In the past 7 years, Quick Start Strategies has analyzed the performance of over 1,400 companies to uncover the story-behind-the-story as to why companies consistently fail to meet their desired sales objectives.
Our data has been collected using an ongoing self-assessment survey and a complete lead-to-cash lifecycle analysis. We continually update our database to determine attributes and correlations to ‘best in class’ sales performance. Based on our evolving benchmark data, we suggest there are three areas of focus, and corrective actions, to drive immediate results:
Leveraging the QSS Performance Matrix, only 8% of companies in our sales benchmark meet the criteria of high sales performers across near-term performance, mid-term predictability, and insights. These high-performance companies have a well-developed persona of their optimal buyer that they continually apply to ensure those opportunities in their pipeline are aligned to their optimal customer profile. Unfortunately, our database shows that 74% of the companies analyzed do not properly align their opportunities to their established optimal customer profile.
Additionally, 71% of companies do not align their sales process to how their buyers buy. High performance companies seamlessly leverage their CRM platform as the driver of their sales process. Tight alignment between how the buyer buys and how the company sells are developed across the entire opportunity qualification to close process. High performance companies establish minimal required actions needed at each sales stage to ensure opportunities are aligned to the sales process. Sales skills training, tools, content and insights are tightly integrated into one seamless platform that puts sales reps in the best position to succeed.
Finally, high performance companies close greater than 90 percent of those opportunities forecasted to close in the current quarter. They establish value early in the buyer’s journey and consistently question and update expected purchase dates. An accurate close date and amount is dependent upon many factors: understanding the optimal customer profile, supporting opportunities with the right ‘value engineering’ aligned to the buyer’s journey, and a sales process that is rigorously defined and followed.
