107 Remarkable Sales Stats That Will Get You Thinking

HubSpot’s Scott Tousley assembled this remarkable list of statistics about sales and marketing. No mention of direct mail (they are HubSpot after all), but still very inspiring. We like re-reading them from time to time.

1. 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up.   [Source: Scripted]
2. The average sales person only makes 2 attempts to reach a prospect.   [Source: Sirius Decisions]
3. 80% of sales require 5 follow-up phone calls after the meeting.   [Source: The Marketing Donut]
4. Research shows that 35-50% of sales go to the vendor that responds first.   [Source:InsideSales.com]
5. If you follow up with web leads within 5 minutes, you’re 9 times more likely to convert them.   [Source: InsideSales.com]
6. 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]
7. Only 25% of leads are legitimate and should advance to sales.   [Source: Gleanster Research]
8. 50% of leads are qualified but not yet ready to buy.   [Source: Gleanster Research]
9. Nurtured leads produce, on average, a 20% increase in sales opportunities versus non-nurtured leads.   [Source: DemandGen Report]
10. Companies that excel at lead nurturing have 9% more sales reps making quota.   [Source: CSO Insights]
11. Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads.   [Source: The Annuitas Group]
12. At any given time, only 3% of your market is actively buying. 56% are not ready, 40% are poised to begin.   [Source: Vorsight]
13. Companies that automate lead management see a 10% or greater increase in revenue in 6-9 months.   [Source: Gartner Research]
14. Lead nurturing emails generate an 8% CTR compared to general email sends, which generate just a 3% CTR.   [Source: HubSpot]
15. Lead nurturing emails get 4-10 times the response rate compared to standalone email blasts.   [Source: SilverPop/DemandGen Report]
16. Businesses that use marketing automation to nurture prospects experience a 451% increase in qualified leads   [Source: ANNUITAS Group]
17. Companies that nurture leads make 50% more sales at a cost 33% less than non-nurtured leads.   [Source: Forrester Research]
18. 25% of marketers who adopt mature lead management processes report that sales teams contact prospects within one day. Only 10% of marketers report the same follow-up time without mature lead management processes.   [Source: Forrester Research]
19. 22% of B2B organizations touch leads with lead nurturing on a weekly basis.   [Source: MarketingSherpa]
20. 65% of B2B marketers have not established lead nurturing.   [Source: MarketingSherpa]
21. In a typical firm with 100-500 employees, an average of 7 people are involved in most buying decision.   [Source: Gartner Group]
22. Nearly 2/3 of B2B marketers identified engaging key decision makers as their top challenge   [Source: Forrester Research]
23. After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember stories. Only 5% remember statistics.  [Source: Dan & Chip Heath]
24. Visuals are processed 60,000x faster in the brain than text. (Lesson: Use visuals in presentations)   [Source: Neo Mammalian Studios]
25. 70% of people make purchasing decisions to solve problems. 30% make decisions to gain something.   [Source: Impact Communications]
26. Customers believe that sales reps are 88% knowledgeable on product and only 24% on business expertise.   [Source: Corporate Visions]
27. 78% of decision makers polled have taken an appointment or attended an event that came from an email or cold call   [Source: DiscoverOrg]
28. 95% of buyers chose a solution provider that “Provided them with ample content to help navigate through each stage of the buying process”   [Source: DemandGen Report]
29. The best times to email prospects are 8am and 3pm.   [Source: GetResponse]
30. Tuesday emails have the highest open rate compared to other weekdays.   [Source: Experian]
31. Personalized emails improve click-through rates by 14%, and conversion rates by 10%.  [Source: Aberdeen Group]
32. Personalized emails including the recipient’s first name in the subject line have higher open rates.   [Source: Retention Science]
33. Relevant emails drive 18 times more revenue than broadcast emails.   [Source: Jupiter Research]
34. An average buyer gets 100+ emails a day, opens just 23%, and clicks on just 2% of them.  [Source: Tellwise]
35. 40% of emails are opened on mobile first – where the average mobile screen can only fit 4-7 words max.   [Source: ContactMonkey]
36. 33% of email recipients open emails based on subject line alone.   [Source: Convince and Convert]
37. Subject lines that create a sense of urgency and exclusivity can give a 22% higher open rate.   [Source: Email Institute]
38. For B2B companies, subject lines that contained the words “alert” and “breaking” perform well.   [Source: Adestra]
39. Subject lines with more than 3 words experience a drop in open rate by over 60%.  [Source: ContactMonkey]
40. Emails with “Free” in the subject line were opened 10% more than those without.   [Source: HubSpot]
41. Emails with “Quick” in the subject line were opened 17% less than those without.   [Source: HubSpot]
42. Emails with no subject all together were opened 8% more than those with a subject line.  [Source: HubSpot]
43. Only 2% of cold calls result in an appointment.   [Source: Leap Job]
44. In 2007 it took an average of 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts.   [Source: TeleNet and Ovation Sales Group]
45. 93% of converted leads are contacted by the 6th call attempt   [Source: Velocify]
46. On the phone, tone is 86% of our communication. Words we actually use are only 14% of our communication.   [Source: ContactPoint]
47. Email marketing has 2X higher ROI than cold calling, networking or trade shows.   [Source: MarketingSherpa]
48. A team of 50 sales reps leave about 1,277 hours of voicemails per month.   [Source: RingDNA]
49. The optimal voicemail message is between 8 and 14 seconds.   [Source: The Sales Hunter]
50. 15% of every sales reps’ time simply leaving voicemails.   [Source: RingLead]
51. 80% of calls go to voicemail, and 90% of first time voicemails are never returned.   [Source: RingLead]
52. The average voicemail response rate is 4.8%.   [Source: InsideSales]
53. The best time to cold call is 4pm – 5pm. The second best time is 8am – 10am. The worst times are 11am and 2pm.   [Source: InsideSales]
54. The best days to call are Wednesdays and Thursdays from 6:45 to 9 a.m. and 4 to 6 p.m.  [Source: RingDNA]
55. The worst days to call are Mondays from 6 a.m. to noon and Fridays in the afternoon.  [Source: RingDNA]
56. Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25-95%   [Source: Bain & Company]
57. 91% of customers say they’d give referrals. Only 11% of salespeople ask for referrals.  [Source: Dale Carnegie]
58. Each year, you’ll lose 14% of your customers.   [Source: BusinessBrief.com]
59. 83% of consumers are comfortable making a referral after a positive experience.   [Source: Texas Tech University]
60. Customers are 4x more likely to buy when referred by a friend.   [Source: Neilsen]
61. The lifetime value of a referred customer is 16% higher than a non-referred customer.  [Source: Journal of Marketing]
62. 65% of a company’s new business is from referrals.   [Source: New York Times]
63. A referred customer is 18% more loyal than a customer acquired through a different method.   [Source: Journal of Marketing]
64. A referred customer spends 13.2% more than a non-referred customer.   [Source: Journal of Marketing]
65. 73% of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperform their sales peers and exceeded quota 23% more often.   [Source: Aberdeen]
66. You are 70% more likely to get an appointment on an unexpected sale if you join LinkedIn Groups.   [Source: Vorsight]
67. Social media has a 100% higher lead-to-close rate than outbound marketing.   [Source: Hubspot]
68. 5% of B2B sales teams consider social media a successful lead generation method.  [Source: Ken Krogue]
69. Sales reps using social selling are 50% more likely to meet or exceed their sales quota.  [Source: Liz Gelb-O’Connor]
70. The top salespeople use LinkedIn at least 6 hours per week.   [Source: The Sales Management Association]
71. 82% of buyers viewed at least 5 pieces of content from the winning vendor.   [Source: Forrester]
72. 57% of the buyer’s journey is completed before the buyer talks to sales.   [Source: Corporate Executive Board]
73. 68% of consumers feel more positive about a brand after consuming content from it.  [Source: iMedia Connection]
74. 44% of inside sales pipeline comes from marketing, and inside sales average dials are down 20% year-over-year.   [Source: Bridge Group Inc]
75. 76% of content marketers are forgetting sales enablement.   [Source: Hubspot]
76. 75% of buyers want marketers to curb the sales-speak in their content.   [Source: DemandGen Report]
77. Businesses with websites of 401-1000 pages get 6x more leads than those with 51-100 pages.   [Source: Hubspot]
78. 68% of B2B businesses use landing pages to garner a new sales lead for future conversion.   [Source: MarketingSherpa]
79. 86% of B2B buyers access business-related content on mobile devices.   [Source: Genwi]
80. An outside sales call costs $308, an inside sales call costs $50.   [Source: PointClear]
81. 46% of high-growth tech companies are growing via inside sales.   [Source: Harvard Business Review]
82. Lost sales productivity and wasted marketing budget costs companies at least $1 trillion a year   [Source: The B2B Lead]
83. 50% of sales time is wasted on unproductive prospecting.   [Source: The B2B Lead]
84. 71% of sales reps say they spend too much time on data entry   [Source: Toutapp]
85. Only 33% of inside sales rep time is spent actively selling.   [Source: CSO Insights]
86. By 2020, customers will manage 85% of their interaction with the enterprise without interacting with a human.   [Source: Gartner]
87. The average sales person makes 8 dials per hour and prospects for 6.25 hours to set 1 appointment.   [Source: Ovation Sales Group]
88. Nearly 57% of B2B prospects and customers feel that their sales teams are not prepared for the first meeting.   [Source: IDC]
89. 88% of missed opportunities were caused because sales couldn’t find or leverage internal resources.   [Source: Qvidian]
90. Companies with aligned sales and marketing generated 208% more revenue from marketing   [Source: MarketingProfs]
91. When sales and marketing teams are in sync, companies became 67% better at closing deals   [Source: Marketo]
92. 61% of B2B marketers send all leads directly to Sales; however, only 27% of those leads will be qualified.   [Source: MarketingSherpa]
93. A whopping 68% of B2B organizations have not identified their funnel.   [Source: MarketingSherpa]
94. Alignment of sales and marketing impacts revenue growth up to 3 times   [Source: Bulldog Solutions]
95. Only 30% of CMOs have a clear process or program to make marketing and sales alignment a priority   [Source: CMO Council]
96. Companies with “dynamic, adaptable sales and marketing processes” reported an average of 10% more sales people on-quota compared to other companies   [Source: CSO Insights]
97. Companies with mature lead generation and management practices have a 9.3% higher sales quota achievement rate.   [Source: CSO Insights]
98. 46% of marketers with mature lead management processes have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads.   [Source: Forrester Research]
99. Sales reps ignore 50% of marketing leads   [Source: The B2B Lead]
100. B2B companies’ inability to align sales and marketing teams has cost them upwards of 10% or more of revenue per year.   [Source: IDC]
101. Just 56% of B2B organizations verify valid business leads before they are passed to Sales   [Source: MarketingSherpa]
102. Only 44% of companies are using any kind of lead scoring system   [Source: DecisionTree]
103. 38% of CMOs said that aligning and integrating sales and marketing was a top priority in 2014.   [Source: CMO Council]
104. Automated & enforced sales processes generate 88% quota attainment.   [Source: Velocify]
105. B2B organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing operations achieved 24% faster three-year revenue growth, and 27% faster three-year profit growth   [Source: SiriusDecisions]
106. Organizations with tightly aligned sales and marketing functions enjoyed 36% higher customer retention rates   [Source: MarketingProfs]
107. 57% of B2B organizations identify ‘converting qualified leads into paying customers’ as a top funnel priority.   [Source: MarketingSherpa]