For ultimate sales success discover different types of sales metrics, which are most important, and how to effectively track and measure them.
In today’s data-driven world, sales managers have no shortage of data to track. Every day sales reps generate tons of data, but narrowing down and understanding the most valuable metrics can be a challenge.
Because sales are a primary source of revenue, measuring the right sales metrics is critical and can impact profitability, growth, and overall business success.
First off, sales metrics are figures, data, or statistics used to measure and assess sales performance. Metrics serve as a tool to compare the performance of individuals and teams over a period of time.
While often used interchangeably, it’s worth noting that sales metrics and sales KPIs are not exactly the same thing. While they are both qualitative, they have different purposes.
Sales Metrics: are figures or statistics that help to track sales performance and activities of an individual, team, or company over a time period. They measure the impact of day-to-day performance. An important distinction is that not all sales metrics are KPIs and only some provide insight into the success of strategic goals.
Key Performance Indicators or KPIs: measure performance against strategic objectives. A metric becomes a KPI if it is critical to success and directly impacts your company’s strategic goals. KPIs are a type of sales metric.
For Example: If your company wants to increase sales by 15% next year, then your KPI would be sales growth, and the sales metric would be sales revenue.
Tracking the right metrics can make the difference between profitability and loss. Here are some reasons why tracking sales metrics are so important.
Evaluate the Effectiveness of Sales Process: Sales performance metrics can help sales leaders monitor their teams' progress and get valuable insight into the effectiveness of the sales process.
You’ll Know What to Spend Time On: Managers and teams can ensure that time and resources are spent on value-adding activities.
Improve Performance The metrics can indicate areas for improvement, allowing the sales leaders to adjust operations and sales activities accordingly.
Identify Problems and Areas for Improvement: Sales leaders can also use this information to assess individual team members' strengths and weaknesses. Managers can use this information to coach sales reps to achieve better results.
For example: If you notice your sales rep is not spending enough time on each call, you can listen to call recordings of their interactions and figure out the problem. Maybe they aren’t overcoming objections or are lacking in product knowledge. Once you have identified the issue, you managers can address it with the right actions.
Here we’ll cover four types of sales metrics that are commonly used. It is beneficial to use a combination of these to get a more complete and accurate picture of your sales pipeline. Keep in mind that while these are common, metrics will vary from organization to organization.
For example, if you only consider sales activity metrics but ignore total revenue, you won't be able to determine if your sales activities are truly effective.
Sales Activity Metrics: measure the effectiveness of sales activities on a day-to-day basis by individuals.
Calls made: outgoing calls.
Total Talk Time: time spent talking to prospects.
Total Demos booked: total number of demos scheduled.
Number of Follow-Ups: how many follow-ups have been made.
Emails sent: how many emails have been sent.
Number of Meetings Scheduled: number of planned meetings.
Quota attainment: targets and goals attained.
Conversion Sales Metrics: shows how effectively your sales team converts leads into new customers.
Revenue: money made from a customer, account or deal.
Lead conversion rate: percentage of leads that turn into customers.
Quota attainment: % of quota that the rep has attained.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): money required to acquire new customer.
Customer lifetime value (CLV): revenue generated from a single customer.
Lead Generation Sales Metrics: give you an indication of how well your sales reps are prospecting.
Qualified leads generated: number of leads that have been qualified.
Sales qualified leads (SQLs) generated: number of leads who have shown intent to purchase.
Opportunity creation: number of opportunities added to the pipeline.
Opportunity win rates: number of deals closed vs. total number of deals.
Opportunity close rates: number of closed-won deals.
KPIs: give you an indication of how well your company is performing against its targets and objectives. If you notice one particular metric is driving performance, you should upgrade that metric to a KPI. Determining KPIs will vary based on your company, industry, market, goals and more.
Having said that, here are some common KPIs to get you started:
Sales growth rate: the rate by which your sales are growing. Break down by month or year or period.
Average profit margin: the amount of profit generated by sales
Net sales revenue: the amount of sales revenue after deductions
Customer lifetime value (CLV): how much a company can earn from a customer.
Customer retention rate: the number of customers who remain customers over a specific period.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) money required to turn a prospect into a customer
A sales development team consists of SDRs or sales development representatives who find and qualifies new leads for account executives and salespeople via telephone. This team plays a vital role in building sales pipelines, so it's important to set metrics and KPIs that determine the SDRs success.
Metrics can show whether reps are successful on calls or if they are lagging in parts of the sales process. With this information, managers can see what is and isn’t working and influence future outcomes with additional support and coaching.
A sales rep's number of daily conversations will indicate how well they connect with prospects. This is important as the more meaningful conversations they have, the more likely they are to meet their quotas.
Use call analytics & dashboards to capture call data like this. You’ll gain a greater understanding of your metrics and uncover opportunities to work with your staff and improve their performance.
The average number of sales calls or emails per day will help your sales reps attain set quotas. Using dialing technology or integrating your CRM with your phone system is one way to ensure reps maximize dials and increase total daily calls.
You will get an indication of the quality of conversations your reps have by monitoring how much time they spend on each call. Maybe the rep makes many calls, but the talk time is very short. This could indicate that they are not effective during those conversations. Perhaps they aren't asking the right questions, they aren't overcoming objections, or they are having difficulty closing the deal. Managers can offer coaching and support at this point.
Inbound sales teams are often made up of reps and account executives responsible for inbound leads and closing deals with pre-qualified prospects. The right metrics can help you determine if sales reps are following up quickly and closing deals with prospects.
Quota attainment measures how well your reps meet their targets. This could be related to revenue, volume, profit, and activity. It is a simple and straightforward way to measure the strengths, weaknesses, and overall performance of your reps.
Using this metric, you can measure the percentage of opportunities won and determine how often your sales team wins deals.
Related: Essential Metrics for Every Call Center
An organization's total revenue is the sum of all income generated by all operational and sales activities. You can break this down further by tracking revenue by product, service, or sales rep.
Calculates the average profit generated from a sale of a product, service or service category. Each product or service will have different profit margins, so it will give you a good indication of where and what to focus your efforts on.
You can use this fundamental metric to determine the cost of converting a lead into a customer. It shows how much money you’ve spent on getting the customer vs. the number of new customers gained within a specific time frame.
Related: Achieving Customer Success with Call Center Analytics
With so many sales metrics that need to be measured and tracked, the best way forward is to automate and streamline the process. You don’t need to (nor should you) keep track of your important sales metrics manually.
Tracking and measuring your most important metrics starts here:
Select a few sales metrics that are most important.
Decide how often to measure the metrics.
Collect your sales data in a CRM customer relationships management tool like Salesforce or Zoho. Here you can track metrics and KPIs in real-time via a dashboard.
Using integrations, connect your cloud business phone system to your CRM. You can make calls directly from your CRM and automatically track call data like call duration, number of dials, abandonment rates and more.
Analyze the data and look for trends that can help identify issues or opportunities.
Use findings to improve sales.
In 2023, it’s time to focus on quality conversations rather than the quantity of conversations. It's important to track metrics that ensure your reps are having quality conversations that lead to meaningful outcomes.
Using call metrics like those tracked by your Unified Communications system, you can create dashboards that not only track your entire team's performance but the performance of each rep.
This metric will show you how much time your reps actually spend speaking with prospects. It is possible for a rep to have 150 total calls, but the average talk time might only be a few seconds. In this case, the rep may not be engaging in effective conversations and may need additional training or sales tools.
This stat will provide insight into how often your team and individual sales reps are winning deals. A sales rep's ability to sell is largely determined by the quality of the conversations they have.
It's all about revenue at the end of the day, and this metric will indicate the value that your sales reps are bringing in as a result of their sales activities.
When it comes to improving your sales, regularly tracking your metrics is a must. The figures will certainly reveal both opportunities and challenges within your sales process.
From there, you’ll know where to focus your efforts, and you can help reps maximize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses. Start by taking advantage of your unified communications system and capturing the right data.
If you’d like to get started with a unified communications solution but aren’t sure where to start, download our step-by-step guide which will take you through the process of choosing the right vendor and features for greater business success.