening, reading, and responding to emails.
31. According to HubSpot, email is very popular with prospects. 8 out of 10 prospects want to speak to a sales rep via email more than any other medium.
32. Are your subject lines working for you? Convince and Convert found that approximately 35% of email recipients will open an email based on the subject line alone.
Social Selling & LinkedIn Statistics
33. According to statistics from Kinsta, LinkedIn currently has over 575+ million users, and a staggering 260 million are monthly active users.
34. In its Millennial Playbook, LinkedIn explained that millennials make up 38% of LinkedIn’s user base. And an estimated 11 million millennial users occupy decision-making positions.
35. Data from HubSpot suggests that LinkedIn is a 277% more effective social media for lead generation than its competitors on Facebook and Twitter.
36. LinkedIn explains in a recent infographics that 94% of B2B marketers use it as a channel to distribute content.
37. Research from Forrester uncovered that 98% of B2B enterprises see the value in social selling, yet only 49% of those businesses have developed robust social-selling programs.
38. According to LinkedIn’s own numbers, 43% of marketers say they have sourced at least one customer from LinkedIn.
39. The latest figures from Statista show that an estimated 4.26 billion people use social media worldwide.
40. An IDC study suggests that 84% of C-level executives will use social media to support important purchase decisions.
Sales Prospecting Statistics
41. Do you struggle with sales prospecting? You’re not alone. 40% of salespeople say that this part of the sales process is the most difficult, closely followed by closing and qualifying.
42. According to HubSpot Research, 6 in 10 prospects will want to discuss pricing on the very first call with a salesperson.
43. A survey from the Rain Group found that 62% of buyers want to hear from sellers at a time when they’re actively looking for a solution to a problem.
44. According to Salesforce, an astounding 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone, which is why salespeople must hone their phone-based prospecting abilities.
45. Salesforce suggests that an estimated 51% of the top sales professionals focus the majority of their efforts on building relationships with prospects.
46. Gong analyzed 15 months of sales data and found that sales teams have the tendency to frantically scramble at the end of a quarter, which can negatively impact results.
47. Research from The Bridge Group discovered that the average sales rep will be able to make around 52 calls each day.
48. According to Gong, salespeople can boost their chances of success by 74% during a lead call by asking 11 to 14 insightful questions.
49. Prospects are becoming harder to reach over the phone, so sales reps must be more persistent than ever before. Spotio claims that it takes around eight attempts to reach a prospect today, compared to just 3.68 attempts back in 2007.
50. Those missed calls mean that voicemails are very important. According to LeadFuze, the average sales rep will spend around 25 hours a month leaving voicemails for prospects.
Sales Follow Up Statistics
51. According to InsideSales, 50% of all sales will happen after the fifth contact with a prospect. Unfortunately, the majority of sales reps will give up after just two interactions.
52. In an experiment, Drift tested the response time of 433 companies. The results showed that just 7% of those companies responded within the first five minutes of a form submission, while a shocking 50% didn’t respond within five business days.
53. The Telenet and Ovation Sales Group reports that on average, it will take around eight follow-up calls to reach a prospect.
54. Speed is very important in sales. The Harvard Business Review studied 2,200 American companies and discovered that a salesperson is seven times more likely to have a meaningful conversation when he or she reaches out within an hour.
55. Echoing that finding, InsideSales discovered that sales are 100x more likely to answer the phone if sales professionals make the call within five minutes of a web form being submitted.
56. Sales reps will leave a high number of voicemails each day. According to Zoominfo, the average voicemail response rate sits at around 4.8%.
57. According to Velocify, texting to a prospect after initial contact can lead to a 6% higher engagement conversion.
58. Salespeople find that LinkedIn is an important follow-up platform, given that 96% of them use the platform at least once a week.
59. According to HubSpot, an estimated 75% of online buyers would like to receive 2 to 4 phone calls from a company before it gives up.
60. A fast follow-up is important, given that 35-50% of sales will inevitably go to the vendor that responds first.
Sales Closing Statistics
61. Salespeople are hungry to close deals. A HubSpot survey found that 71% of sales professionals say that closing more deals is their top priority.
62. According to the 2017 CSO Insights Report, the percentage of salespeople meeting their sales quotes dropped from 63% to 53% over the six years prior.
63. A Salesforce report explored the importance of identifying pain points to close sales. The report found that salespeople who identify and address those pain points are 28% more likely to close the sale.
64. Collaboration is key to sales success. According to a best-practices study from Miller Heiman, 91% of the top-performing sales organizations collaborate across departments on the biggest deals.
65. The best sales departments make the entire sales experience as pleasant as possible, given that 50% of customer loyalty is based on that experience.
66. The source of a lead will often determine how long it takes to close. Research from Implisit offers the following breakdown:
- Referred leads take 97 days to close.
- Website leads take 75 days to close.
- Social media leads take 40 days to close
67. Research from The Rain Group proposes that the average win rate of salespeople who have the opportunity to offer a proposal to a prospect is around 47%.
68. What’s your biggest barrier to closing? According to The Richardson Selling Challenges Study, here’s the breakdown:
- 48% of salespeople compete against low-price competitors.
- 15% of salespeople differentiate their product.
- 9% of salespeople create a compelling case for change.
69. GetCRM found that customers are four times more likely to buy from a business when they have been referred there by a friend.
70. Microsoft discovered that an impressive 79% of salespeople achieve their sales quotas by calling on a variety of social selling techniques.
Inside Sales Statistics
71. According to CSO Insights, just 33% of inside sales-rep time is spent actively selling.
72. According to findings from iHireSalesPeople, the average success rate for inside sales reps sits at an impressive 18%.
73. DiscoverOrg found that 78% of decisions-makers within businesses have taken an appointment or attended an industry event based on an email or cold call.
74. PointClear emphasized the cost-effectiveness of inside sales when it discovered that the average outside sales call will cost $308. Meanwhile, the average inside sales call costs $50.
75. This statistics comes from Toutapp. Perhaps unsurprisingly, 71% of sales reps report that they spend too much time on data entry.
76. According to Pacific Crest, 37% of high-growth companies use inside sales as the primary sales strategy—compared to 27% for field sales, 23% for internet sales, and 8% for channel sales.
77. CSO Insights found that sales reps often have the tendency to see lead volume/quality as more important that training and process.
78. According to PWC, there are a number of reasons why prospects might take their business elsewhere, including unfriendly service (60%) and a lack of knowledge (46%).
79. Personalization can help breed inside sales success. When both the message and subject line are personalized, emails have an average open rate of 5.9% and a click rate of .2%.
80. According to sales stats from the Sales Benchmark Index, 70% of customers don’t want an in-person meeting, but they’re open to doing business remotely.
Sales Funnel Statistics
81. Salesforce found that 68% of businesses currently fail to identify and measure their sales funnel. In other words, 79% of leads in those businesses never mature or become a closed sale.
82. Nurturing prospects throughout the sales funnel can drive significant growth to businesses. And these leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.
83. If you’re going to maintain an effective sales funnel, you’ll need the right technology. According to Topo, high-growth sales teams use an average of five applications within their technology stack.
84. Statistics from HubSpot show that 72 % of companies with fewer than 50 opportunities in their pipeline fail to reach their goals for the month. For this reason, it’s very important to maintain a healthy sales funnel.
85. According to Aberdeen, high-performing sales organizations are 38% more likely to leverage sales analytics tools to collect customer data that informs interactions with customers.
86. When it comes to pitching and nurturing prospects, it’s important to remember that 63% of audience members remember stories after a presentation, while only 5% remember sales stats.
87. According to Forrester Research, only 5% of salespeople use a completely automated marketing solution.
88. Internal churn can affect the efficacy of sales funnels, given that an estimated 25% of sales reps will change roles each year.
89. According to a piece of research from LinkedIn, an estimated 24% of forecasted deals within a sales funnel will eventually go dark.
90. According to Ascend2, 51% of email marketers believe that email-list segmentation is the most effective and efficient personalization method for nurturing leads.
Sales Training Statistics
91. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4.3% of the US population works in sales.
92. According to a Forbes piece focusing on how to find the best talent, up to 55% of salespeople lack basic sales skills.
93. Sales stats from mediafly reveal that 27% of companies do not offer any type of sales onboarding program to new hires.
94. Research from Accenture reveals this data: For every dollar, a company invests in training, it will receive an estimated 353% ROI, which is around $4.53 in return.
95. The quality of sales training is very important. An unfortunately high 26% of sales professionals claim that their sales training is ineffective.
96. According to The Bridge Group, an average company will spend between $10,000 and $15,000 hiring a person, but only $2,000 a year in sales training.
97. Salesforce found that 80% of high-performing sales teams receive sales training they rate as outstanding or very good.
98. The Training Industry found that without systematic, ongoing learning and reinforcement, 84% of what was initially learned is lost within 90 days.
99. According to findings from Aberdeen Research, 52% of poor-performing firms do not take the time to measure the impact of sales training on company success.
100. Some salespeople cannot deliver results right away. Accenture found that 5% of sales professionals take 10 months or longer to contribute to company goals.
101. 46% of sales reps didn’t originally intend to become sales professionals. Therefore, many junior sales reps require significant amounts of training.
102. Training customization is very important. McKinsey discovered that leading organizations are twice as likely to customize training according to specific sales roles.
Conclusion
We hope these statistics give you the power to inspire and motivate your own sales team. The right knowledge is one thing, of course, but you’ll also need to offer the appropriate suite of tools to your sales teams. If you start your free UpLead trial today, you’ll push your results higher than ever.
