Salesforce Report: Sales Reps in India Spend Just 27% of Time Selling

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, released the fifth edition of its State of the Sales report that shares insights from more than 7,700 sales professionals from 38 countries — including 300 from India. The research shows how sales organizations are optimizing tech for peak efficiency, addressing customers’ increasing demands, and maximizing rep productivity to drive success now.

Key insights of this year’s State of the Sales report include:

• The New Sales Mantra: Maximizing Impact. Companies are moving away from high-risk strategies as they battle inflation, supply chain bottlenecks, regulatory uncertainty, and political disruption. And yet, sales reps are under pressure to hit targets. 74% of Indian sales professionals say selling is harder now.

• Reps Strive to Meet Rising Buyer Expectations. Buyers are looking for sales reps to meet them wherever they are, regardless of channel — and then to act as trusted advisors. Organizations in India connect with buyers on an average of 11 channels.

• Sales Operations Boosts Efficiency. Operational efficiency is taking on growing importance. Sales ops is expanding into a more strategic role, tasked with enabling reps to spend more time in customer conversations. Sales reps in India estimate they spend only 27% of their week actually selling.
• The Seller Experience Gets a Second Look. Companies are reviewing training programs and benefits, while optimizing territories and sales enablement tools to set employees up for success and retain star players. Sales teams experienced a 27% average turnover rate in India over the past year.

Arun Parameswaran, Managing Director - Sales, Salesforce India, said, “Sales professionals are adjusting to a world where maximizing productivity and efficiency are imperative for every business. To find success now, companies need to maximize efficiency with the objective to keep revenue coming with no time to pause. Sales tools and processes are key to driving efficiency and cost savings and we can expect to see more businesses consolidating their tech stack over the coming months.”

Methodology

Data in this report are from a double-anonymous survey conducted from Aug. 24, 2022, through Sept. 30, 2022. The survey generated 7,775 responses from a range of sales professionals from across North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, and Europe. All respondents are third-party panelists. See page 25 of the report for further survey demographics. Due to rounding, not all percentage totals in this report equal 100%. Comparison calculations are made from total numbers (not rounded numbers).