OnePageCRM, an action-focused CRM for small businesses, compiled results from the Sales Insights Survey for small businesses and summarized sales trends for 2022.

The survey was running in December 2021 and collected responses from 108 sales professionals and small business business owners about their sales and business expectations, priorities, and challenges. You can read the full Sales Insights report here.

The report covers a variety of sales-related topics and provides actionable recommendations on how to improve different stages of your sales process, manage data in a growing business, automate routine tasks, and follow up more efficiently.

The report is divided into three sections: Sales expectations, Sales processes, and Sales tools.
According to the results, in 2022, small businesses want to prioritize their relationships with existing customers by either improving communication with them (80%) or by increasing business activities with existing clients (75%).

The majority of small business owners and sales professionals want to improve their data analysis and management skills (63%). Time management, networking, and virtual selling are also among the top skills on the 2022 agenda.

Most survey participants (74%) expect their revenues to increase in 2022. Only a small percentage of companies (approximately 2%) believe that their revenues will decline during the next few months.

61% of small businesses struggle with prospecting and qualifying leads. While modern tools have made it much easier to capture leads from various sources and quickly add them to CRM systems, businesses are now looking for ways to generate more high-quality leads.

76% of survey participants agree that referrals (or word-of-mouth marketing) are their number one source for getting high-quality leads. Networking is another popular source for lead generation that is used by more than half of small businesses (53%).

According to the survey results, most of the lead sources reported by small businesses are all digital. Only a small fraction of participants (7%) use traditional advertising.

When it comes to staying on top of sales trends, many sales professionals and small business owners (45%) join LinkedIn or Facebook discussions, 34% prefer to participate in live webinars and Q&A sessions. 33% sign up for sales-related newsletters.

Small businesses value easy-to-use CRM systems (86%) and consider contact management the most important CRM feature (87%). In the report, OnePageCRM also lists a few tips on how to make the most of your contact management process even if you currently use a simple spreadsheet.

The report also provides more detail on daily sales challenges in small businesses, the number of follow-ups, a list of top sales resources for upskilling, and much more. Get the full report here: Sales Insights Report for Small Business 2021.