The Pathway to Sales Productivity for 2011

The results of IDC's annual Sales Productivity Benchmarks survey are in. Many of the technology industries' best and brightest participated in this study, with over $200B in revenue represented by participating companies. The Sales Advisory Service's team conducted interviews with over 90% of these participants to best understand their challenges, confirm the quality of the investment data they provided to IDC and to hear their vision and direction for the future. The objective?. . . provide sales productivity benchmarks and insight into what sales and sales operations executives should do in 2011 to impact sales productivity. Here are just a few of the key IDC guidance areas and accompanying data from this study: (note that no data is provided on a company-specific basis to protect participants' confidentiality)

• Upgrade Your Sales Operations Function: Sales operations needs to be the driving force for productivity improvements across sales, setting its vision for the future and maintaining the path towards this vision. Go to Rise of the Sales Operations Function for guidance on staffing levels and roles and responsibilities to transform this function into the next generation. 
• Elevate Sales Reps' Knowledge: Technology buyers are telling us that they aren't satisfied with the knowledge and service provided by their vendors' sales teams. One sure way to approach this challenge is to better equip our sales reps with the knowledge, insight and skill-sets they need to improve customer engagement. Focus on three key areas to make the greatest impact in 2011:
• Customer Intelligence: Someone from sales must represent sales reps' interests in ensuring that they get the right information and training from the organization to optimize their customer intelligence. (e.g., customer interaction history, share of wallet, role-based intelligence) Sales operations is in an ideal position for this; but regardless of who is responsible within sales, they need to collaborate with marketing and the business intelligence teams.
• Sales Enablement: Sales operations needs to orchestrate the process and technology to get the right information to the right folks at the right time, place and format to move an opportunity forward. Sales enablement should be an organizational strategy, not a tactical maneuver. (e.g., start with the organizational structure first, followed by process and technology)
• Talent Management: Challenges(opportunities) abound: 25% of companies lack a formal, new rep on-boarding process; and it takes 2 years for a new rep to reach 100% productivity. Some ideas: Develop a consistent new rep and ongoing training strategy, with both formal and informal elements; collaborate with HR for staff development (e.g., "we have a program to groom 'super reps' to become managers); and formalize a coaching program (e.g., ~1/3 of first line sales managers' time should be spend coaching).
• Invest in Next Generation Sales Automation (and its adoption!): Start off by getting everyone on the same sales force automation application; and then leverage newer applications and technologies to improve the areas mentioned above. (e.g., OneSource, InsideView or Stratascope for customer intelligence; SAVO, SANT or iCentera for sales enablement) Refer to IDC's Sales & Marketing Automation Framework for additional guidance.
• Get Your Sales Pipeline in Shape: Leverage a sales operations "analyst" to analyze and interpret internal and external data into actionable recommendations for your sales teams. Initial steps will no doubt include cleaning up the data, improving process and technology consistency and then identifying trends and leveraging benchmarks information.
• Establish and Track Operational Metrics: Sample metrics from IDC's Sales Productivity Scorecard include: (averages across all technology companies)
• Sales Budget Ratio (sales spend as a % of revenue): 11.2%
• Sales Staff Spend KPI (staff spend as a % of total sales spend): 78%
• Sales Operations Staff Level: Target 10-15% with 1/4th to 1/3rd represented by a Center of Excellence Team

If you would like to participate in this ongoing study/survey and receive a full overview of the results, please contact Michael Gerard or Irina Zvagelsky.