The success of a company’s Sales and Marketing teams lies in their ability to convert leads and prospects into customers. One vital factor in doing so is how well Sales organizations follow up with the inbound leads that Marketing generates to qualify them.

In our most recent Sales Effectiveness Benchmark Report, Conversica commissioned independent researchers to secretly shop 1,177 companies across the technology, telecommunications and media & entertainment industries. This report analyzes their efforts to engage with inbound leads and identifies trends in lead engagement strategies.

Companies and industries were graded using four key elements of lead engagement, which we identify as the 4Ps of sales effectiveness:

• -Promptness: How quickly did a company follow up on an inquiry with a personalized response?
• -Persistence: How many attempts did the company make to follow up with the lead?
• -Personalization: To what extent was the response personalized? Did the response move the conversation forward?
• -Performance: Did the email successfully reach the lead’s primary Gmail inbox? Or did it land in Promotions, Social, or Spam?

The findings from this report can help you understand how your company measures up with your sales effectiveness relative to others in your industry, which factors are strong indicators of success or failure, and what measures you can take to align your Marketing and Sales teams with best practices.

Major finding from the Sales Effectiveness Benchmark Report
Our target industries struggled with thier sales effectiveness in several key areas:

• -Delivering prompt messages to our secret shopper with roughly 50% of companies taking 24 hours or longer to follow up.
• -A third of companies surveyed (33%) attempted to reach our secret shopper between 3 and 15 times.
• -Almost 50% of companies surveyed made little to no attempt to personalize their lead follow-up communications. Organizations need robust automated solutions to deliver more personalized messages to resonate with their inbound leads.
• -Too many messages coming from our surveyed companies fell into the Social and Promotions folders rather than the Gmail Primary inbox.
• -In the overall sales effectiveness grade distribution, the Technology industry performed the best, with 10% of companies earning an overall A.

Download a complimentary copy of the Sales Effectiveness Benchmark Report for additional insights and best practices to improving your organizations overall sales effectiveness.