The sales force conundrum

Getting sales right is a strategic priority for B2B information companies. Their unique combination of high fixed costs and extremely low truly variable costs means that every new customer win, and every further sale to an existing customer, flows straight to the bottom line.

Yet despite the significance of sales force to B2B information companies, too many businesses underperform in this area. Sometimes there exists too little focus on how best to sell products, driven, in part, by the naïve belief that if the product is good enough it will sell itself.

To help companies address this, OC&C joined forces with Outsell to survey the sales leadership of 54 information businesses across EMEA and North America.

The objective of this study was to:

1. Explore how well these executives believe sales force ‘works’ in their companies today
2. Identify which dimensions of sales force have the biggest impact on business performance
3. Reveal areas for improvement of which executives might not be aware.