Pipedrive's global sales performance review

Sales is difficult to compare as every aspect of it seems to be unique—product or service, business model, pricing, business environment, customers, their purchasing power—you name it. Hence, it’s almost impossible to get a sense of how salespeople across the United States differ in their approach or performance from their counterparts in the United Kingdom or Brazil. Don’t you want to know who’s the best sales nation in the world? We certainly do.

One thing that makes all businesses similar is their use of a process that gets them a customer. Every company follows some sort of a step-by-step path that has proven successful to them. The way salespeople perform along their chosen process is what makes businesses of different shapes and kinds comparable and therefore becomes the center point of our analysis.

For the purpose of our global sales study, we take anonymized metadata of sales performances across 34 countries and more than 10 industries, remove outliers and look for differences.

Our particular interest goes to three questions:

• How many of their potential prospects salespeople manage to convert to customers?
• How long it takes them to do it?
• How hard they need to work for it? (read: how many activities they need to engage in. An activity is any scheduled action e.g. a phone call or meeting)

For some years now, we’ve discovered fascinating patterns that show how salespeople in different countries perform. We’ve also discovered notable differences due to industries people work in.

Let’s take a look at how everyone stands when it comes to selling skills.

The US and European countries have their edge

It is misleading to think that salespeople in the US, UK or Germany are resting on their laurels.

"Closing well and closing fast are certainly very important...but equally, an ability to close really large and high quality deals are just as important"

My own experience in sales has shown that I’ve been able to generate top revenues in organizations while being well down the leaderboard in closing percentages or speed.

Even though the size of deals was not the focus of this research, earlier analysis has shown that companies in the developed world boast more purchasing power, more expensive products and services are being offered, and more rigorous purchasing processes have been put in place.

So, for example, Brazilians might be faster to smaller deals while Americans or Germans might be slower to larger deals.

Let’s throw in another global sales variable: the way buyers behave naturally according to the cultural norms of their respective countries. Of course, great salespeople live and work on their terms and enjoy success because of their initiative, dedication and resilience. Faced with headwinds, they still find a way to move forward.

"However, even high performers need to match their style to those of the buyers."

For example, when working in a country like Sweden (known to value consensus in decision making) you might never get a prospect to go forward without enough debate with other internal stakeholders in the company.

What does the data tell us about improving your performance?

High performers have a 36.97% conversion rate, and they take on average 36.5 days to close a deal. For low performers, the average conversion rate is 4.95% and they take 53.62 days to close.

Generally speaking, high-performing organizations add half as many deals into their pipeline but win at least twice as many. What does this mean? Great salespeople are especially careful about not filling their days with conversations leading to nowhere. At the same time, once they’ve detected a potential prospect, they use all their intelligence and experience to maximize their chances of winning.

If they feel their chances are getting too small, they usually let go better than others to make room for new high potential conversations.

Essentially, the more deals in a pipeline, the lower the conversion rate. You’ll risk losing focus, which is detrimental to any salesperson’s performance management. If conversion rates weren’t important, then sales teams would likely be run by A.I.-enabled computers, which could work around the clock but only achieve a 2% conversion rate. This is already happening in the transactional sales world, that is, lower value purchases, while the human touch is essential in more complex sales.

How can you improve in 2018?

We are a global sales company. Working with 90,000 companies and hundreds of thousands of the best salespeople means we see what makes the best performers successful. We’ve collated these insights to help you and your teams drive even greater sales performance.

Stick to your strengths, know what works

We’ve seen different sectors favor different methods and approaches. By embracing your strengths you can optimize your approach to match. So, if you’re a wordsmith stick to emails, and if emotional intelligence is your thing then it makes sense to focus on those all-important face-to-face meetings.

Streamline your sales process, don’t overcomplicate

One of the key conclusions from our data is simplification. Sometimes salespeople try to do too much. Champion the art of cutting back the layers of process in favor of clear and easy-to-remember steps. But note, that doesn’t mean doing less – it just means sharpening up your act and shaking off those stages that are not working.

Tool up and embrace available tech

A critical part of the sales process is managing and recording conversations. Also, high performers are much more active on their mobile devices. This suggests that those using their mobiles know the importance of capturing key information, while it’s fresh in their minds – and before the next meeting washes it away. In my view, no notes mean no progress. Think about leveraging tools to advance conversations along the pipeline. Whatever your weapon of choice, embed it deeply into your sales process.

Focus to get ahead

Focus is essential for closing deals: I’ve seen that from my own experience. I was always in a better place when I knew exactly what I needed to work on. Companies with low conversion rates conduct 30% more activities than higher-performing ones – around two more per deal. It sounds obvious, but doing less and focusing on the right things means you’ll do them better. Avoid a scattergun approach, keep an optimum number of good deals in your pipeline. Otherwise, it affects everything: the processing, analyzing and execution.

Leading conversations is instrumental

I’ve seen so many salespeople fall by the wayside because they struggle with leading a conversation. Leading a conversation transforms into leading a sales process and leading your sales career. Learn how to initiate a move forward, do it with certainty and make sure you have your prospect with you every step of the way.

Be mindful of speed

It’s true that if you’re quicker to ‘yes’ you’ll achieve higher performance. Conversely, that also means you may be quicker to ‘no’. That can be difficult to digest, as we may often want to go along with the illusion of a potential ‘yes’ rather than burst the bubble. But tough as a ‘no’ is, it will also bring clarity—it means you can move onto new prospects.

Even though the world is getting more competitive, with the possibility of tough times ahead, I believe that the best salespeople will continue to strive to do better. The best salespeople will make sure they have the right tools and that they are continually learning from others so that they can thrive in any conditions.