Better Customer Acquisition Through Sales Excellence

Many sales teams are struggling with declining or stagnating markets. However, there is little investment in customer acquisition. Yet some salespeople are turning a blind eye to the need for action. This is shown by an analysis of the sales market in Switzerland.

Not only have the past few years been challenging, but the future is also likely to continue to place high demands on sales. According to a research by the Swiss consulting network Customers X in collaboration with its research partner Swiss Marketing, the Swiss professional and trade association for marketing and sales, 50 percent of companies say they face the major challenge of optimally transforming their sales system. Greater sales excellence can make a decisive contribution to this. This systematic perfection of all sales processes aims to achieve maximum efficiency and effectiveness. The focus is on sales employees, who are supported with the right tools, strategies, and training to improve their sales performance.

Slow Digitalization

While just under 64 percent stated in 2021 that sales excellence was gaining importance in their companies, the figure has already risen to 80 percent in 2025. The management approach has therefore become established in sales. This figure is surprising in that companies have so far only digitized their sales systems to a very limited extent. In addition, only 16 percent of those surveyed are in favor of a focused increase in efficiency. Yet this is actually a fundamental component of the sales excellence concept. Only 40 percent of companies have truly institutionalized sales excellence.

In view of technological possibilities such as artificial intelligence (AI), the survey results raise questions: As the authors of the study emphasize, sales is not only about achieving goals, but also about continuously optimizing the path to achieving them. This approach ensures that future goal achievement is also based on a secure foundation. If changes are always avoided, this can also lead to a situation where a comprehensive transformation process is eventually necessary that is almost impossible to manage, according to the study's authors.

Marketing and Sales Poorly Integrated

This also applies to the still poorly integrated disciplines of marketing and sales: only 33 percent of the companies surveyed have succeeded in merging the two departments so far. As a result, great potential remains untapped. After all, sales relies heavily on customer data to be able to initiate sales measures accordingly. Although this information is generated on a large scale in marketing, it is not always made available to sales.

This is followed by another problem: 30 percent of companies focus almost exclusively on customer loyalty instead of driving customer acquisition. This even applies to companies that, in their own estimation, operate in a declining or stagnating market. In this group, only 25 percent consider that increased customer acquisition could be the solution to their problems.

Customer Acquisition Not Holistic

The tools used for customer acquisition present a rather heterogeneous picture:

• For example, 20 percent of study participants use both CRM or automation systems and social media
• 38 percent prefer CRM or marketing automation, and
• 42 percent have clearly discovered social networks for this purpose.

The conclusion that can be drawn from this is that only 20 percent of companies use a holistic, IT-supported customer acquisition approach. More than half of the companies exchange information about customer acquisition within their teams. However, this also means that a number of companies are not active in this area and are once again wasting great potential.

Sales Approach? Nonexistent

The same applies to the sales approach, which is only used in 25 percent of the companies surveyed. There is therefore a lack of an agreed philosophy on which sales staff can base their customer sales talks. Many salespeople still seem to see themselves as lone warriors rather than team players. However, collaborative, strategic work could boost sales success in many ways. The use of a sales approach is generally an important tool for the continuous improvement of sales. A quarter of the study participants state that their company uses a sales approach. According to the study publishers, this is an alarmingly low figure in relation to the number of successful B2B companies offering complex solutions in Switzerland.

The analysis of the 25 percent of companies that use sales approaches is illustrated in the following chart:

The fact that salespeople often lack information about their customers is also evident from the fact that cross-selling, i.e., the sale of complementary products or services, accounts for only between 16 and 30 percent of generated revenue. “If you combine this figure with significantly lower customer acquisition costs, it becomes clear what a powerful lever cross-selling could be for companies,” according to the study's publishers.

Performance Instead of Empowerment

Problems in leadership are often to blame for the fact that sales excellence and thus customer acquisition are not getting off the ground, as the study's authors note. For example, 45 percent of employees say that their sales manager does not have the latest knowledge in the field of sales. This could explain the rather sluggish pace of digitization efforts.

In addition, 50 percent of employees complain that their sales manager does not pay enough attention to training and employee development. As a result, the high value of continuing education is not being exemplified. Instead, managers prioritize short-term performance, while long-term empowerment falls by the wayside.

This is a partly automated translation of this german article.