Marketing team size analysis: 300 businesses

The differences between established market leaders and scale-ups are often the subject of much debate, yet surprisingly little research is available to explain the operational differences between them.

Market leaders have spent many years developing and honing industry leading positions. By contrast, with little existing awareness, scale-ups focus on establishing themselves and building sustainable growth trajectories.

Method for analysing sales & marketing team sizes

We investigated these differences by aggregating data from leading sources (Fortune 500 and Sunday Times Tech Track 100). We then compared their revenues, overall employee numbers, marketing team sizes and sales team sizes. We then categorised them into the same categories as also presented within our research of more than 600 sales and marketing budgets.

Given how difficult this information is to find, we used an approach that required analysing employees on LinkedIN and then comparing this to overall numbers where available. In most cases this yielded relatively accurate results, although there are natural limitations to this, as not every employee is on LinkedIN and the job categorisations are not always correct.

Results and analysis

The analysis revealed valuable insights for senior executives, marketers, investors and entrepreneurs.

• Sales teams are typically much larger than marketing teams (although not always)

  This trend was consistent across most industries, with some having sales teams more than 10 times the number of salespeople. Notably, this was not too much of a surprise as these industries tended to be those with a high number of retail outlets e.g. Retail. By contrast, the exceptions were less surprising as they tended to be industries that were media and marketing led, so in effect naturally full of marketers. That said, it was of value to identify industries where the sales team sizes could either be smaller or larger than the marketing team, which tended to be technology businesses.

• Sales and marketing teams are broadly the same proportion of total employees

  Across all categories, there was a general consistency in the number of employees that were in sales & marketing teams as a percentage of the total number of employees. Apart from the exception categories mentioned earlier, marketing teams were 5% on average of the total number of employees. Meanwhile, sales teams were much larger at 13%.

• Industries with small sales & marketing teams also had small budgets (although not always)

  Having subsequently analysed the sales & marketing budgets of more than 600 listed companies, we could map the budgets against team sizes. This analysis revealed a natural consistency between the proportion of revenue spent on sales & marketing budgets and the proportion of employees in sales & marketing roles. This needs little explanation. However, the exceptions were worth noting. Industries such as banking have a large number of salespeople but very small sales & marketing budgets due to the unique nature of their operations.

• Startups prioritise marketing over sales

  Our research shows a clear consistency in the prioritisation by startups of marketing over sales teams. In the vast majority of business categories, marketing teams increased by a much higher proportion of overall employees to the proportional increase of sales teams. An increase across both categories would be expected given the lack of physical infrastructure of most startups, and the limited revenues of scaling businesses. However, this difference was much more notable for marketing teams (9% on average compared to 3%).

Team size calculator

We turned this research into a sales & marketing team size calculator. We split the data into the startups and established businesses and then provided a category dropdown to make it more suited to each business. Resultantly, by simply stating an approximate figure of the number of employees in their business, a user can estimate the number of sales and marketing people they should have. Naturally, due to the limitations presented in this analysis, it may be quite inaccurate. However, it is built on actual data and provides a new way for CMOs and members of the C-suite to consider their allocations.

Further investigation and analysis is required

This research provides a necessary first step in the analysis of sales & marketing team sizes. These teams are often built with little or no awareness of the general rules that affect their allocation. We believe our key findings presented above are relatively robust. However, much greater research is required to prove them conclusively.

If you would like the full written research report and the dataset along with a much more detailed analysis of the findings and limitations, please get in touch.

Any questions?