Salesforce Looks At The State Of Sales

Salesforce just released its 2015 State of Sales Report looking at industry trends after surveying over 2,300 sales leaders around the world. It looks at priorities, behaviors, and technology in use b...
Salesforce Looks At The State Of Sales
Written by Chris Crum
  • Salesforce just released its 2015 State of Sales Report looking at industry trends after surveying over 2,300 sales leaders around the world. It looks at priorities, behaviors, and technology in use by sales teams and finds that the best performing teams are more likely to maximize technology, especially when it comes to analytics and mobile.

    “Technology is rapidly becoming the difference between big quarters and big misses,” said Mike Rosenbaum, executive vice president of Sales Cloud at Salesforce. “The companies who deliver strong sales results not only use modern CRM platforms to gain critical insight into all the customer touchpoints, but are also deploying newer technologies like sales analytics to sell smarter and mobile to respond anytime, anywhere.”

    The report finds that high-performing sales teams are three and a half times more likely to use sales analytics than under-performing teams, and predictive analytics represents “the next phase of analytics innovation.” 19% of those polled are currently using predictive analytics, but Salesforce expects adoption to grow by 135% over the next twelve to eighteen months.

    High-performing sales teams are more than twice as likely to be “heavy tech adopters” than moderate and under-performing teams. Technology accelerates sales processes three times more often for high-performers than for under-performers, it finds.

    “Mobile is becoming a key accelerator for sales,” the company says. “Inspired by consumer adoption, mobile devices and apps are now becoming mainstream for business users,” Today’s highest performing sales reps use mobile apps for everything from lead management to sales forecasting.”

    According to the report, the top sales organizations are about five times more likely to rate their mobile sales capabilities as “outstanding” or “very good,” and 60% of the high-performing teams currently use or are planning to use a mobile sales app. Among those surveyed, mobile sales app use will more than double in the next two years. Over half currently deliver or plan to deliver sales directly via a mobile app in the next two years. A surprising 83% of all sales teams are currently using or planning to use wearables in some form in the next two years.

    “Sales success now begins with a collaborative culture,” Salesforce says. “Creating a culture where sales is the collective responsibility of the entire organization is critical to success. In many cases, that means breaking down silos and unifying sales and marketing processes to get a complete view of the customer.”

    Those with high-performing sales teams are three times as likely to view sales as the responsibility of the entire company. These high-performing teams also largely (93%) rate employee satisfaction as very important.

    You can find the full report here.

    Earlier this week, we looked at another report for the company which examined CPMs across leading social platforms.

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