Ever wonder how much other companies are spending on marketing? What percent of a marketing budget should be spent on labor? Think about how your sales compensation plans might compare to others? Curious about quota size standards? Want to understand what salespeople think their strongest skill is...or their weakest?
We did...and so we conducted our annual Sales and Marketing Industry Study--and hundreds and hundreds of sales and marketing professionals weighed in. Here are some of the key findings:
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Marketing compensation is based on a salary and, for most (70%) marketers, a bonus (an 11% increase from last year’s survey). 63% of the marketers surveyed reported being happy with their compensation plans (up slightly from January 2008 study).
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69% of marketers feel their relationship with sales is strong, or very strong. This is a 3% decrease from 2008. 73% of sales professionals feel their relationship with marketing is strong, or very strong—much higher than marketing’s view of the same question.
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63% of companies spend less than 5% of revenue on marketing, with the strongest range being 3-5% of revenue (33%). Still, 21% of marketers spend 6-10%, while 16% spend 11-20% or more. Not surprisingly, a large % of budgets are allocated to labor costs. Still, the majority (57.3%) use 26% or less of their budget for labor.
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Email continues to be the biggest area of focus for company’s marketing mix, with Thought Leadership (white papers, articles, webinars, etc.) not far behind.
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Sales compensation is mostly based on salary, plus variable incentive pay as a commission. Pay mixes (base vs. commission) vary widely, but are based largely on the admin requirements of the role. The most common pay mix splits are 70/30 for management or account management roles and either 60/40 or 50/50 for business development or account executive positions. Only 13% of the plans are on commission only. Only 26% of sales managers are paid on base alone.
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66% of sales professionals reported to be satisfied with their compensation plan (up 2% from 2008).
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73% of sales quotas are set at or above $1,000,000. Yet, 48% reported they FELL SHORT of quotas, meaning only 52% of salespeople are meeting or exceeding quotas. While previous surveys have consistently shown at least 30% of sales teams falling short of quotas, this year’s results have seen a drastic increase. This is likely due to the ailing economy.
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The strongest sales skill salespeople feel they have is PRESENTATION, while the area they feel weakest in is HANDLING OBJECTIONS.
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Over 60 sales and marketing templates (DOC, XLS, PPT, and PDFs)
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Loads of "how-to" articles and examples
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8 Training sessions (MP3 audio files) for your computer or iPod
