9 Infuriating Stats Your Sales Force Doesn’t Want You to Know

Ryan McMullen

Yesterday I was shooting the bull with a client about his sales force, and we agreed that, for the most part, really great salespeople are not good sales managers. We asked ourselves, “Why do you think that is?” The answer is that “normal” salespeople don’t do the simple, everyday things that result in business, and it drives great salespeople crazy!

My high school soccer coach never stopped screaming for the entire game. You would have thought he not only hated coaching but also hated the sport of soccer. The reason he was always so incensed is that he was one of the best, hardest-working soccer players to ever come out of St. Louis and expected all of us to be as good as he was.

It got me thinking: “What is the great salesperson doing that the other 90% are not? Is he better-looking than everybody else? Is he a smoother talker than Bill Clinton? Does he know some secret he isn’t telling us?”

The answer is so simple and infuriating at the same time. That salesperson making all the money is simply following up with his prospects. That’s it.

It’s great because it’s so simple but at the same time very infuriating because all of your salespeople are being paid to do it and they just don’t.

To support the argument, I pulled some very eye-opening stats from the Internet, more specifically LinkedIn and InsideSales.com, that will make every sales manager cringe and pull out just a little more hair.

Here’s how the average salesperson acts:
1. 48% of salespeople never follow up with a prospect.
2. 25% of salespeople make a second contact and stop.
3. 12% of salespeople make three contacts and stop.
4. Only 10% of salespeople make more than three contacts.
 Here’s why they are broke and change jobs every eight months:
5. 2% of sales are made on the first contact.
6. 3% of sales are made on the second contact.
7. 5% of sales are made on the third contact.
8. 10% of sales are made on the fourth contact.
9. 80% of sales are made on the fifth to 12th contact.

Admittedly, there are some other factors involved in just a “contact,” but all things being equal, selling is just a numbers game. We’ve all seen the sales boards that keep track of contacts every single day. That’s because it works!  

This is not theory; this is simple math. If you talk with X number of prospects Y times, you will sell Z. The lesson these awesome salespeople give us is that if you religiously follow up with your prospects to get into that fifth-to-12th-contact window, it is impossible that you will not be successful, if for no other reason than your competitor isn’t doing it.      

Ryan McMullen (ryan@stlouismarketinglab.com) is the owner of St. Louis Marketing Lab.