Mood of the sales team: New survey reveals business outlook at sharp end of business world

New Zealand’s sales teams are heading into 2024 more optimistic than last year but with realistic expectations about some tough months ahead.

Following a sharp slowdown in activity late last year, sales leaders were offering a “rosier take” on the year ahead, said Mike Stokes, chief executive of sales and leadership consultancy Indicator.

Indicator surveys around 500 sales team leaders to gauge how the sales teams are feeling about their prospects in the year ahead. Those leaders collective manage nearly 8000 sales people.

While salespeople were by nature an optimistic bunch, their insight was valuable as it came from the “coalface” of the business world, Stokes said.

This year 68 per cent of respondents said they were setting growth targets for their team, compared to just 63 per cent last year.

But of those setting a growth target, most were aiming for single-figure growth, which suggested expectations were still subdued, Stokes said.

In 2023, 54 per cent of teams achieved their growth target.

Last year was tougher than 2022, with significantly fewer companies achieving growth, Stokes said.

Slower decision-making, clients with reduced budgets and inflation were listed as the biggest challenges in 2023.

More than 30 per cent fewer salespeople achieved their targets in 2023 compared to 2022.

A lot of respondents had reported a slowdown as the election approached last year, Stokes said.

That had flowed into the summer break and few were expecting things to take off quickly out of the gate this year, he said.

There was expectation the first half of the year would be tough.

Despite that, the (net) level of pessimism has dropped from 9 per cent at the end of 2022, to 4 per cent at the end of 2023.

Mike Stokes, chief executive of Indicator.

Increased marketing and brand activities, along with product/service extensions and addressing staffing issues (increased investment in training, expanding the team and better recruiting) were seen as potential levers to fuel revenue growth in 2024, Stokes said.

“But there is also acknowledgment of challenges ahead. Economic conditions are expected to pose the biggest challenge in 2024. Addressing resource/team issues is also viewed as critical to driving growth.”

This year the Indicator team polled Australian companies for the first time to provide a comparison with local sentiment. Around 11 per cent of respondents were Australian, Stokes said.

While many of the issues were similar on both sides of the Tasman, it was fair to say the Australian sales leaders were broadly “more bullish” than their Kiwi counterparts, Stokes said.

Technology challenges were also to the fore, with 70 per cent of sales leaders believing AI will either have a significant impact or completely transform sales.

Despite the hype, 78 per cent of salespeople were not currently using any AI sales tools, Stokes said.