Key Sales Metrics Your Team Should Be Tracking | The Alternative Board

These days, the problem with compiling and analyzing sales-related information isn’t a lack of data. It’s an abundance of data. Sales performance software and other tracking tools can unlock a wealth of details about a company’s overall performance, but without the right focus, there’s just too much of it to understand in a useful manner.

A more effective strategy is isolating key performance metrics that speak to your sales team’s overall track record—wins, losses, numbers of prospective customers in the pipeline, and so on.

Here are some key sales metrics that can yield the most meaningful data for you and your team:

Reaching quotas

How many members of your sales team reach or bypass your weekly or monthly quotas? According to HubSpot, “your quotas are likely unrealistic if less than 60% are hitting” them, while “if 90% to 100% of your salespeople are hitting quota, they’re probably coasting.” Depending on the circumstances, it may be time to reassess the way you set sales quotas.

Email open and click-through rates

Emails are a popular way to reach out to prospects, but if they’re not being opened, it’s a waste of everyone’s time. “Factors that influence open rates, like subject lines and readability on a mobile device, are indicators of where you can optimize your emails,” notes the sales communications and analytics firm SalesHandy. Also, using a click-through metric, you can “ensure email content resonates with the needs of your prospects.”

Sales time

What amount of time is spent by the team in administrative and support tasks, as opposed to actual sales? Have team members log in daily sales tasks for an agreed-upon period. Study all factors that distract them from what they do best—make sales—and, where possible, provide the team with resources that accelerate completion of administrative chores, so they can get back to selling.

Want additional insight? Download Setting KPIs for Business Success now to learn more

Typical deal size

You can determine typical deal size by “dividing your total number of deals by the total dollar amount of those deals,” as HubSpot notes. Reviewing this metric each month (and/or each quarter) will help indicate if deals are growing in size, shrinking, or remaining the same.

Conversion (win) rate

Ultimately, what every business strives for is converting a sales lead into an actual sale. How many new leads translate into product or service sales each month? Evaluating these figures can help you assess whether shortcomings exist within the sales process, sales techniques, team performance and/or the ways in which leads are generated. It also helps to determine a conversion percentage rate that enables you to more effectively attain your revenue goals.

Use of marketing materials

With the rise of content marketing, it’s important to ascertain whether your sales team is making the most of this key engagement resource. Does your marketing department generate valuable content that’s being under-employed by the sales team? According to the American Marketing Association, “sales departments fail to use around 90% of marketing materials/marketing content,” which can “translate to missed opportunities and sales funnel leakage.”

As we have noted elsewhere, “a company’s sales strategies and operations should never be set in stone. These activities must be constantly reviewed, altered, scaled and enhanced in order to meet changing marketplace conditions and to stay ahead of the competition.” That’s where compiling data and analyzing metrics helps boost your team’s sales performance.

TAB has resources to help you improve your company’s sales process. Our TAB Boss Webinar, “Removing Bottlenecks in Your Sales Process,” can help you identify obstacles in your sales methodologies, manage sales in a more organized fashion, and show you how to move away from “sales triage” to prevent problems. The webinar is presented by TAB Facilitator Bob Dodge, a sales veteran. Register for the free webinar today!