5 Sales Statistics You Should Know for 2015

5 Sales Statistics You Should Know for 2015

Sales Acceleration

5_Sales_Statistics_You_Should_Know_for_2015It’s almost time to put 2014 in the books, and it’s been an eventful year in the marketing world. If there’s one big takeaway from the last 12 months, it’s that we’re living in a golden age of statistics. This is great news for curious people, regardless of the topic of interest. In the data-driven world of digital marketing, keeping up with numbers is a downright necessity.

Effective marketing and sales management go hand in hand. Even the most skilled, successful salespeople are better at their job when strong marketing delivers qualified leads. And it’s not just about marketing. Statistics can tell you something as simple (and useful) as what day of the week and time is best to contact prospects. So let’s look at five of the most interesting and actionable sales statistics you can use to make 2015 you best year of sales management yet.

Nobody Likes Mondays… or Fridays

The folks at LeadResponse Management conducted a survey on the best days and times to contact leads, and the results are illuminating. Monday consistently scored as the worst day to call, qualify, and convert leads. Friday didn’t score quite as poorly for making contact, but it’s not a good day to close deals.

The best days to call? Tuesday and Thursday, by a large margin. According to the LRM survey, Tuesday and Thursday score 49.7 percent better than the worst days for contacting leads, and 24.9 percent better for converting.

Timing Matters, Too

The time of day that you call also plays a role in how likely you are to find a willing prospect on the other end of the line. As you might expect, the lunch hour is the worst time to call. The interesting thing is that the rest of the midday period, including the hours immediately before and after lunch, is also a poor time to call.

LRM’s survey reveals that your best bet is to call at the beginning or end of the workday. For contacting leads, the 4-6 pm time-slot is 114 percent better than the worst slot. If you’re looking to convert, 8-9 am and 4-5 pm are an incredible 164 percent better than the worst slot. That’s some useful sales management data to pass along to your team.

With Email, the First Hour is Key

According to this handy infographic from GetResponse, more than 23 percent of email opens occur in the first hour after delivery. That may not sound like much, but the number drops off dramatically from there. In the second hour, your odds drop to 9.5 percent. By the fourth hour after delivery, your email has less than a five percent chance of being opened.

The best hours to send email are from 8-9 am, when most people are first checking their messages, and in the early afternoon, when people are beginning to wind down their day. Early evening hours can also be good, but you’ll face a lot of competition for the customer’s attention during that time.

Social Minus Analytics Equals Trouble

From Hubspot’s endless supply of interesting facts comes this gem: 53 percent of social marketers don’t measure their results. 83 percent of marketers said that social was an important part of their marketing plan. You don’t need an advanced statistics degree to see that those numbers don’t add up.

Analytics can be intimidating, but the going through the process of constant improvement is the best way to keep your business running strong. You’ll learn just as much about what you’re doing well as you will about which areas need improvement. There’s simply no good reason for a modern marketer to ignore analytics.

SEO Wins Big Over Outbound

Hubspot also has some valuable info on the quality of leads from different sources. The numbers are eye-opening, even if you’re already familiar with the benefits of inbound marketing. Leads generated through outbound methods like direct mail and print ads have a 1.7 percent close rate. Not exactly a ringing endorsement.

Leads generated through SEO, on the other hand, demonstrated a 14.6 percent close rate. And that’s only considering SEO, without factoring in all of the other lead-generation sources of inbound. There’s no getting around the hard data. Inbound is much more effective than outbound, and the gap is growing.


Overall, the data highlights the constantly evolving nature of marketing in the digital world. The great thing about complex data is that it often reveals simple truths, and that’s no different when it comes to sales management. In this case, those truths are to contact customers when they want to be contacted, use analytics to improve your sales process, and leverage the public’s preference for inbound marketing. Simple stuff, but still a great way to start your 2015.

 

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