It certainly feels like connecting with companies to develop into strong b2b sales leads at just the right time is harder and more important than it has ever been before. I wanted to see if my perception was accurate, so spent some time researching.
HubSpot's State of Inbound Report is one of the world's most respected reports on the top sales & marketing challenges and priorities companies face today and indeed, I ended up finding some valuable information on this subject, to see if my hunch was accurate or way off base.
Specifically, HubSpot's 2017 State of Inbound recorded responses from 6,399 respondents in 141 countries.
Here are some interesting takeaways pertaining to the state of sales prospecting:
1.) Regarding sales challenges, HubSpot asked the question -- "What is more difficult to do in sales compared to 2 to 3 years ago?" One of the top 5 responses in every geography across the globe was "identifying/prospecting good leads."
2.) The top sources of sales come from leads directly sourced by reps, followed by referrals, not those sourced by Marketing.
So what is interesting is that while prospecting directly by a sales rep is clearly getting harder, companies are simultaneously becoming more dependent on it as their top source for b2b sales leads.
Thus, solutions that can make a rep's sales prospecting process more efficient & effective, like leveraging sales trigger events, will clearly benefit organizations.
Perhaps more time & investment should be spent on innovative technology to help identify & connect with potentially good fit companies at just the right time, since many of the best sales will not come from companies and contacts that already in a database/CRM.
B2B lead generation is quickly changing and I believe the most successful companies will be the first ones to leverage innovative tools to meet these challenges.
