2020 State of Sales for Small to Mid-Size Businesses | Vector Sales Advisors

2020 State of Sales for Small to Mid-Size businesses

Data shows companies need to go back to the basics to grow sales.

Sales Agility Assessment shows 73% of companies score poorly in managing their sales team and processes effectively

Built a $2.2M pipeline and 150+ new sales opportunities in one year

Sales Xceleration provides potential and new clients the ability to participate in a Sales Agility Assessment before an engagement starts. This assessment provides companies with a baseline on how well they are doing in all of the critical areas that drive sales growth.

Participants answered a number of questions focused on activities over 4 key areas:

  • Sales Strategy
  • Sales Methodology
  • Sales Analysis
  • Sales Organization

Questions offered multiple-choice answers, with each answer assigned a specific number of points. Lack of tangible effort in the area queried scored zero points. Study-wide scores were then tallied into a grading scale of Excellent, Average, Below Average and Poor.

The one significant change we saw from the 2018 to the 2019 data was in the area of sales performance. In 2019, 3% more organizations rated their sales performance as Poor, while Below Average changed from 25% to 23%, Average changed from 6% to 3%, and Excellent changed from 0% to 1%.

2019 Small to Mid-Size Business Rating of Their Overall Sales Performance

business rating on sales performance

Fundamentals appear to be sorely lacking

Among Companies Polled, A Paltry 1 In 10 Seems To Have Built A Strong Sales Infrastructure

A review of combined Poor/Below Average scores across the 4 key areas show just how many companies are struggling with the basics:

companies struggling with sales strategy

As outlined above, 73% of small to mid-size businesses rate themselves as doing Poor overall in managing their sales.

Small to mid-size companies continue to struggle implementing the fundamentals. The biggest area they are declining in is Sales Methodology. This includes things like not having a documented sales process, lack of clarity on roles and territories, etc. They need the vital tools in place to set the sales team up for success. The other three key areas all remained relatively flat from 2018 to 2019.

The overall scores of how companies rated themselves in the 4 key sales areas had very little change from 2018 to 2019:

What does all this mean?

We see small to mid-size businesses struggling to build the right tools and processes to manage and drive growth.

They need to focus on getting the right people in the right seats, properly train them for the role, give them clear goals, sales processes and then track, review status and hold them accountable to those goals.

Top 10 lowest performing areas

90%

of companies

  • Don’t provide any structured onboarding
  • Don’t have a good understanding of how likely they are to close a sale
  • Don’t have a sales process that is followed
  • Have not tested their hypothesis for the markets they serve

91%

of companies

  • Don’t issue individual sales rep quotas
  • Don’t know if their sales training is effective

92%

of companies

  • Don’t consider ROI when deciding where to spend their marketing budget
  • Reported there is no sales process, therefore it isn’t understood by anyone

94%

of companies

  • Don’t typically do much training

97%

of companies

  • Have not done a thorough analysis of their competition

About Sales Xceleration

We help businesses build a path to more sales. We do this by providing an Outsourced Sales Consultant to small businesses and mid-size corporations that want to launch or expand their sales operations to drive revenue growth. Our Sales Consultants take a hands-on approach and do the work for our Clients. They build the right processes, use the right tools and ensure the right salespeople are in place. Our unwavering objective is to help business leaders build a solid sales foundation so they can enjoy sales growth for years to come.

About the Data

We offer a 48-question Sales Agility Assessment to potential and existing clients. This assessment is typically taken by the Owner, President, CEO and/or Sales Leader. It delves into how well they are currently performing on the core sales components a company must execute well to run an effective sales department. The results of the scores, compiled from 1,283 completed assessments across all industries, are what was used to compile these insights.

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