Sales Ramp Up – When Will Salespeople Start Making Quota?
The more your SaaS or software company offers a more sophisticated, higher priced solution, the more likely it is you will use a salesforce – yes, one with real people! Their role is to help convince customers of your merits and bring in orders. Whether your salespeople are inside or field representatives will depend on your offering and your target customers. In either case, Sales Ramp Up is relevant – how soon will they generate the right levels of revenue?
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Impact of Sales Ramp Up on Your Profit and Cash Flow
One thing is sure: the faster new sales reps can achieve productivity and quota, the more profitable your company will be. Conversely, a business plan for a new company must allow for productivity ramp-up time for sales people. This will have ans. It could even constrain your growth, because you’ll need to pay staff for a certain period before they can contribute full value back to your company.
Sales Ramp Up Times of 2 to 6 Months, Depending on the Type of Salesperson
With this benchmark – “Productivity Ramp Up for Sales Dev., Inside Sales and Field Sales Reps” – Lean-Case give you data on the average time companies must wait before seeing full productivity for these different kinds of salespeople:
- 1Sales/business development reps focus on generating market interest and leads for the business. A lead means “serious interest from prospective customers with the necessary budget for a solution your company can profitably provide.” Ramp-up time may cover induction, creation of a base for prospecting, andstarting initial contacts with customers. Insight Partners cites a ramp-up time benchmark of 2 months, and Bridge Group 3.8 months.
- 2Inside sales reps make sales by phone and by email. They deal with complete sales cycles or with the part of the sales cycle from a lead to closure – customer subscription, signature of an annual contract, or similar. Successfully completing the sales cycle may take longer than the time taken to generate the sales lead that started the cycle. The Insight Partner benchmark for productivity ramp-up case is 6 months, while Bridge Group puts it at 4.9 months.
- 3Field sales reps meet customers in person. They also handle a complete sales cycle or the part from lead to closure. The ramp up benchmark from Insight Partners is 6 months here.
Beyond the Initial Salesperson Warming-Up Period
To improve your model start-up and ongoing sales productivity further, you may also want to use benchmarks like:
Top 75 Benchmarks for your saaS Business Case
We have selected 75 best practice benchmarks to make reasonable assumptions in numerous situations.
Can You Reduce Sales Ramp Up Time?
Can you simplify and shorten the purchasing process for the customer? If so, you might then increase your potential for making sales online and decrease your need for salespeople. Overall, you would then reduce the financial impact of the productivity ramp-up time. On the other hand, customization to end-user needs and personal contact may be key differentiators for your solution, compared to competitors. Time to productivity may simply be incompressible.
Through these different benchmarks, you can refine your business pre-launch and launch planning, and your ongoing cash flow and profitability thereafter.
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