40+ Must-Know Sales Follow-Up Statistics & Facts for 2024
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Any successful business knows how crucial it is to follow up with potential customers after their first interaction with your brand. Whether it’s in the form of an email or a phone call, the options are endless. However, you’ll still find those who struggle to come to terms with the need to follow up.
I’ve worked in sales for several years, so I thoroughly understand the importance of keeping in touch with potential customers. The benefits are limitless. But if you’re looking for a good reason to start following up, I’ll give you more than 40.
I’ve listed 40+ key sales follow-up statistics you must keep in mind that demonstrate the importance of following up with your customers.
Sales follow-up statistics top picks
Before we dive into the various categories of statistics in greater detail, here’s a list of the ones I consider the most important. These will help set the foundation for you to realize the benefits of following up with potential customers, so here they are.
Sales representatives often spend up to 40% of their time finding prospects to call.
Customer satisfaction now ranks as the #1 metric for sales performance, beating individual and team quotas.
The best time of the day to make sales calls is between 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM.
About 95% of salespersons say they’re unable to find the right content to send their prospects.
28% of marketers use generative AI to create and answer emails.
48% of sales representatives struggle to communicate their product’s value to the customer.
Sales representatives only spend 2 hours a day selling their products or services to a customer.
General sales follow-up statistics
In this section, I’ll take you through some general statistics that will help paint a picture of the state of sales follow-ups in 2024.
Sales representatives can use up to 40% of their time simply finding prospects to call. Due to a lack of an existing database or data sharing between departments, sales professionals can waste a lot of their time looking for information.
Only about 5% of your market is likely to be looking to buy at any given point in time, and just about 40% is ready to start buying. This is why it’s crucial to devise a sales strategy that informs, intrigues, and convinces your audience to buy from you.
Customer satisfaction is now the primary or #1 metric for sales performance. It has outranked individual and team quotas.
While 70% of salespeople were active on LinkedIn in 2018, the number grew to 84% in 2020.
Only about 8% of salespersons follow up with potential customers five times. As you can see, only a small fraction of salespersons are likely to be successful, and now you know what it takes to make that sale!
49% of salespersons rely on data to assess their sales performance and prospect new sales. This helps them improve aspects such as the time from the first contact to the final sale, the number of touches it takes to prime a sale, and so on. The key is to convince using information, and not persuasion.
A Marketo study found that the subject line word count that attracted the highest open rate was seven words, at 46.2%. When it comes to using email for sales, the subject line is crucial to ensure leads click on it.
The word count of email bodies that received the highest open rate was 144 words at 2.7%.
Sales follow-up response time statistics
If the follow-up statistics in sales mentioned above have demonstrated one thing, it’s that generating sales takes time. Only a small fragment of customers are likely to be convinced on the first attempt to contact them. Persistence, as is often said, is key. Here are a few statistics that help paint a picture of what sales response times truly look like in 2024.
Next-day email follow-ups reduce the chance of receiving a response by 11%. A prospect will typically need 2-3 days to respond.
Waiting for three days to follow up via email increases the chances of responses by 31%.
Waiting for a period of five days reduces the chances of receiving a response to 24%. While it’s essential to give prospects time to do their homework, neglecting them for too long can lead to them moving on to a potential competitor or deciding not to buy at all.
The best time of the day to make sales calls for the highest responses is between 4:00 PM and 5:00 PM. The difference between the number of conversations during this hour and between 11:00 AM and 12:00 PM is a whopping 71%.
Sales follow-up productivity statistics
If you think most sales representatives spend a major portion of their time contacting leads, you’d be wrong. In fact, most of them spend hundreds of hours logging data and performing other such tasks that take away from their bandwidth to be able to qualify leads.
In this section, I’ll shed some light on a few key productivity-related sales follow-up statistics so you can make informed decisions about how to allocate your time and resources.
Today, every sales process has an average of five decision-makers. If parties fail to collaborate in a timely manner, this can often lead to costly delays.
According to Statista, with 77% of sales professionals conducting more video or virtual meetings, the trend of digital selling has been on a steady rise.
Only about 35.2% of a sales representative’s time is actually spent selling a product or service.
43% of sellers state that access to data on buyers’ intent is critical to their sales process. Yet, a huge percentage of sales professionals don’t have access to such data, hindering their ability to convert leads into customers.
Only about 28% of sales representatives met their quotas in 2023. This is a result of multiple factors: time spent on activities other than selling, the lack of automated sales processes, and not contacting leads at the right time and frequency.
Sales representatives who capitalize on social selling are 51% more likely to meet their quotas at the very least when compared to those who don’t.
About 95% of salespersons say they’re unable to find the right content to send their prospects. This is primarily because content and sales teams in businesses aren’t aligned.
Sales follow-up mistakes and challenges statistics
When working in sales, there’s always room for error. After all, with so much information, it can be hard to understand the right strategy, and it also takes time for businesses to learn from experience. In this section, I shed some light on statistics that highlight follow-up mistakes and challenges that sales representatives often face.
The #1 challenge for sales professionals and marketers is that AI tools often provide information that is inaccurate.
Only 27% of sales professionals and marketers are very confident that they would know if the information given to them by AI tools was inaccurate.
About 45% of sales professionals say that their biggest challenge with interacting with prospects is incomplete data. This is because entering data into CRMs is a low priority for many sellers.
About 64% of employees reported making embarrassing typos or mistakes when sending emails. On the sales front, this can have a major impact on a brand’s professionalism and can prove to be a major barrier in their attempts to turn leads into buying customers.
86% of sales representatives say that their deals stalled or fell through because a key stakeholder left their client or prospective company. The trick is to narrow down your tech stack to only the most necessary tools that truly help streamline a sales representative’s work.
About 28% of sales representatives state that the biggest reason leads back out of the sales process is that it is too long. This is a siren call for greater efficiency in business operations.
Sales technology statistics
Leveraging technology in sales offers a host of benefits. It can help streamline workflows by automating tasks that sales representatives often end up doing manually. In this section, I’ll run you through a few key statistics that highlight the trend in terms of sales technology and automation.
81% of sales professionals say that using AI reduces their overall task time by automating a range of processes that would otherwise have to be performed manually.
55% of buyers state that working remotely has made the buying process a lot easier.
61% of sales representatives say that using AI can make the process of prospecting far more personalized. It, therefore, increases the chances of customers making a purchase.
Sales professionals are increasingly using generative AI for a range of processes - 76% to write copy, 63% to analyze market data, and 62% to generate image assets.
28% of marketers make use of generative AI to create and answer emails. This shows the increasing recognition of the value technology can offer in the sales world when implemented correctly.
Among the various tools available today, about 50% of sellers make use of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tools, 45% rely on sales intelligence, and 42% make use of sales planning tools in their tech stack.
Top sales representatives spend about 18% more time, on average, updating their CRMs than others. Doing so significantly helps them personalize their communication at a time when customers are increasingly demanding the same.
29% of sales professionals say that reducing the number of tools in their tech stack can help them operate far more efficiently.
About 63% of leaders in the sales sector state that leveraging AI increases their chances of competing with other businesses in their industry.
In 2023, 61% of sales leaders stated that they intend to automate their CRM software to make their sales workflow a lot more efficient.
Salespersons statistics
Salespersons or sales representatives form the backbone of any sales department, and their role is key to generating greater revenue. This section offers statistics on their perspective on their organizations’ approach to sales, their challenges, and their workflow.
In an average 8-hour work day, sales representatives spend only two hours selling their business’ product or service.
Furthermore, sales representatives spend an average of one hour a day on administrative tasks.
Only about 30% of sales professionals state that their company’s sales and marketing departments are strongly aligned.
48% of sales representatives state that they struggle with communicating their product’s or service’s value to the customer. Added to this is the fact that they also struggle with demonstrating their industry expertise and keeping customers engaged during virtual meetings.
While 76% of sales leaders intend to spend more on content creation, 65% of the total sales content generated by B2B businesses ends up going unused.
Wrapping up
The world of sales is changing with every passing year and with changes in the technology available. In this guide, I’ve listed 42 sales follow-up statistics that will help you navigate the world of sales, particularly so when it comes to the art of following up with customers.
A few key highlights are that salespersons must remain consistent in their follow-ups to increase their chances of turning leads into buying customers and that customers increasingly demand personalized communication that adds value to their lives. Additionally, recording customer behavior is critical to creating the aforementioned personalized communication, and this is where an AI note-taking tool can help.
Notta, for example, is an AI-powered notetaker app that can help you document your customers’ preferences and pain points so you can tailor your communication to ensure you increase your chances of making a sale.
References
IRC Sales Solutions: IRC Sales Solutions - Learn the strategy and structure needed to revolutionize your sales.
CMO Alliance: Only 5% of your market are ready to buy - what do you do?
LinkedIn: The LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2020
Marketing Donut: Why you must follow up leads
Marketo: What email subject line length works best? - marketo blog
Regie: July 2023 sales email benchmark report: Outbound findings
CallHippo: Infographic - the best time to make sales calls in 2024
Salesforce: Salesforce State of Sales Report
Brevet: 21 Mind-Blowing Sales Stats
Grammarly: Inbox insecurity
Salesforce: 10 statistics that reveal the future of sales
Hubspot: Hubspot's 2024 State of Sales Report: How 1400+ pros will navigate AI & Other Trends
Salesforce: New research: 60% of marketers say generative AI will transform their role, but worry about accuracy
Hubspot: The Hubspot Blog's state of AI report [key findings from 1300+ business professionals]
LinkedIn: LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022
HubSpot: Sales Trends Report
Prezentor: Time is money - especially in sales!
HubSpot: Hubspot's 2024 State of Sales Report: How 1400+ pros will navigate AI & Other Trends
Prezentor: The State of B2B Sales in 2023
HubSpot: 78 key sales statistics that'll help you sell smarter in 2024
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