Sales Inbox diagnostic
How much revenue is asleep in your sales inbox?
We took apart the sales inbox of several B2B distributors and manufacturers.
Here are the numbers we found.
Six numbers that come back, whatever the industry.
Quotes never followed up
of quotes sent are never followed up within 5 days. No exception across the distributors we analyzed.
Among manufacturers
of quotes go out with no follow-up. The pattern holds well beyond distributors.
of daily emails
are customers chasing you themselves. The most reliable churn signal we have observed.
Emails / day / rep
land in a sales inbox. Time that adds up and takes over from actually selling.
Quotes past 24h
of quotes go out after more than 24 hours. Nobody steers that number.
Revenue left on the table
Depending on the size of your book, measured on the quotes that were never followed up.
The pattern is always the same.
Whatever the sector, the size or the ERP. Sales reps receive 80 to 100 emails a day. The people running these teams know it. Handling them takes up to 70% of the time.
Quotes go out, nobody follows them up.
A bespoke request or a pre-configuration ties up a rep for a whole day. Meanwhile the standard quotes wait, and nobody has the time to chase them.
62 to 95% of quotes sent are never followed up within 5 days
The same finding whatever the industrial sub-segment
The most reliable churn signal: your customers are the ones chasing you
The cross-sell that never happens.
Every incoming order is a chance to offer a reorder, a complementary range, a volume discount within reach. Across most of the inboxes we analyzed, no cross-sell opportunity is triggered automatically.
Cross-sell still depends on what the senior order desk rep remembers
No opportunity rule is applied automatically in the inboxes we analyzed
Without a system, every incoming order is a missed opportunity
"How long do we take to answer a customer?"
"I have no way of knowing." A CEO of a French industrial manufacturer we analyzed. Without instrumentation, response time, quote-to-order conversion and latency per order desk profile all stay invisible. The senior rep senses the trends, but nobody puts a number on them.
The most strategic KPI is also the least measured
Decisions are made blind
Every email becomes usable data as soon as it is tagged automatically
1,200 dormant quotes a year in the inbox of a mid-sized company.
At one mid-sized distributor we observed, around 1,200 quotes a year go out and never receive a follow-up. Compounded over several years, that is tens of thousands of euros asleep in the inbox, never recovered and never measured.
≈ 1,200 dormant quotes a year at one mid-sized distributor observed
Each one is potential revenue that appears in no report
Compounded over 3 to 5 years, the shortfall becomes significant
From inbox to report, in 48 hours.
No ERP touched. No commitment.
You export a PST file. We do the rest.
PST export (5 min).
You export a PST file of your sales inbox (Outlook or Google Workspace). Secondary option: a read-only connection.
Analysis (48h).
Our system takes apart the last 90 days of conversations, tags the requests, measures the delays, and surfaces where the gains are.
A quantified deliverable.
A report of your own reality, with numbers. Actionable improvements. No commitment.
They made the move.
Groupe HEDIS
“On every incoming order, the agent applies our opportunity rules. The opportunity is obvious, because it arrives with the order itself.”
Jean-François Le Rudulier
CIO, Hedis Group
context & challenges
At Hedis Group, the share of orders processed without any data entry went from 22% to 54% in a few months. The time freed raised a question: what to do with it? Rather than shrinking the team, HEDIS moved its sales support staff onto inside selling: restocking, complementary ranges, customer reactivation. The challenge: equip them with an agent that spots opportunities as the orders come in and hands them over ready to use.
22% to 54%
orders processed without data entry.
+3 levers
restocking, ranges, reactivation.
Run my diagnostic
48 hours. One PST file. No access to a live system.