Case Studies

Best-in-Class Performance

In September and October 2011, Aberdeen surveyed 291 end-user organizations to learn about their sales performance management practices. Aberdeen used the following four key performance criteria to distinguish the selling organizations within Best-in-Class companies:

• 83% of sales reps achieved annual quota in the last measured year, compared with 51% among Industry Average firms and 22% within Laggard companies.
• 23.1% average year-over-year growth in corporate revenue, versus 7.2% for Industry Average firms and a 5.9% decline among Laggards.
• 9.7% average year-over-year improvement in average deal size, compared with 1.9% for Industry Average companies and a 0.4% decline for Laggards.
• 1.4% improvement in (reduction of) sales cycle, versus declines of (lengthening cycles) 0.9% and 7.1% for Industry Average and Laggard respondents.

Competitive Maturity Assessment

Survey results show that the firms enjoying Best-in-Class performance share several common characteristics, including:

• 85% of their sales reps are measured on both quantitative and qualitative goals
• 82% report that their Sales Performance Management (SPM) process has buy-in from corporate senior leadership
• 78% deploy customized sales performance reporting from historical, current or anticipated individual/team sales achievements