From my buddy, Mark Lack, to help you sell better!
We all know how important sales are. Without sales, your business doesn’t grow, and without growth, your business dies.
No matter what industry you’re in, you must account for sales and business development within your organization. Regardless of whether you have a large team or are an army of one, there are best practices and years of data you can draw from to be more efficient and successful.
We’ve gathered 56 important sales statistics and grouped them into seven distinct categories to help you focus on what’s crucial to your business. Study these statistics, learn from them, and implement them in your own strategy to grow your business. To help you remember the most important statistics.
Referral Statistics
1. Customers are 4x more likely to buy when referred by a friend. [Source: Neilsen]
2. One offline word-of-mouth impression drives sales ~5x more than one paid impression, and as much as 100x more for higher-consideration categories. [Source: WOMMA]
3. The lifetime value of referred customers is on average 16% higher than that of non-referred customers. [Source: Wharton School of Business]
4. More than 50% of buyers consult third-party sources before consulting a company’s salesforce. [Source: Avande]
5. 73% of executives prefer to work with sales professionals referred by someone they know. [Source: IDC]
6. In a survey of 3,000 business people, over half of the respondents indicated they got 70% or more of their customers via referrals. [Source: Ivan Misner]
7. Even after purchasing a product or service, 42% of buyers still reviewed a company on a third-party site. [Source: Avande]
Cold Call Statistics
8. 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up. [Source: Scripted]
9. 80% of sales require five follow-up phone calls after the meeting. [Source: The Marketing Donut]
10. It takes an average of eight cold call attempts to reach a prospect. [Source: Brevet]
11. It takes 18 or more dials to connect with a prospect over the phone and call-back rates are below 1%. [Source: TOPO]
12. Teleprospectors make between 100 and 500 calls for every lead they qualify. [Source: SiriusDecisions]
13. Sales reps can spend up to 40% of their time looking for somebody to call. [Source: Inside Sales]
14. 75% of 1,000 executives polled were prompted to attend an event or take an appointment as a result of a cold call or email. [Source: DiscoverOrg]
15. The optimal voicemail message is between 8 and 14 seconds. [Source: The Sales Hunter]
16. The best days to call are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6:45 to 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. [Source: RingLead]
17. The worst times to call are Mondays at 6:00 am and on Friday afternoons. [Source: RingLead]
18. 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone. [Source: Brevet]
19. The average Sales Development representative makes 46 calls a day. [Source: The Bridge Group]
Sales Email Statistics
20. The best times to email prospects are between 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 3:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. [Source: GetResponse]
21. Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14% and conversion rates by 10%. [Source: Aberdeen Group]
22. People who buy products marketed through email spend 138% more than people that do not receive email offers. [Source: Convince and Convert]
23. 40% of emails are opened on mobile first, and the average mobile screen can only fit four to seven words max in the subject line. [Source: ContactMonkey]
24. 33% of email recipients open emails based on the subject line alone. [Source: Convince and Convert]
25. 70% of email readers open emails from a brand or company in search of a deal, discount, or coupon. [Source: Campaign Monitor]
26. Subject lines with three words or more have an average email open rate of less than 15%. [Source: ContactMonkey]
27. 57% of email recipients consider a message to be spam if it isn’t relevant to their needs, even when they know the vendor well. [Source: Scripted]
28. 69% of email recipients report emails as Spam based solely on the subject line. [Source: Convince and Convert]
29. Almost 40% of all messages are sent between 6:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m. [Source: GetResponse]
30. Only 23% of sales emails are opened. [Source: TOPO]
31. 44% of email recipients made at least one purchase last year based on a promotional email. [Source: Convince and Convert]
32. Adding the word “New” to your subject line can increase open rates by 23%. [Source: Adestra]
33. 23.63% of all email opens occur within the first hour of delivery. [Source: GetResponse]
34. 17% of Americans create a new email address every six months. [Source: Convince and Convert]
Lead Nurturing Statistics
35. CRM system adoption increases sales by up to 29%. [Source: Salesforce]
36. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. [Source: The Annuitas Group]
37. 95% of buyers chose a vendor that provided content to navigate each stage of the buying process. [Source: Demand Gen Report]
38. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads, and do so at a 33% lower cost. [Source: Marketo]
39. 67% of the buyer’s journey is done digitally. [Source: SiriusDecisions]
40. Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects see a 451% increase in qualified leads. [Source: Annuitas]
41. Seven out of ten executives believe that technology will replace human interaction with customers in the next decade. [Source: Avande]
Social Selling Statistics
42. 43% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product when learning about it from friends on social media. [Source: Nielsen]
43. 81% of Americans’ online purchasing decisions are influenced by their friend’s social media posts, versus 78% who are influenced by the posts of the brands they follow. {Source: Market Force]
44. You are 4.2x more likely to get an appointment if you have a personal connection with a buyer. [Source: Sales Benchmark Index]
45. 55% of B2B buyers search for information on social media. [Source: Blender]
46. 32% of buyers post a review on social media. [Source: Avande]
Sales Timing Statistics
47. Research shows that 35% to 50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first. [Source: InsideSales.com]
48. There is a 10x drop in lead qualification when you wait longer than 5 minutes to respond, and a 400% decrease when you respond within 10 minutes versus 5 minutes. [Source: Harvard Business Review]
49. The best days to qualify leads are Wednesdays and Thursdays, with a 49% increase on Thursdays compared to Tuesdays. [Source: Harvard Business Review]
50. In a study of 2,241 US companies, only 37% responded within an hour, 53% within a day, 24% after 24 hours, and 23% never responded at all. [Source: Harvard Business Review]
51. 80% of prospects new to their position who are spending $1M+ on new initiatives do so in their first 90 days. [ Source: Craig Elias]
Sales Challenges Statistics
52. 79% of all marketing leads are never converted to sales. [Source: SalesForce]
53. Only 5% of salespeople said leads they receive from marketing were very high quality. [Source: HubSpot]
54. 22% of salespeople don’t know what CRM is. [Source: Hubspot]
55. 65% of customers are lost because of indifference, not because of mistakes. [Source: Blender]
56. 82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared. [Source: Blender]
