Security Sales Survey Questions - 12 Proposed Questions

What is your average quote turn around time?

How long have you been in the industry?

You might want to break it out by salespersons at integrators/distributors/manufacturers.

How long have you been at this company?

What is the average tenue of a salesperson at your company?

Do you do your own design/sales engineering/estimating?

I don't see any mention of competitors in the survey questions.

"Who are your main competitors?" Whether its an integrator sales person, distributor salesperson, or manufacturer sales person they will all have competitors and know them well.

I'd like to see how many years each rep has at their current company, and in the industry. I'd also be interested in knowing what industry/ies they sold in before this one.

On average how long between first contact and first contract?

(1) What's the more common reason(s) propective clients give when they reject a proposal (price, scope, skills, other)?

(2) On average, how many interations of a proposal are created & reviewed before delivering the final version to the client? How can this process be improved?

How much of your sales volume comes from existing customers vs. new accounts?

What is your follow up response to a lost sale? Do you inquire about the reason(s) for not getting the job?

Measuring the size of the company being surveyed would be good. The challenges facing an organization with 20 people is probably quite different than those facing organizations with 100.

I think that you may ultimately have too many questions for one survey so I suggest a Marketing Survey and a Sales Survey.

The Marketing Survey would include questions regarding Lead Generation, Advertizing, Trade Shows, Lead to Prospect Ratio's and ultimately Lead Generation cost per qualified prospect, etc.

The second "Sales Survey" would include the sales process, sales cycle, closing ratio's, project sizes, detail that perhaps should be broken down by size and scope of the project. i.e. sales cycle on a $450,000 project will likely be different from one that is $45,000.

Just an Idea or the one survey will likely be 25 or 30 questions.

Other Possible questions:

What is the biggest complaint customers have about existing EAC Systems today?

What is the most requested EAC functionality/Capability by customers today? i.e. longer range, hands free access, etc

Not sure what the goal of the survey is, but if it is to help salespeople be more successful then, the above list of questions suggests that the problem for salespeople is everything BUT what the salesperson is doing. I believe that when you see top performers, they are doing things that their co-workers are not doing; and not doing what the lower performers are doing. Some questions that might help uncover this:

If you see sales people that are higher performing than you - what are they doing that you are not or what are you doing that they are not?

If you see sales people that are lower performing than you - what are they doing that you are not or what are you doing that they are not?

Thanks for all the great feedback / proposed questions.

Here are your submissions aggregated:

• How long have you been in the industry?
• How long have you been at this company?
• What is the average tenure of a salesperson at your company?
• Do you do your own design/sales engineering/estimating?
• What is your average quote turn around time?
• What are your toughest competitor's key strengths?
• What other industries have you sold in?
• On average how long between first contact and first contract?
• What's the more common reason(s) prospective clients give when they reject a proposal (price, scope, skills, other)?
• On average, how many iterations of a proposal are created & reviewed before delivering the final version to the client? How can this process be improved?
• How much of your sales volume comes from existing customers vs. new accounts?
• What is your follow-up response to a lost sale? Do you inquire about the reason(s) for not getting the job?
• What are the top 2 or 3 reasons you lose a project?
• How large is your company?
• If you see sales people that are higher performing than you - what are they doing that you are not or what are you doing that they are not?
• If you see sales people that are lower performing than you - what are they doing that you are not or what are you doing that they are not?

We are discussing today internally which ones to use for this first round.

I would like to add to the CRM question...which supply chain software do you use? How do you track purchashing, inventory, job equipment?