Sales is lifeline of any company and needless to say that sales reps play the crucial role of bringing in cash flow by acquiring new business deals. They act as the interface between the company and the buyer till the deal is not closed. One of the most important and initial step in sales is prospecting – the process of qualifying an individual or an organisation who has demonstrated the authority and desire to make a purchase decision along with the estimated capital requirement.

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In this deck we have compiled the top 50 sales prospecting stats so that you can implement them in the sales strategy.

[slideshare id=60640152&doc=salesstats-160408052543]

You can also go through the stats just by scrolling down.

1. The First viable vendor to reach a decision maker has a 74% chance to win the deal if they manage to set the buying vision. [Source: Forrester]

2. Best time to email prospects is 8AM and 3PM. [Source: GetResponse]

3. Only 25% of leads can become prospects and get into the sales funnel. [Source: Gleanster Research]

4. 84% of the B2B decision makers start the buying process with a referral. [Source: IDC]

5. It takes an average of eight cold call attempts to reach a prospect. In 2007, this average was 3.68. [Source: InsideSales.com]

6. Thursday is the best day to prospect; Wednesday is second best; Tuesday is the worst. [Source: InsideSales.com]

7. Following up with web leads within 5 minutes makes you 9 times more likely to engage with them. [Source: InsideSales.com]

8. Less than 25% of companies who receive a web lead will respond by phone. [Source: InsideSales.com]

9. Only 27% of web generated leads get contacted at all. [Source: InsideSales.com]

10. 50% of buyers choose the vendor that responds first. [Source: InsideSales.com]

11. Best time to cold call prospects is 4-5 PM; 8-10 AM second best; 11AM-2PM worst. [Source: Kellogg School of Business]

12. Referred customers have a 16% higher lifetime value. [Source: Journal of Marketing]

13. Only 11% of salespeople ask clients for referrals, although 91% of clients are open to provide referral. [Source: Dale Carnegie]

14. You are 4.2 times more likely to get an appointment if you have personal connection with a buyer. [Source: Sales benchmark index]

1. 50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting. [Source: The B2B Lead]

2. Sales reps ignore 50% of marketing leads. [Source: The B2B Lead]

3. The average sales development rep makes 52 calls daily. [Source: The Bridge Group]

4. It takes 18 calls to connect with a single buyer. [Source: Topo]

5. Call back rate are less than 1% and less than 24% of sales emails are opened. [Source: Topo]

6. Texting after contact leads to a 112.6% higher lead to engagement conversion. [Source: Velocify]

7. At any given time, only 3% of your market is actively buying. 56% are not ready, 40% are poised to begin. [Source: Vorsight]

8. 63% of people requesting information on your company today will not purchase for at least three months – and 20% will take more than 12 months to buy. [Source: Marketing Donut]

9. B2B buyers 5 times more likely to engage when they are introduced to the seller. [Source: LinkedIn]

10. 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a Web site can offer. [Source: Forrester]

11. 38% of respondents said they had made their purchase due to the live chat session itself. [Source: Forrester]

12. Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. [Source: Forrester]

13. 46% of marketers with mature lead management processes have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads. [Source: Forrester]

14. 25% of marketers who adopt mature lead management processes report that sales teams contact prospects within one day. [Source: Forrester]

15. 10% of marketers without mature lead management processes reported that sales team follow-up within one day time. [Source: Forrester]

16. 86% of B2B buyers access business-related content on mobile devices. [Source: Genwi]

17. 50% of the generated leads are qualified, but not ready to buy right now. [Source: Gleanster Research]

18. The chance of successfully qualifying a lead drops 4 times after waiting just 10 minutes to respond. [Source: LeadResponseManagement.org]

19. Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment. [Source: Leap Job]

20. Eighty percent of sales require five follow-up calls after the first client meeting. [Source: Marketing Donut]

21. 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.[Source: MarketingSherpa]

22. Email marketing has two times higher return than cold calling. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

23. 79% of B2B marketers don’t have a systematic approach to lead scoring. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

24. 57% of B2B organizations identify ‘converting qualified leads into paying customers’ as a top funnel priority. [Source: MarketingSherpa]

25. Sales team will have 56% greater chance to attain quota if they engage buyer before the buyer contacts a seller. [Source: Sales benchmark index]

26. 73% of executives prefer to work with sales professionals referred by someone they know. [Source: Sales benchmark index]

27. 57% of the buyer’s journey is completed before the buyer talks to sales. [Source: CEB]

28. A direct referral lead is over 36x more valuable than a lead generated by a cold call, 10x more valuable than a trade show lead, and 4x more valuable than a web lead. [Source: InsideSales.com]

43. Customers believe that sales reps are 88% knowledgeable on product and only 24% on business expertise. [Source: Corporate Visions]

1. Visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text. A good reason to include gripping visuals in your sales collaterals, emails and marketing content. [Source: 3M Corporation]

2. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non nurtured leads. [Source: Annuitas Group]
   

3. Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads. [Source: Annuitas Group]

4. 44% of inside sales pipeline comes from marketing, and inside sales average dials are down 20% year-over-year. [Source: Bridge Group Inc]

5. Top sellers use LinkedIn six or more hours per week. [Source: Jill Konrath]

6. Companies that excel at lead nurturing have 9% more sales reps making quota. [Source: CSO Insights]

7. 75% of buyers want marketers to curb the sales-speak in their content. [Source: DemandGen Report]

51. Referral leads convert 30% better than leads generated from other marketing channels. [Source: R&G Technologies]