InsideSales.com Study Reveals End-of-Month Sales Tactics Cost Businesses Millions

Sudipto Ghosh

February 16, 2017

InsideSales.com, the leading sales acceleration platform that uses AI-powered predictive analytics, announced the release of a comprehensive study on sales wisdom for 2017. The report, titled “Time-based Closing Strategies: The High Cost of Procrastination“, provides enriching insights on the challenges facing conventional sales wisdom.

InsideSales.com released the study at Accelerate’17, the marquee event for sales and marketing professionals, and data scientists. The report revealed that end-of-month selling behaviors common to most business-to-business sales organizations have a negative impact on overall sales win rates and deal sizes. Not only do these last-minute blitzes result in the loss of deals that might have otherwise eventually been won, but the deals that do close do so at lower rates and smaller sizes than those won earlier in the month, resulting in significant losses in revenue.

InsideSales.com gleaned these results from a scientific review of nearly 10 million anonymized sales interactions logged by over 150 enterprise users of the company’s sales pipeline management and forecasting software, HD Forecast™.

“These insights fly in the face of one of the foundational beliefs of business-to-business sales. They nullify the common belief that sales organizations should push to meet goals before month’s end,” said Ken Krogue, InsideSales.com founder, and president.

“The study makes clear that it’s time to completely rethink end-of-month strategy. Without a complete understanding of pipeline management in relation to time-based patterns or strategies, organizations are losing opportunities and throwing millions away each year.”

An examination of the data determined that high pressure pushes to hit calendar-based sales quotas do more harm than good, as they force sales reps to both behave disagreeably and to engage in severe price-cutting — often lopping 47% from the price that would have obtained the previous day.

Key findings from the report also indicate that weekly closing strategies are similarly misguided. Tuesdays close at a rate 65% higher than Fridays — the day of the week with the lowest close rate and, paradoxically, the day many sales reps work hardest to close on.

Fortunately, this is an easy fix for sales teams. The study recommends putting limits on discounting options, offering bonuses for full-price deals and raising prices for future month purchases. Additionally, companies can coach reps and managers to push deals to the next month to maximize revenue and close deals mid-week.

InsideSales.com offers sales professionals a unique sales intelligence platform built on Neuralytics, which is a predictive and prescriptive self-learning engine that drives revenue growth. Sales teams can deliver optimized experience for buyers, offering enriching personalization with breakthrough innovations in predictive sales communications, engagement tracking, forecasting, and rep motivation. Sales teams use the InsideSales platform on desktop as well as playbook format for opportunity scoring, sales communications, email and web analytics, tracking and gamification.

The Provo-based company recently scooped $50 million in Series E funding in January 2017 from nine investment firms led by Polar Capital Management Inc. Founded in 2004, the sales acceleration platform has managed to raise $250.2 million in six funding rounds since 2012. Top speakers at InsideSale’s Accelerate’17 include Tiffani Bova from Salesforce, Ruben Sigala, Hilarie Koplow-McAdams (President- NewRelic), Katie Azuma from infor, Kerry Cunningham (Sr. Research Director at SiriusDecisions), and Dave Barrett of Polaris. The 3-day event concluded on February 16.