Sales Data Nugget

Do Top-Performing Reps Send More Emails?

Michaela Mendes

Head of Content & Strategy

Table of contents:

Ever wondered why some of your reps show up and crush it every quarter, and some…don’t?

This is the number one question on every sales leader's mind.

“How do we figure out what all of our top reps are doing, then how do we replicate that across the team?”

If you knew the answer, you’d be rich: in pipeline, profits, and promotions!

We just launched SetSail Discover, an AI-powered solution that analyzes activity data to find the specific rep behaviors that matter for your business. We’ve already found some surprising results.

Now, there are many reasons why top performers excel. (In fact, we measure rep performance across hundreds of factors.) But one of these factors gets talked about pretty often: email volume.

We wanted to know – do top reps send more emails than everyone else? Does activity volume matter?

Do top reps send more emails than everyone else?

We used Discover’s proprietary, AI-powered “signals engine” to analyze email activity across top reps (as measured by quota attainment). Discover’s superpower is identifying what’s effective for your unique sales process. But this time we wanted to see if there were any general lessons we could learn.

We analyzed millions of Salesforce records and found three key insights:

Finding #1: Overall, all top-performing reps send virtually the same or fewer number of emails as everyone else.

Finding #2: These top performers get 24% more meetings, and receive 14% more emails.

Finding #3: The top-performing BDRs stand out the most. They send 8% fewer emails yet receive 23% more emails and get 87% more meetings.

What does this mean for your team?

Takeaway #1: top reps emphasize quality over quantity. They have better targeting and messaging, which leads to higher engagement and more meetings booked. They don't spam or do activity for its own sake.

Takeaway #2: measure results and leading indicators. If you grade your team based on activity alone, you’re not seeing the whole picture.