Sales Force Design: Research Findings

Lead Generation
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Sales Force Design: Research Findings

Sales Force Sizing
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ABSTRACT This report provides evidence that changed economic conditions have impacted the Sales organization, performance, and processes, revealing new trends and amplifying existing ones. The good news is that there are very specific steps companies can take to increase revenues in a cost-effective manner, exploiting the current selling environment. The data which support this research report indicates that there are ten statistically significant drivers of sales force performance available for implementation. These drivers have been demonstrated to be effective by world class selling organizations. They constitute the difference between superior and mediocre performance, as measured by Return on Sales, a measure of the profitability contribution made by the Sales function. We invite you to compare these findings with your own experience and, where warranted, leverage the sales drivers to improve your Sales environment.

Sales Force Design: Research Findings

Executive Summary
There are 10 drivers of sales success
SBIs Yearly Sales Strategy Review During the 2nd quarter of each year, Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) conducts a complete review of its entire benchmark repository looking for trends, dependencies, and new drivers of sales force performance. This year, even more so than in years past, we were surprised by some of the findings. The current economic circumstances have begun to exert a strong influence on sales force design, strategy, and implementation. Report Audience Our research on sales force design is intended for those who make strategic decisions impacting the sales force CEO, Vice Presidents of Sales, Chief Operating Officers and Chief Financial Officers. Results We pull in data from hundreds of sources on thousands of public and private companies in our database. We first look as widely as possible for sales factors of statistical significance. Using a series of analytical techniques, pattern recognition routines, and simulations, we identify the drivers that separate top from bottom performers. Drivers of Sales Success That effort yielded the following 10 sales drivers. 1. Sales Force Sizing 2. Sales Force Configuration 3. Sales Role Revision 4. Territory Design 5. Quota Setting 6. Sales Compensation 7. Sales Talent Management 8. Sales Performance Management 9. Lead Generation 10. Sales Process Mapping
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Sales Force Design: Research Findings

Key Takeaways For those who want to net out these findings further, we summarize them for you in the 3 key points below: #1: Economics are pressuring sales models Growth rates are negative or single digit Possible future changes to tax, regulation, and other government interventions have raised risk premiums to drive out sales-specific investments #2: Key Performance Metrics are ALL down Revenue/head has declined Cost per head is increasing Sales cycle Length is increasing Average Sales Price has decreased # of sales reps (per $1B) is down #3: Selling capacity and market opportunity are mismatched Companies have not re-segmented their markets (e.g. financial services industry vertical strategies still predominate in B2B sales organizations) Buyers have changed their purchasing behavior and selling methodologies have not kept pace

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Sales Force Design: Research Findings

Sales Driver #9: Implement/Improve Lead Generation

A Lead Generation program creates a fatter Sales pipeline
Background Lead Generation is an emerging discipline, which sits at the interface between Sales and Marketing. It includes all effort necessary, across multi-channel marketing campaigns, to find, track, measure, and hand off leads to the sales force. Lead Generation programs produce guidance on process, procedures, tools, teams, and formal governance. With the drop off in revenue over 2008-2009 companies (from world-class to the laggard) are scrutinizing the Lead Generation function. Program Elements A comprehensive Lead Generation program contains the following attributes, which, in tandem, enable a predictable set of high quality leads to be found, developed, and transitioned to Sales: Multi-channel lead sourcing. Covers complete range of lead origination (offline and online) and relies on success of Interruption strategy Lead Nurturing. Efforts to develop a Lead into a Prospect over time based on relevancy, frequency, recency, and depth of interest Lead Scoring. Numerical score given to leads (by person) over time to reflect online behavior Lead Grading. Alpha score (A through F) given to a lead based on its closeness to the Ideal Customer Profile Marketing Automation. Software designed to automate the complete Lead Gen process cycle Lead Development Dedicated Staff. Employees with the specific skills/training to qualify leads Interactive Marketing Content. Pre-Sales documents that contain interactive elements leveraged by an electronic campaign. Lead Transfer. Process for taking a Marketing-Qualified Lead and passing it to the Sales team where it becomes an Opportunity in CRM.

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Sales Force Design: Research Findings

Finding #1 (see Chart 19) Even world-class companies do not possess all the elements of a Lead Generation program. The most common element is multi-channel sourcing and the least common is Marketing Automation software.

Chart 19: Adoption of Lead Generation program Elements

Key Metrics World-class sales organizations track the following key performance measures to assess success of Lead Generation programs: Pipeline to Quota Ratio. Ratio of the pipeline relative to total sales quota. This captures the degree to which the sales organization can identify and quantify closeable business. Nurture Leads Database Growth. Average rate at which a companys nurture leads database grows. This database is separate from the CRM Sales Opportunity database. Lead-to-Close Conversion Rate. Percentage of Leads captured by Marketing that is closed by Sales and result in revenue.

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Sales Force Design: Research Findings

# of Sales Rep Weekly Appointments. Number of face-to-face (or in the case of Inside Sales, scheduled concall) appointments held per quota-bearing sales professional. Finding #2 (see Chart 20) The separation between world class and laggard performance on the key Lead Generation metrics is pronounced and consistent, with performance scaling from laggard to world class. With these results known, Lead Generation can be seen as a leading indicator of company performance.

Chart 20: Lead Generation Key Metrics

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