Today we are exploring the 5 key areas that are true difference makers: the most effective type of personalized emails, the power of multithreading, the impact of researching people, companies, and industries, busting the myth that warm introductions don’t work, and how sales intelligence tools are a top performers’ best friend. Plus, at the end we’ll share a snapshot of key metrics in SMBs globally.

5 Proven Best Practices that Separate Top Performers from Low Performers.

1. Types of research: When researching prospects, top performers focus on industry research. And when they reach out, they showcase that industry knowledge.

When it comes to current customers, top performers are already familiar with the company, so they go much deeper on industry research (54%) and use it as a way to create more relevant outreach or a more nuanced conversation about their challenges, competitive environment, or potential industry trends that may impact their business.

2. Email personalization: Top performers personalize their emails based on their understanding of the company or industry, versus the person they are reaching out to.

The winning tactic — that 69% of top performers use — is personalizing emails based on relevant industry or company data. This finding only underscores the insight we uncovered in the previous section. Industry research should be a regular part of your daily routine to increase your chances of exceeding your quota.

3. Multithreading: Top performers seek to make between 4-9 connections with key buyers.

While over two-thirds (68%) of low performers stop at befriending one to three decision makers, top performers go the extra mile with nearly half (49%) saying that they have between four and nine decision-makers. You see a similar pattern when it comes to connecting with buying committee members.

4. Warm introductions: Top performers use warm introductions to dramatically increase their chances of receiving a response from a prospect.

Whether mentioning a mutual connection in your first outreach, or having that mutual connection make an introduction on your behalf, warm outreach is used significantly more by top performers (43%) versus low performers (32%). We found that SMB sellers have a significantly higher success rate of receiving a reply with more than 50% of their warm outreach (15%) compared to enterprise sellers (8%).

5. Sales intelligence tools: More than 40% of top performers use sales intelligence tools to identify white space, decision makers, and buying committee members.

We found that more than 40% of top performers say that they use sales intelligence tools to identify, white space, decision makers, and members of a buying committee and there’s roughly a 13 point difference between low performers and top performers across all three use cases.

State of B2B Sales for Small and Medium Businesses

Take a look below to get a snapshot of key metrics in SMBs globally in 5 areas: top challenges, levels of quota target attainment, average deal sizes, average length of sales cycles, and how success is measured.

It should come as no surprise that a highly competitive sales environment is the #1 challenge for both SMBs and enterprises. But, what caught our attention was the fourth item down — wasting time on unqualified leads. Twenty-six percent of SMB sellers list this as a top challenge versus only 20% of enterprise sellers who say the same. 

2. Top challenges: Increased competition, making contact with decision makers, longer buying cycles, and wasting time on unqualified leads.

What caught our attention in these stats was the fourth item down — wasting time on unqualified leads. Twenty-six percent of SMB sellers list this as a top challenge versus only 20% of enterprise sellers who say the same. This is a critical challenge, particularly when time is literally money.

3. Deal size: Most SMB deals are under half a million dollars.

SMBs have markedly smaller deal sizes than enterprises. In fact, 65% of SMB deals are between $10,000 and under half a million dollars with over a third (34%) in the $100K-$499K range. Compare that to enterprises whose lionshare of deal size (54%) is between $500K - nearly $5M.

4. Length of sales cycle: Nearly half of SMB sellers report that they have an average sales cycle of less than 3 months.

Deals may drag on from a change in decision makers to a shift in prospect or customer budget priorities to an ever growing list of people on a buying committee who need to weigh in. Regardless of what obstacles come up, SMB salespeople have smaller size deals because greenlighting a $50K agreement versus a $5M one is presumably faster and easier for any organization to sign off on. 

5. Success measures: The most important metric for SMB sellers is meeting revenue targets and the top metric for ENT sellers is customer satisfaction.

When we asked SMB and ENT sellers globally about the metrics that are most important to their success, the top one for SMB sellers was meeting revenue targets followed closely by conversion rates. On the other hand, enterprise sellers value customer satisfaction the most (42%) with customer lifetime value and customer acquisition costs coming in a close second (both at 36%).