Salesjobs.ie recently surveyed over 14,000 sales professionals surveyed on the their current economic status, attitudes to work, remuneration, through to sales targets, to key motivators, to work-life balance and everything in-between.

Key findings of Survey

Helping their employers get through the current economic crisis is high on their priorities

• 40% would take on additional responsibilities without additional pay to help their company get through the economic crisis.
• 36% of respondents had been asked to take a cut and a further 40% noted they had been asked to take a pay freeze.
• 71% state they work over 40-60 hours a week with one third of the total working in excess of 50 hours.
• 25% work at weekends, only 12% of sales people surveyed have answered that they never work weekends.
• The sales sector is not immune to the recession by any means with 40% of sales professionals stating they felt their current role is under threat of redundancy in 2009

The survey revealed One third of sales people when asked if the current economic climate has impacted on their sales performance replied they were either on or above target, encouragingly there are some healthy sales out there and it is not all doom and gloom

Only 10% of people are happy with how their companies are dealing with the financial crisis. The majority thought investment in sales and marketing should be increased in order to deal with the crisis.

Of the many options which we gave for how employees within the ‘sales industry’ would measure their success, a huge 24% responded that they would measure their success on ‘peace of mind’ and how fulfilled they were. This compares to only 8% who value material wealth and money as an indicator of success.

A full PDF sales report on findings can be accessed here

Published by Niall Devitt, Btb Business Training

Usually when I talk to clients who are looking for a training solution for their employees, one of the first things that I need to do is to get the client to decide and agree on the training objectives and to have them evaluate how realistic these objectives are in relation to both their budgets and time scales.

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