Trends in B2B sales 2023: Insights from $37B in pipeline data

The business-to-business (B2B) sales landscape has changed drastically over the past few years. With new technologies and customer expectations emerging, it’s critical for B2B companies to stay ahead of trends in order to remain competitive.

Ebsta recently unveiled their benchmark's report on The State of B2B Sales in 2023,  offering valuable insights into factors businesses can use to stay ahead of the competition.

Their analysis revealed a key theme for B2B sales performance in 2022.

To state it simply...

2022 was a tough year. On average, 29% of reps making quota and win rates declined. It was common for businesses to see both deal sizes decrease and prospects become reluctant to commit to long-term contracts.

These insights came from the $37 billion worth of pipeline data analysed by Ebsta. The goal? To provide B2B businesses with benchmarks and indicators that could be used to measure performance and say goodbye to guesswork.

Key findings in B2B sales:

1. Only 29% of reps made quota through 2022.
2. 18% of reps didn't even have a quota to start with in 2022.
3. Win rates decreased by 15% in 2022.
4. Average deal values dropped by 32%.
5. The length of sales cycles increased on average by 32%

2022 was a tough year for most...Win rates declined, sales cycles grew, and it became significantly harder to close deals.

The average deal values were lower in 2022 as companies were more tentative in committing to bigger or longer term contracts.

We saw deal slippage rise, especially in Q4 of 2022, due to more stakeholders being involved in sales processes and businesses being more reluctant to commit to new products or change.

The changing market led to more deals being won by the status quo, as people were often reluctant to commit to change.

Silver Lining in B2B Sales Challenges

Despite these challenges, the B2B Sales Report highlights consistent attributes and factors among top performers in the market. These factors can be learned from and applied to your sales process.

What are the qualities of the top sales teams?

Ebsta's B2B Sales Report revealed that the best performers were:

1. 3X more likely to have strong relationships with key stakeholders
2. More likely to use a sales methodology
3. Saw value in leveraging their CRM.
   
   

These approaches are fundamental to achieving predictable revenue growth.

Here's why...

We often see business say,

"you need to do more outbound"

"we can do more!"

"I’m trying these numbers but the data is all wrong!"

"John says he is following the process but not hitting because of “Luck”. Is he right?"

This is the big mistake.

This mistake is what we like to call, "The Growth at all Costs" playbook.

It's now time to move on from this playbook.

The old growth-at-all-costs playbook is no longer sustainable and businesses must adopt a more predictable and efficient approach.

The old approach to growth

The old way of marketing relied heavily on doing more for the sake of doing more. And in the end, we saw more and more companies have fragmented systems between marketing, sales, and customer success.

The new approach: RevOps

The new approach to marketing involves better alignment between marketing, sales, and customer success.

B2B organisations need to place more concentration on building alignment. With the right people, processes, technology and insight, businesses can achieve greater confidence in what's likely to lead to better success.

This new approach ensures that these teams work together effectively and have clear shared goals around revenue generation.

This approach is called, Revenue Operations.

The problem with fragmented data systems

Companies with fragmented data systems typically have teams working in silos, no shared goals around revenue or service, misalignment in direction, technical debt, and confusion about what needs to be done to get the best out of the company.

So...What is RevOps?

RevOps is a new approach that aligns sales, marketing, and service teams around revenue and uses data to power decisions. It aims to create a golden string where marketing impacts sales and customer service feeds back into all of that to give repeat business.

RevOps is an efficient solution to maximise revenue by enhancing every stage of the sales funnel through small incremental changes across the business. Instead of focusing on acquiring more leads, RevOps emphasises on qualifying and converting leads and improving win rates, which leads to a significant increase in overall revenue.

What teams are involved in your RevOps strategy?

The normal funnel typically consists of a sales process that includes demand generation, sales management, and customer success.

All of these teams come under the umbrella of RevOps.

How can you increasing revenue without getting more leads?

We've said it before, and we'll say it again... RevOps is all about making incremental changes that have big effects on revenue.

You can increase revenue by qualifying more leads, converting more of those leads, and improving win rates by replicating what your best salespeople are doing.

You don't need to get more leads, you just need to work with the leads you have in a smarter way

By leveraging data-driven insights from Ebsta's 2023 B2B Sales Report and following RevOps principles, businesses can increase their overall revenue without acquiring additional leads. With this approach, 2023 could be the bright start of a new era for B2B sales teams.