CHALLENGES AND TOP PRIORITIES IN SALES 2023

Challenges and Top Priorities in Sales 2023

Led by the RAIN Group Centre for Sales Research, a group of analysts examined the responses of 423 sales managers, CSOs and general managers to better understand the main challenges and their top priorities in sales for the next 12 months.

Here are some of the results from the study:

Top 3 Challenges in Sales

• Recruiting and hiring of sales reps
• Improvement of quality and quantity of sales opportunities
• Sales training for sales staff

---

Top 3 Sales Priorities

• Establish value selling: adding value instead of selling products
• Improve the productivity of salespeople and sales teams
• Increase business with existing accounts

---

“This study was particularly fascinating because it not only revealed the current trends in sales today but also the needs that will have to be addressed in the future. Nearly all of these challenges can be met, and all of these priorities can be achieved by focusing on three sales promotion strategies If sales managers are able to improve sales productivity, develop multi-skilled salespeople and support sales managers, they are in an excellent position to drive success,” said Mike Schultz, co-president of the RAIN Group and director of research.

---

Top 3 Sales Strategies for 2023

• Productivity – Improve sales productivity
• Diversity – Develop multi-skilled sellers
• Enablement – Leverage sales managers
  

  ---

Even if many people will still be sitting in their home office, the expensive resource of sales will remain clearly and strictly controlled in the future. As an entrepreneur you should not underestimate the effort for the onboarding process:

---

“It takes an average of three months for a new seller to be ready to interact with buyers, nine months for a new seller to be ready to perform, and 15 months for a new seller to become a top performer.”

---

“This is a huge investment of time and resources to keep the sales force up to date and working at a high level. We know that hiring and recruiting is a major challenge for sales managers. But it can also be less critical. We conducted a ground-breaking productivity study and found that 47 percent of employees waste a lot of time during a working day; that’s almost half of a sales team. If you increased their productivity, you would have the net effect of hiring more salespeople”.