You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
The good news is that new advances in technology make it easier than ever before to track and analyze the right data. Metrics are very important in every part of any business, especially in sales. Sales leaders can’t use their intuition to make decisions because they would be dealing with a lot of information and the risk of failure would be high. However, new technology makes it easier to track and analyze data.
Successful companies are those that carefully track and analyze all aspects of their business model, sales tactics, and sales staff.
This guide will help you understand which sales metrics you should pay attention to and how sales enablement can help improve your sales numbers.
First, let’s take a look at what sales metrics are!
Sales Metrics
Sales metrics are data points that help an individual, team, or company track progress toward goals, prepare for future growth, adjust sales compensation, award incentives and bonuses, and identify any strategic issues.
What types of sales metrics are there? Which ones should you be tracking?
Let’s get started.
Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
These sales metrics are important for measuring company-wide performance.
- Total revenue: Total revenue refers to the total amount of income generated from all operational and sales activities across all products and services.
- Revenue by product or service: This refers to the income generated per product or service.
- Market penetration: Market penetration refers to your number of customers compared to the total number of potential customers in the market.
- Percentage of revenue from new business: This metric shows you how much income you’re generating from new customers every month or quarter.
- Percentage of revenue from existing customers: This refers to the income generated from cross-selling and upselling current customers, as well from repeat orders and expanded contracts.
- Year-over-year growth: This metric compares the revenue generated from year to year.
- Average customer lifetime value (LTV): LTV refers to the amount of revenue a business can expect from one user or customer throughout their lifespan at the company.
- Net Promoter Score (NPS): This score reflects whether a customer or user would recommend your business to another person.
- Number of deals lost to competition: Gathered during a win-loss review or a customer survey, this metric shows you how much business you’re losing to the competition.
- Revenue by territory: This refers to the amount of income generated from sales in a certain territory.
- Revenue by market: This refers to the amount of income generated from sales in a particular vertical.
- Cost of selling: Cost of selling, also referred to as selling expenses, refers to the amount of money you and your sales reps invest to sell the product. This metric is most useful when measured as a percentage of the revenue generated.
Activity Sales Metrics
The following sales metrics show the daily activity of salespeople. Activity metrics are ones that managers can directly influence.
If a salesperson isn’t meeting their quota, it can be because they aren’t sending enough emails. By looking at their activity metrics, you can see how many emails they are sending and how many calls they are making. If they aren’t sending enough emails, you can tell them to increase their daily email output.
Activity metrics include the number of:
- Calls made
- Emails sent
- Conversations
- Social media interactions
- Scheduled meetings
- Demos or sales presentations
- Referral requests
- Proposals sent
Activity sales metrics can be used to predict future results.
Pipeline Sales Metrics
What metrics should you use to gauge the health of your sales pipeline? Here are some metrics that will help you understand what is working and what is not in your sales process.
To gain a more profound understanding of the data, you should measure various metrics within a specific time frame, such as monthly or quarterly. It would also be beneficial to examine the metrics of each team and individual.
- Average length of sales cycle: This refers to the amount of time it takes for leads to go through the sales pipeline until becoming a closed-won deal.
- Total open opportunities: This refers to the number of open deals by a team or individual.
- Total closed opportunities: This refers to the number of closed-won deals.
- Weighted value of pipeline: This metric shows the estimated value of deals as they move through the pipeline.
- Total value of sales: This refers to the income generated directly and exclusively from sales activities.
- Annual contract value (ACV): ACV refers to the amount of revenue a contract generates per year.
- Win rate: This refers to the number of deals won divided by the total number of deals. It can be measured by team and by individual.
- Conversion rate by sales funnel stage: This refers to the number of converting leads at every stage of the sales funnel. It can be measured by team and by individual.
Lead Generation Sales Metrics
What metrics can you use to determine how well your salespeople are prospecting?
- Frequency/volume of new opportunities added to the pipeline
- Average lead response time
- Percentage of leads followed up with
- Percentage of leads followed up within target time range (for example, 8 hours)
- Percentage of leads dropped
- Percentage of qualified leads
- Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Outreach Sales Metrics
Some of the metrics in this category may not be important to your company. It all depends on your individual sales process, methodology, and strategy. For example, if your sales reps only talk to prospects they’ve met at trade shows, then the average initial-contact-to-meeting rate would be a better way to measure their performance than the average email open rate.
Email Sales Metrics
- Open rate
- Response rate
- Engagement rate (link clicks, webinar attendance, video plays, etc.)
- Percentage of recipients who move to the next step
Phone Sales Metrics
- Call-backs
- Percentage of prospects who agree to a conversation
- Percentage of prospects who move to the next step
Social Media Social Metrics
- Percentage of LinkedIn connection requests accepted
- InMail response rate
- Percentage of prospects engaged with on social media who move to next step
- Conferences, trade shows, events
- Number of meetings set
- Number of qualified opportunities generated
Primary Conversion Metrics
Here, you’ll look at opportunity metrics specifically.
- Percentage of opportunities closed/won
- Percentage of opportunities lost (no decision)
- Percentage of opportunities lost to competitor
- Percentage of opportunities won by lead source
- Average number of conversations for won opportunities
- Average number of conversations for lost opportunities
The Best Ways To Measure Sales Enablement Success
The following are some key sales performance indicators that can help you measure the success of your sales enablement team:
1. Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate
A lead can be defined as a sales prospect by companies, and an opportunity is a possible deal that is likely to close with a attached dollar amount.
The lead-to-opportunity conversion rate is a good measure of sales enablement success because it shows how well the business development representatives are doing. If the rate goes up, it means that the sales reps are getting the right message to the right people at the right time.
Tools to Consider
- We recommend leveraging the deal stages and/or the lead-to-opportunities conversion rate that’s tracked within your CRM.
- Unbounce is a development tool that makes it easier to improve customer conversion rates using their grading tool.
2. Content Performance
The content you create can be a great way to engage potential customers, so it’s important to track its effectiveness. Content can include case studies, feature comparisons, social media posts, articles, and many other things.
You can improve your content’s performance by tracking how it is being leveraged. Sales reps may not be aware of a particular piece of content that could help them convert more leads to customers. By tracking content performance, you can get a better understanding of what is working for your sales reps and what information is valuable to your potential customers.
Tools to Consider
- HubSpot provides content management tools that make it easier to determine how a specific piece of content is performing.
- Content management tools like Showpad, Highspot, and Seismic effectively allow teams to understand which content results in conversions. It’s one reason why they’re increasingly called enablement platforms.
3. Win Rate
Win rate refers to the percentage of deals your company has won over a given period of time:
The success rate of a team can be determined by their win rate, which is the number of times they’ve won divided by the total number of opportunities they’ve had.
When you measure the win rate as one of your sales enablement metrics, you can get an idea of where your sales team is succeeding and where more training is needed. If salespeople have solid training and the resources to close deals, the win rate will increase.
Tools to Consider
- Zendesk Sell is a CRM software solution that provides tools for monitoring and growing win percentage.
- TruSales for SFDC provides a range of sales enablement metrics, including win rate, lost deals, and similar KPIs.
4. Competitive Win Rate
Although a little healthy competition is okay, it can prevent someone from winning. Competitive win rate shows how often someone wins when competing against at least one other person, and is reflected as a percentage of total opportunities.
The competitive win rate shows how often your sales team beats out the competition. A high win rate means your team is good at showcasing your business’s advantages. If the win rate is falling, it could be a sign that your value proposition and messaging need to be changed.
Tools to Consider
- Yesware is a plugin for common email applications, making it easier for your sales reps to stay on top of communications with prospects.
- SalesLoft provides a combination of communication tools and templates and sales training to improve sales rep performance.
5. Average Selling Price
How much your customers pay on average for your products or services is known as your average selling price (or average contract value, ACV). Note that this price includes any discounts. This metric lets you know whether or not your sales team is accurately representing your brand’s value or if they’re having to discount services in order to make sales.
The average selling price is important because it shows how much profit your company is making and how well your sales reps are doing. If the average selling price decreases, it could be because your sales reps are giving huge discounts which could hurt your company’s image.
Tools to Consider
- HubSpot‘s Sales Pricing Calculator gives you a range of sales calculation tools with an easy, free download.
- Datapine allows you to easily see several sales KPIs in a single location, making it easier to centralize.
6. Average Discount
The average discount is a sales metric that reflects the average discounts that your customers regularly receive. Some companies may see their best profits from discounts, however this should be done cautiously as too many discounts can have a negative impact on revenue.
If your sales team offers deep discounts regularly to secure business, you may want to consider better sales training for new hires. You can use this information to determine if the team is responding to customer needs or if they offer discounts as a standard practice to make their close rates look good.
Tools to Consider
- Shopify has an average profit margin calculator as part of its dashboard, which gives you a similar metric to determine the discounting or profitability of your sales.
- WooCommerce also has a calculator for determining the average profit margin, which can be used to calculate the average discount overall.
7. Sales Cycle Length
Sales cycle length is the amount of time it takes from first contact with a new lead to the final sale. The sales cycle includes a number of moving parts, such as demos, meetings with stakeholders, free trials, and similar activities. By tracking sales cycle length, businesses can identify areas where they may be able to improve efficiency and close deals more quickly.
Many delays in the sales process are due to a lack of urgency on the part of the sales team. By conveying a sense of urgency, the sales team can shorten the sales cycle.
Tools to Consider
- MondayCRM provides sales cycle tracking, including tools for your sales reps to accelerate the sales cycle and improve results.
- Keap is a CRM focused on small businesses, providing analytics on several sales metrics, including sales cycle length, to help boost sales efforts.
Sales metrics are important to track to make sure your team is on the right track. Sales enablement metrics give you good insights into how effective your sales and marketing efforts are and if they are getting better or worse over time. Prioritizing the right ones and then making corrections (or even changing completely) will put you ahead of others. You will be able to see your progress, reach your sales goals, and have a positive impact on your bottom line.
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