Show me the Money!

I got the chance to attend a couple of shows in September - Shop.org and Software Business 2009.  The former was a gathering of thousands of people representing retail organizations of all shapes and sizes as well as those who serve them - technology providers like us. To give you a feel, here is a 1-minute clip from the show floor - I'm in the last 20 seconds (20 seconds of fame?!!).

The latter was a gathering of tens of people from technology companies, primarily software as a service organizations, start-ups to publicly traded.  I was part of a keynote panel to discuss when, how and why companies would leverage partner programs (with a focus on OEM models) within a go to market strategy.  I'd like to give a shout out to Kevin Meldorf, the session leader for inviting me to join industry heavyweights like Bob Mahoney (Oracle), Colin Mahony (Vertica) and Barry Mattingly (Corrao Group) and for a fantastic learning and growing experience!

Even though Software Business was under attended due to the timing (end of quarter?) and the lack of promotion by the media company (last Tweet in May?! ), there were some great presentations, which reminds me of an old sales joke.  After a long day, one sales guy asks the other how his day went.  The guy says, "I delivered an awesome presentation to my biggest prospect!" to which the other replies, "yeah, I didn't sell anything either..."

One of the more memorable and relevant to all of us was done by David Fritz and Jim Triandiflou (the former CEO of Centive) from Growth Solutions L.L.C.  It was titled "Sales Benchmarks from the World's Best Software Sales Forces", which was based on a survey of more than 20 leading Silicon Valley firms.  Show me the money!!

• Average sales cycle 149 days (this had extended by an average of 40 days from 2008)
• Conversion rates to close - 4% of leads, 23% of opportunities and 49% of proposals were "closed won"
• Average performance to quota < 50% of all reps (23% Senior AE, 33% Junior)
  
• Average annual bookings* per rep was $442,000 (90th percentile = $664,000 per rep)
• Sales & Marketing expense as a % of revenue was 36%
• Overall productivity was measured by revenue per employee at $192,000 for on-premise software and $149,000 for SaaS
• 75% of the firms were currently hiring Sales and Marketing positions
  

This is the good, the bad and the ugly folks.  Clearly the economy is stringing out sales cycles with buyer uncertainty and risk.  There is also a clear lack of integrity in setting quotas that directly impacts retention and efficiencies.  How do these figures compare with your experience?

You can participate or dig into the data here.  Or you can check out their book, New Sales Roles (2nd edition).

Do you Grok it?