Sales Managers at World-Class Sales Organizations Are Significantly More Confident in Their CRM Data

RENO, Nev., April 12, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- One of the trends identified in the results from the 2012 Miller Heiman Sales Best Practices Study is the continued growth in data confidence among World-Class Sales Organizations compared to the lack of improvement among other organizations. Miller Heiman, a leading sales performance consulting firm, announced this observation in the results from its ninth annual study of selling and sales management best practices in the complex selling environment.

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"There is a huge discrepancy in confidence between top-performing organizations and the overall study population," said Joe Galvin, Chief Research Officer and head of the recently announced Miller Heiman Research Institute. "To make timely, informed business decisions and guide strategy development for growth, organizations must be able to rely on the accuracy of the data in their CRM systems."

The results showed 81 percent agreement among World-Class Sales Organizations that their sales management teams have confidence in relying on their CRM data to make decisions, compared to just 25 percent agreement among other organizations. Confidence has increased significantly among World-Class Sales Organizations in the past few years of data, but has remained steady, and low, among most organizations.

"Lack of data confidence is a significant issue for companies looking to grow beyond where they are today," continued Galvin. "Think about how bad data or a lack of reliable data affects forecast accuracy, coaching the sales team through complex sales processes, or determining where to make resource investments."

Each year, this study analyzes the best practices of World-Class Sales Organizations to identify the activities that are most effective in generating sales performance results, including the activities that are helping increase data confidence and salesperson productivity.

Data was collected during the fall of 2011 and included more than 1,200 professionals in complex selling environments regarding the sales activities and performance of their organizations.

View more study highlights or download the executive summary for additional details about the top 12 best practices: http://www.millerheiman.com/summary.

For more information, visit www.millerheiman.com.

SOURCE Miller Heiman