Few outside of the sales industry may know this, but LinkedIn puts out a Global State of Sales report each year. The focus of the last report was centered around how the pandemic disrupted the sales process for the better, how the rise of tech stacks is impacting performance, and how top performers are leveraging these trends to get ahead.
With LinkedIn being the leading social media platform for B2B sales, many sales representatives and managers will use these findings to adjust and confirm they’re utilizing best practices, but there are many takeaways Marketing teams should acknowledge as well.
What sales learned – research is king
One thing that is undoubtedly true is the fact that the top sales performers all do a lot more research than other sellers. A total of 76% of the top sales performers phone leads for sale stated that they “always” do research before reaching out to a potential sales prospect. Only 47% of other sellers made the same claim.
This is in-line with the report’s findings that true “cold” calls are on the way out, and “warm” calls are the standard of top performers with 88% of sellers saying they engage in “warm” calls.
The report states that sellers need to do “significantly more” research on buyers prior to reaching out than they did before the pandemic.
What sales learned – sales tech stacks are growing
The overwhelming majority of sellers said they planned to use sales technology “significantly more” or “more” often this year than in years prior.
The top ranked most important BW Lists types of sales tech were CRM and Sales Intelligence tools which tied for first.
Sellers say in large part that incomplete data is a major problem for them. Nearly half of all sellers (45%) say that they have lost sales because they have incomplete data that does not fully correspond with what they know to be true about their customers.
Using buyer intent technology to find prospects who are ready to buy right now is increasingly central to the sale process.
