…and it’s not all bad news.
Skynamo has just released its one-of-a-kind global field sales report. Skynamo, the leaders in field sales technology, are constantly seeking to understand the industries they serve, which includes a large number of building and hardware companies. For this reason, they carried out extensive research recently, resulting in the benchmark report.
Why is this good for us in the building industry? This benchmark report for 2021 gives some surprising insights into how our sales teams compare in terms of challenges, technology used, and sales rep productivity, and the state of the building and hardware industry as a whole.
The report kicks off with the Skynamo Thermometer – a monthly report based on sales transactions on their field sales app from industries around the world. Interestingly, according to the thermometer, the building and hardware industry has seen a growth of over 130% since August 2020.
Of the 1000+ companies across 26 different industry segments being monitored by the Skynamo Thermometer, the last few months of 2021 saw strong growth. In fact, the graph has been climbing steadily since January 2021. The building and hardware industry is no exception to this growth, already surpassing the sum of the average value of total orders per customer converted in 2020.
In addition to the monthly Thermometer, Skynamo surveyed over 250 manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors with field sales teams over the course of 2021 to find out what their biggest challenges are and how they use technology to overcome them. In a separate survey, Skynamo asked over 700 sales managers and business owners with field sales teams what technology they use to manage their sales operations.
The findings? In the building and hardware industry the most popular ERP system used was identified as SAGE, as was the same across all industries in the UK and Europe, and Africa and the Middle East.
Skynamo’s survey further revealed that of the building and hardware respondents that answered to having a customer relationship management tool (CRM) in place, the majority of them said that they were using a combination of paper, email, Excel and WhatsApp as their CRM software. Skynamo’s survey showed that – even though the majority of respondents cited having a CRM system in place – not many of them actually use it.
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Skynamo asked business owners, sales managers and reps in the building and hardware industry, in three different regions, what they found the most challenging about their jobs and daily activities. Their responses revealed that most of them are overburdened by the amount of manual admin, which was the most debilitating aspect of their day-to-day work.
If you want to read the full field sales benchmark report for 2021, you can. Find out how your field sales team and technology compare to other manufacturers, wholesalers and distributors from around the world. It is free, so download your own copy of The Field Sales Benchmark Report 2021 from Skynamo.
