Do 81% Of All Sales Happen On The Fifth Contact?

The following was from a newsletter that Jeff Meyer sends out and it too, got me curious as to the source of the stats, and the need for a new survey. Please make your comments as to your thoughts and how a contemporary survey could be done. Attribution to Jeff's ezine is at the end (required per his newsletter):

"A study done by the Association of Sales Executives revealed
that 81% of all sales happen on or after the fifth contact..."

I know that most salespeople waste a lot of their time chasing
prospects that never buy, so I wanted to learn more about this study.

These questions came to mind:

* When was the study done?
* Who was the group conducting the study?
* How was it conducted?
* How did they come to these conclusions?

* Which businesses/industries were included?
* What kind of products/services were being sold?
* Were these experienced sales people or rookies?

The logical place to go for answers was Google.

Much to my surprise, I couldn't find
an "Association of Sales Executives."

After a bit of research, I came across an article from another
study of sales results. This article was attributed to statistics
"compiled by the Sales & Marketing Executives Club of
Los Angeles."

It said:

"Number of calls to close a sale:

2% close on the 1st call
3% close on the 2nd call
4% close on the 3rd call
10% close on the 4th call
81% close on the 5th call"

"Notice that only 19 percent of the sales were closed by
the fourth call. The majority were closed during the fifth call.

"Is five the magic number? Not necessarily, but these statistics
tell us that the longer we hang in, the better our chances
are of closing the sale."

But if you type "Sales & Marketing Executives Club of Los
Angeles" into Google, only two results display, one
of which is the above-mentioned article.

For many years I had heard statistics similar to those just
mentioned, but on the face of it I don't know if
they are correct or not.

"Reprinted with permission from "Jeffrey Mayer's
SucceedingInBusiness.com Newsletter. (Copyright, 2003, Jeffrey J.
Mayer, SucceedingInBusiness.com.) To subscribe to Jeff's free
newsletter, visit http://www.SucceedingInBusiness.com."

So here are MY questions: Do you ever reference this survey? What are you thoughts? Is it time for a new comprensive poll? Comments, please, with your ideas. Let's get some valuable input.

Comments

[Damon]

You know, Jim Kidd has a 7 touch approach to sales. Any contact is a "touch" and he proposes 7 touches to a sucessful sale.

[Brian Carroll]

I suggest you down load the latest Cahners Research report on "Evaluating the Cost of Sales
Calls in Business-to-Business Markets"

It proves the stats you're talking about by studying 23,000 B2B buyers. It also gives stats by industry.

http://www.cahnerscarr.com

Here's the link for the pdf
http://www.cahnerscarr.com/PDFS/evaluating_cost_sales.pdf

[Justin Hitt]

Brian, Thanks for pointing out Cahners' website. Also available from that site:

How Many Personal Sales Calls Does it Take to Close a Sale?
http://www.cahnerscarr.com/5425d.htm

According to their research there are different numbers of interactions depending on industry.

The best measure for this would be in a companies own experience -- tracking customer interactions in a customer relationship management system can help extract this information. Once a company has their own base line, they can then look at the process they use to close sales.

There is no magic number, just qualified prospects, a relevant sales message, and a solution desired by the target customer.

Sincerely,

Justin Hitt
Strategic Relations Consultant
Turning Relationships Into Profits
http://iunctura.com/