How Good Is Your Sales Process?

In a 2024 study by Salesforce, 67% of sales professionals didn’t expect to meet their quotas that year, and 84% missed them the year before. According to Forrester, the average sales target achievement for B2B sales organizations is 47%, indicating that more than half of sellers are missing their targets.

These statistics highlight sales professionals’ challenges in meeting their targets despite all the sales training, programs, tools, and methodologies. By what is the underachievement caused? Should we look not at the front line but at their leaders? Are the missing targets related to company strategies that are not being understood? 

Senior sales leaders do not believe this. Recent research indicates that they show high confidence in achieving their organisations’ sales targets. According to Salesforce’s State of Sales report, 82% of sales leaders and managers feel confident about their company’s 12-month growth strategy.

The disconnect

Obviously, there is a disconnect between sales leaders and the front line. The data doesn’t lie. These are the voices of real salespeople and their leaders. The strategies may be clear, but the implementation not so.

The brutal truth

Here is the brutal truth: Sales reps on the frontline have lost confidence because their sales processes are broken. They struggle to understand what their managers ask them and apply this to the traditional sales process in which they have been trained. A Gartner survey revealed that 77% of sellers struggle to complete tasks efficiently despite increased investments in sales technologies and training. In other words, you may have the best CRM in the world with all the AI bells and wizzles…but when it comes to preparing for customer meetings, determine what you want your stakeholders to discover, the insights you will share and getting commitment to a next meeting with the bigger buying team – how well do you score on that?

What is your experience?

• What do you think?

• What sales process do you follow?

• And how well or not well is this working for you?

Let me know in the comments.

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