The latest revenue enablement statistics for 2023
It's been an eventful past couple of years and things don’t appear to be slowing down. There’s a lot of change and research to keep up with — but it’s time-consuming to track down the most helpful and reliable sources and data.
So we did the legwork for you. This skimmable compilation of the latest sales, marketing, and sales enablement statistics, categorized by recent trends, will quickly help you understand which areas to focus on in your business in coming months to best enable revenue teams.
Further reading: “Flipping your game” — executive strategy for thriving in a tough economy.
Stats summary: the MVI for 2023 (most valuable initiative)
Looking at all of the data, one theme has risen to the forefront: customer experience.
This stat from Salesforce’s 2022 customer research sums it up best: “88% of customers say the experience a company provides is as important as its product or services — up from 80% in 2020.”
Our own research concludes the same. Out of 1,000 pharma professionals polled during a live event, 31.2% (the majority by more than ten percentage points) cited improved customer experience as a top priority for their go-to-market strategy this year. And our survey of 209 sales, marketing, and enablement professionals conducted with Heinz Marketing found that an experience that exceeds buyers’ expectations is one of the top three factors that have the greatest impact on revenue.
It makes sense — there’s a psychological reason for this trend. Things have not only been eventful, most of the events have been less than desirable. To put it colloquially, the vibes aren’t great.
People are stressed due to internal and external factors, so when conducting business, any way to ease stress and provide a pleasant experience is a key differentiator.
Positive customer experience not only influences first-time buyers, but encourages brand loyalty and future purchases.
In their ROI of Customer Experience report from 2019, Qualtrics found that “CX impacts future purchasing most consistently. On average across 20 industries, there’s a 34 percentage-point difference in likelihood to purchase more products or services between consumers rating a company’s CX as ‘good’ versus those rating a company’s CX as ‘poor.’ Where there was variability across the other loyalty metrics, all industries were within three percentage points of the cross-industry average for purchasing more.” See the figure from their report below.
The following statistics reflect customer expectations and behaviors and how revenue teams can better meet them.
Trend 1 - Hybrid engagement
“Top sellers use the tech stack to humanize interactions with buyers… with 91% of sellers at large companies using sales tech once a week” (LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022 United States & Canada Edition).
“Customers are more online now than they were in 2020 — and they don’t expect that to change anytime soon. Still, 43% of customers prefer non-digital channels — meaning satisfying customers generally requires great experiences both online and offline” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
“Remote working facilitates sales: More than half of buyers (55%) say that working remotely has made buying easier” (LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022 United States & Canada Edition).
“Virtual selling is here to stay: A significant percentage of sellers (almost 40%) say that they have closed deals over $500,000 without ever meeting the buyer face to face” (LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022 United States & Canada Edition).
“By 2025 80% of B2B sales interactions between suppliers and buyers will occur in digital channels” (The 2022 Gartner® Market Guide for Revenue Enablement Platforms).
“Phone, email, and in-person are still the top 3 engagement channels customers prefer, with phone outpacing email for the first time in years” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
“83% of customers expect to interact with someone immediately when they contact a company” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
Trend 2 - Ethics and values
“Of the group that exceeded quota by 50% or more, 70% say they ‘always’ put the buyer first, far more than any other grouping” (LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022 United States & Canada Edition).
“66% of customers have stopped buying from a company whose values didn’t align with theirs — up from 62% in 2022” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
“74% of customers say communicating honestly and transparently is more important now than before the pandemic” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
“Company culture matters to most salespeople,” receiving an average importance rating of 4.5 out of 5 and ranking as the most important factor in choosing a place to work (Sales Insights Lab Salespeople Perceptions and Top Performance Study 2022).
Trend 3 - Tech adoption and an eye for the new
“68% of customers have purchased products in a new way in the past two years” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
“In 2021, 35% of marketers were leveraging AR or VR in their strategies. Of those marketers, 42% plan to increase their investment in 2022” (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021).
"58% of marketers who currently leverage experiential marketing call it an effective strategy" (HubSpot Blog Research, 2021).
“By 2026, 30% of B2B sales cycles will be primarily run through a DSR [digital sales room], which will be used to manage the customer life cycle” (The 2022 Gartner® Market Guide for Revenue Enablement Platforms).
“80% of sellers who reached 150% of quota or more use sales tech at least once a week” (LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022 United States & Canada Edition).
Trend 4 - Expertise and guidance
“Those that exceeded their revenue goals in 2021 have the knowledge and skills for value-based buyer conversations” (Heinz Marketing and Bigtincan survey of revenue professionals 2022).
“29% of respondents struggle with a lack of quick consumable training” (Heinz Marketing and Bigtincan survey of revenue professionals 2022).
One of the top 3 marketing priorities for 2022 is knowing which content is resonating with buyers (Heinz Marketing and Bigtincan survey of revenue professionals 2022).
“83% of customers expect to solve complex problems by speaking to one person” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
“More than four out of five sellers (82%) who exceeded quota by 50% or more said they ‘always’ did research before reaching out to prospects” (LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022 United States & Canada Edition).
“87% of business buyers expect sales reps to act as trusted advisors” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
“Only 7% of top performers report pitching while 19% of non-top performers pitch their offering” (Sales Insights Lab Salespeople Perceptions and Top Performance Study 2022).
“The researched, warm call is taking precedence in sales. Almost nine in 10 sellers conduct warm calls. But 46% still conduct cold calls” (LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022 United States & Canada Edition).
Trend 5 - Sales and marketing alignment
“Creating better alignment with Marketing is one of the top 3 sales priorities for 2022” (Heinz Marketing and Bigtincan survey of revenue professionals 2022).
“83% of customers say they're more loyal to companies that provide consistency across departments” (Salesforce, State of the Connected Customer report 5th edition 2022).
“87% of sales and marketing leaders say collaboration between sales and marketing enables critical business growth” (LinkedIn, 2020).
“Top [sales] performers work closely with marketing. Almost three-quarters (70%) of the highest performing cohort in our survey say that marketing leads are ‘excellent’” (LinkedIn State of Sales Report 2022 United States & Canada Edition).
“By 2025, 25% of organizations will create a formal cross-functional counsel to align customer-facing teams that will provide recommendations, governance and oversight across the entire revenue process” (The 2022 Gartner® Market Guide for Revenue Enablement Platforms).
Download The Essential Guide to the Buying Experience of the Future to learn how a three-pillared revenue enablement framework empowers your customer-facing teams to thrive in the new selling environment.
