What does a Salesman do ?

6. There are 8 % more sales controllers per sales manager and the trend is accelerating

Not much of a surprise neither. With more data, companies need more resources to analyse it.

In the past years, the average number of sales controllers per each sales manager kept going up.

Using data from the employment agency in Germany, by an 8 %. Studies in other OECD countries indicate a similar trend.

In the USA for example, the number of management analysts is growing at an annual 14 %, almost three times faster than the growth of sales managers.

7. Half of all B2B purchases will be made directly online by 2018

If your company does not support an online channel, is time to get worried. B2B buyers expect to make around of 50 % of their purchases online, without the intervention of a sales rep.

8. 80 % of buyers say “no” four times before saying “yes”. However, 92 % of sales representatives give up after four negative answers

This fact is a killer one. It means that only one in ten salespeople stand a chance to close a deal. Of course, this might vary from one industry to another. How many follow-ups does it take in your case? Are you not measuring this? You should.

9. An average B2B sales lead in technology costs $ 31

The average cost of a B2B sales lead fluctuates broadly by industry. Leads for marketing products/services ($ 32) and technology ($ 31) are at the low end, followed by business/finance ($ 43). At $ 60 each, healthcare leads are most expensive.

10. The average marketing budget of a tech company is 4.3 % of its total turnover

This comes from a 2016 survey conducted by bitkom among 1,300 of its German members in managing functions.

Only two-thirds of this marketing budget is invested online (32 %).