CSO Insights is a specialist sales and marketing consulting firm and creators of the annual Sales Performance Optimization survey.

Each year, for the past 17 years, CSO Insights has surveyed thousands of chief sales officers in an effort to create a set of industry benchmarks that you can use to guage and improve your own sales and marketing performance.

Last year more than 2800 individual sales leaders responded to the survey and created a set of data that created 90 different metrics  examining each aspect of the sales process, starting withlead generation and the interface with marketing and finishing with the hand-off to customer service.

The survey itself is completely confidential and takes about 15-20 minutes and your company can remain anonymous if desired. In return for completing the survey, you will receive a complimentary copy of the survey (retail value $795) in late January or early February next year.

Profile of 2010 Survey Participants:

Respondents: Senior executives directly involved in the management of their organizations' sales forces.

Profile of 2800 participating companies:

• 65% had fewer than 50 salespeople
• 15% had 51 to 250 salespeople
• 20% had teams of >250 salespeople

The breakdown of the participation by major industry segments follows:

• 43.7% in Services including financial, high tech, general business, advertising/PR
• 31.1% in Manufacturing including both high tech and non-high tech
• 25.2% in Other covering retail, non-profits, government, education, distribution

If you are in marketing, please bring this blog to the attention of the sales leader in your company.

Click here to take the 2011 CSO Insights survey.