Sales leaders, be honest — you're curious to know what your peers are up to. Having access to sales leadership stats is a helpful tool to have in your arsenal. With the unconventional challenges faced by many leaders, the ability to share information and ask "how are you managing?" is crucial.
If you don't have the time or the resources to commission your own data, you're in luck. We've compiled a list of important data points for you.
Dive into benchmarks that can help you measure your team’s progress.
Stats from HubSpot’s 2022 Sales Strategy & Trends Report
Other Key Sales Trends in 2022
B2B Sales Leadership Statistics
1. Exceeding targets continues to be the top goal of salespeople in 2022. In a HubSpot survey, 45% of respondents cited exceeding targets as a top priority.
2. Sales teams are placing a greater focus on establishing trust with their clients. Of salespeople, 31% say establishing trust and rapport is key to making a sale.
3. 56% of sales leaders say being engaged and attentive is the top method to gain a client's trust.
4. According to 29% of sales leaders, finding common ground is another way to win over a future client.
5. 60% of salespeople say taking the time to understand the key business challenges customers face is an important factor in making a sale in the B2B marketplace.
6. 90% of sales professionals upsell to their existing clients.
7. 64% of sales leaders say the key to upselling to existing clients is to understand their needs and goals.
8. Of those surveyed by HubSpot, over half said 11-30% of their revenue comes from upselling.
Alt: sales leadership stats, percentage of company revenue coming from upselling
9. Meanwhile, 80% of sales professionals also employ cross-selling techniques.
10. Nearly 60% of sales professionals gain one to 40 new leads a week.
11. Of those new leads, 78% of sales professionals take the prospective client through the entire sales process.
12. Personalization is key to offering solutions to clients. In fact, 49% of consumers say they will likely become repeat customers after a personalized shopping experience, according to 2022 research from Twilio.
13. There’s danger in failing to deliver on personalization. Twilio found that 62% of consumers saya brand will lose their loyalty if it fails to deliver a personalized experience. That’s up from 45% in 2021.
14. 72% of top performers report using buyer-first selling. In other words, these sales professionals have designed their sales processes to put the needs of the buyers first.
15. Serving existing customers is a greater priority than finding new prospects. That’s likely linked to the cost of acquiring new customers. In 2013, merchants lost on average $9 for every new customer acquired, according to SimplicityDX. Today, sellers lose $29 for every new customer acquired.
16. Existing relationships also become more important during an uncertain economic outlook. Salesforce found that 85% of sales reps cited the increased importance of long-term customer relationships as a result of today’s economic conditions.
17. Warm calling, or reaching out to a prospect your company has a prior connection to, has become a large focus for sales teams. According to LinkedIn, almost nine in 10 sellers conduct warm calls.
18. Additionally, LinkedIn found that only 21% of buyers want to be cold-called. Email, events, and social media connections are among the most-preferred options.
19. Conversational sales will be a big trend on the horizon. According to Zendesk, 7 8% of sales professionals reportedthat conversational sales will be important to their companies over the next year.
20. Using a customer relationship manager (CRM) appropriately continues to aid in the sales process. 22% of sales leaders say leveraging their CRM to its fullest potential is one of their top goals in 2022, according to HubSpot research.
21. Another 85% of sales professionals say their CRM is somewhat to very important to the sales process.
22. 54% of sales leaders say tracking CRM usage is a good indicator of sales performance.
23. Calls made, follow-up emails sent, and CRM usage are the top three metrics sales leaders suggest tracking for sales performance.
24. In addition to CRMs, most teams use some form of sales tech. According to LinkedIn’s 2022 State of Sales report, 91% of sellers at large companiesuse sales tech once a week.
25. LinkedIn also found sales technology improves performance. In fact, 80% of sellers who reached over 150% of their quotause sales technology at least once weekly. Only 58% of other sellers use sales tech once a week.
26. According to Zendesk, most sales teams use an average of 4.7 sales tools. An additional 46% said they plan to add additional tools in the next year.
27. Teams only spend a quarter of their time selling, according to LinkedIn. Administrative tasks, training, and meetings continue to take up most of sales professionals’ time.
28. Your marketing team plays an important role in sourcing leads. According to 2022 HubSpot data, 42% of salespeople expressed they need higher quality leads from their marketing team.
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29. In 2021, 68% of sales leaders planned to implement a hybrid or fully remote sales model.
30. 64% of sales leaders that have adopted a hybrid or fully remote sales model met or exceeded their target quota in 2020.
31. It’s time to embrace virtual selling if you haven’t already. According to LinkedIn data, 55% of buyers reportedthat working remotely has made buying easier.
32. Phone calls, emails, and video chats are. the top three methodsfor remote selling in 2022, according to HubSpot research.
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33. 59% of sales leaders have a dedicated sales enablement team, according to HubSpot research.
34. 65% of sales leaders that reported investingin their sales enablement team report they outperformed their revenue targets.
35. 50% of sales enablement leaders expect budgets and staffing levels to increasein the next year, according to research from Gartner. Staff compensation and benefits are the largest portions of the sales enablement budget.
36. Research from Garner suggests that it’s time to change your sales enablement metrics. The company found sales enablement teams currently track metrics that measure their function’s impact on pipeline conversion and size. Instead, the consulting group suggests focusing on seller behaviorsas a measure of the team’s impact.
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37. 22% of sales leaders believe the sales process is too long and could be more efficient, according to HubSpot's 2022 Sales Strategy and Trends report.
38. 72% of sales leadersare prioritizing improving their sales processes, according to Gartner.
39. Gartner also found that among chief sales officers, 61% identifiedimproving sales managers' effectiveness as a top priority.
40. Other top CSO priorities includeincreasing returns on key global accounts (62%) and improving account management (62.3%).
41. Alignment of sales and marketing is an important goal for many sales teams. 29% of sales leaders are making it a priority to collaborate across departments, according to HubSpot data.
42. 72% of sales leaders acknowledge that they need to upskill their sales teams, according to Zendesk. Tech-savvy sales reps are often seen as top performers.
43. In the U.S., job opportunities for sales managers are expected to grow by 4% through 2029.
44. Only 31% of sales managers had strong confidence in their sales team’s ability to meet key business objectives, according to research conducted by The Brooks Group,
45. 74% of sales managers oversee their own sales accounts in addition to managing their teams.
46. Selling skills are the number one area of focus for 38% of sales managers when coaching their reps.
47. One study from Second Nature Sales Coaching found that 96% of respondents either agreed or strongly agreedthat effective sales coaching positively impacted their salespeople’s performance.
48. C-suite leaders from buying companies are 2.2 times more likely to participate in sales calls than C-suite leaders from sales teams.
49. By 2025, 60% of B2B sales organizations will move from experience-based selling to data-based selling.
50. According to Salesforce, 84% of B2B sales professionals saythat digital transformation has accelerated in the last four years.
51. The same report found that video conferencing, artificial intelligence, and mobile sales apps have become the most valuable digital toolsfor their teams.
52. For B2B sales teams, the number of stakeholders and decision-makers involved in the buying process is a notable obstacle. On average, seven people are involved in buying decisions for companies that have between 100-500 employees.
53. According to LinkedIn, 1 in 5 B2B decision makers change roles annually.
Did any of these data points surprise you? As companies and leaders continue to adapt to our changing economic landscape, we’ll add new data and information to this post. For more pertinent data, check out these 85 Sales Statistics That Will Help You Sell Smarter.