Pipedrive, the leading CRM for sales and marketing teams, today released its annual State of Sales report, featuring key insights from global research on the perceptions, implications, and unexpected opportunities for the industry. New research finds that almost half of sales professionals (49%) became more satisfied in 2020, which is reflected both in their increased job success and satisfaction.
“The pandemic has had a profound impact on the way we understand working, as well as increased the risk for work-related stress and burnout. It’s interesting to see that most sales professionals, who tend to work long hours and weekends, adapted to the new situation relatively well,” said Jeff Heckler, Global Head of Customer Success, Pipedrive. “Sales has always been a difficult field to work in—even before the pandemic. It is not just about selling skills, rather it is a mixture of experience, knowledge, problem-solving, empathy, and communication. It’s quite possible that extensive experience and skill sets in many different areas helped sales professionals to cope with the new situation faster.”
A year of opportunities
After the initial turbulence at the beginning of the pandemic, 2020 proved to be a year of opportunities for salespeople, as 59% of respondents believe they became more successful at sales in 2020 and 81% of respondents say that they expect an increase in their sales in 2021. Almost all salespeople (92%) believe that their role will have a positive impact on the economy in 2021, and over three-quarters report that sales will be either important (24%) or very important (54%) to the recovery of the economy.
The right training and CRM technology leads to success
The vast majority of respondents (88%) are regularly working on improving their soft skills, which is helping them to be more successful. Those who regularly work on soft skills are 11% more likely to usually or always hit their regular sales quota. Lastly, individuals who use technology and automation tools for lead generation are 26% more likely to have reached their annual sales target last year.
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