Prospect research time saved per brief

Benchmark range

Lower bound: 0.25 hours. Median value: 0.33 hours. Upper bound: 0.5 hours.

Measurement period: per prospect brief produced.

Methodology

Anchored on the only per-account research figure found in published work: InsideSales measured 19.0 minutes of research per account for sales development reps, up 19.1% year on year. Salesforce independently places prospect research at 9.3% of a rep's week within an overall 28% selling-time split, which is consistent with that order of magnitude. The published range is set at 15-30 minutes with a 20-minute median so it does not exceed the one measured per-account figure by more than the opener-drafting work the skill also absorbs, and so it leaves room for the verification pass the buyer must still perform. Hunter's 31-million-email and Gong's 85-million-email analyses are used only to establish that researched personalisation is associated with higher reply rates - no reply-rate or pipeline claim is made in the benchmark. LinkedIn's findings on 70% annual CRM data decay and 86% of sellers losing deals to stakeholder departures size the accuracy risk that the skill's gated identity resolution addresses; neither is treated as a time saving. CaseLedger deliberately publishes a per-brief figure rather than a weekly or per-rep figure, because per-brief is the only unit any source measures.

Cited sources: 6. Measurement period: per prospect brief produced.

Original sources

• Sales Data: solution brief

  LinkedIn Sales Solutions

  LinkedIn Sales Solutions reports that 70% of CRM data goes obsolete annually.

• How to Master Cold Email: the data-backed guide based on 85 million emails

  Gong

  Gong's analysis of 85 million emails reports company-based personalisation reached a 9% direct reply rate against a 2% baseline, and that personalised emails generated five times more booked meetings.

• The State of Cold Email

  Hunter

  Hunter's analysis of 31 million emails found bodies carrying two custom attributes reached a 5.6% reply rate versus 3.6% for non-personalised emails, and manually edited emails outperformed fully automated ones 5.2% to 4.4%.

• The State of Sales Development 2018

  InsideSales

  InsideSales found sales development reps spend an average of 19.0 minutes researching a single account, up 19.1% from 15.9 minutes the previous year.

• The Next Generation of Data Validation

  LinkedIn Sales Solutions

  LinkedIn Sales Solutions reports 86% of sellers saw deals lost or stalled in the prior 12 months because a key stakeholder left a client or prospect company.

• State of Sales, 5th Edition

  Salesforce

  Salesforce reports sales reps spend only 28% of the average week selling, with prospect research accounting for 9.3% of their time and manual data entry a further 8.8%.