For the 18th year, the corporate research team at Selling Power has identified and ranked the best companies to sell for among the top sales forces in the United States. The list encompasses companies of all sizes – with sales forces ranging from fewer than 100 salespeople to companies with sales-force numbers in the thousands.
To gather data, the Selling Power research team issued a comprehensive application with detailed sections covering three broader categories: 1) Compensation and Benefits, 2) Hiring, Sales Training, and Sales Enablement, and 3) Customer Retention. Sections were also provided for companies to spotlight any other information about their sales organization and culture that would help us fine tune the rankings. The scoring process continues to be honed each year to ensure we provide the most objective data-sensitive rankings while still maintaining strict confidentiality of the raw data provided to us. As we continually work to adjust our process to ever-changing companies, industries, and data, each year’s ranking uniquely stands on its own and is not directly comparable to prior years.
Within each broad category we continue to use unique and proprietary scoring systems for each segment within the categories. For example, within Compensation and Benefits, we ranked compensation data individually; but, with segments like Sales Training, we started with a base training level and scored each company at varying degrees above, below, or at the established base level. Another example is the hosting of sales contests, for which companies were scored not only on whether they hosted sales contests, but also the frequency of the contests.
This year we again congratulate CA Technologies for earning the top spot, but it should be noted that salespeople can achieve success with any of these fantastic companies. With the variety of company sizes and industries represented, it is not effective to state one company is better than another company solely on their point totals; rather, this ranking should be used to explore each of the companies, their unique strengths, and their varying sales cultures as a Selling Power Best Company to Sell For.