The State of Field Sales [Infographic]

Our good friends at Spotio, a leader in field sales enablement, recently surveyed no less than 492 US-based professionals in both inside and outside sales roles to uncover their biggest technology challenges and opportunities.

The study found that almost 1 in 5 sales professionals did not have access to the right tools or technology - equipment, consumer databases, and training - to succeed. Specifically, sales reps felt like they did not have adequate CRM and sales automation functionality, while managers were frustrated with a lack of “mobility” across their sales stack.

These technology gaps presented unique challenges for different roles - reps found that a low performing CRM made it difficult to qualify sales prospects, and hurt team interaction.

On the other hand, managers struggled with properly planning, assigning and managing sales territories. This hurt productivity levels, and made it difficult to gain visibility into key sales activities.  

So, what are sales teams doing about this technology gap?

Short answer: invest.

Spotio’s report shows respondents plan to invest $4,851 in sales software (excluding their CRM) in 2019, a 22% increase since 2014.
If you’d like to dive deeper, we have included an infographic below that captures the key findings from Spotio’s 2018 “State of Field Sales” report.