Salesenomics – Many Sales Organizations Are Stuck in the 1980’s

Today is moving day for Objective Management Group.  When we first toured our new space, John Pattison, OMG’s COO said, “It looks like something the 1980’s barfed up!”  I’m happy to report that thanks to big-time help from PENTA Marketing CEO Deborah Penta, our new space is bright, cheery, modern, energetic, open and functional!

Thinking about the 80’s got me thinking…

When was the last time you saw a black and white television or even a console color TV?

How about an electric typewriter?

Or a car that didn’t have anti-lock brakes?

You would have to return to the 1980’s to see those things and when it comes to their operations, some sales organizations are still in the 1980’s.

For example, check out these statistics from OMG’s evaluations of 30,000 sales teams and more than two million salespeople.

31% of companies don’t use CRM.

44% do not have a way to track the opportunities in their pipelines.

89% do not qualify their proposals.

39% do not track whether their salespeople are under/over quota.

54% do not track win rates

51% do not know their average order size

74% do not track the length of their sales cycle

40% do not track the number of opportunities in the pipeline

65% do not track the quality of the opportunities in the pipeline

35% do not track margins!

90% do not track the number of meetings required to close

96% do not track the cost of a sale

Unfortunately, there is more, but these are the head turners and it makes me wonder…

It’s been widely reported for years now, that fewer than 50% of salespeople are hitting quota.  From the data shown above, we know that 39% of companies don’t even track that.  What percentage of their reps do you think are hitting quota?  My guess is less than 20% (think 80/20 rule) so how much worse would it be if those companies were included in the data?  I’m guessing we would learn that fewer than 33% of all salespeople are hitting quota.  That’s much closer to what I hear from companies every day.

We are no longer in the early stages of the information era.  Data is king so how can companies operate without this crucial information?  Even prior to the dawn of the information age, companies found ways to track this information, so why would some choose to ignore this today?

I’m guessing that most of the companies in question are small with less than $20 Million in revenue and fewer than 8 salespeople.  I assume that they are not tech companies and probably come from older industries, like building materials, small manufacturers and small industrial distributors.  But I’m just guessing.

You can easily track everything you should be tracking with the right CRM application.  OMG has an integration with what we believe is the best sales-specific CRM application in the world, Membrain.  It’s user-friendly, ideal for complex sales, easy to customize, produces the most important data and reporting out of the box, and you won’t have to nag your salespeople to use it. And for fans of Baseline Selling, there is a BLS specific edition of Membrain too.

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