If you work in sales, you know how much data can accumulate. This precious data can give you important insights into your business performance and help you decide which steps you need to take next.
Lucky for us, we have great tools, like the sales CRM to measure our data and give us visual representations of what exactly is going on. However, this won’t help us entirely unless we know which metrics to track.
In this article, well go over some of the most important sales performance metrics that will help boost your business. Once you narrow down what you need to focus on, it will be easier to analyze and make smarter decisions based on the results.
In this article, well go over some of the most important sales performance metrics that will help boost your business. Once you narrow down what you need to focus on, it will be easier to analyze and make smarter decisions based on the results.
So what exactly are sales performance metrics?
Sales performance metrics are a measure of your business activities. From tasks to quotas to revenue, these metrics provide valuable insights into your sales performance.
You can track performance over a given time period, and see clearly whether you are meeting your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals. When used correctly, they can be the most essential tool in your business ‘tool kit’.
Below are the most important performance metrics your sales team needs to follow:
1. The amount of sales team members hitting the quota
You sales dashboards can show you what percentage of sales reps are hitting or going over their quotas. If your quotas are hitting under 60%, you probably have set the goals too high and need to lower them to more realistic numbers.
You can also see which reps perform better, and weed out those with subpar performance. These metrics can also indicate that by increasing compensation, your sales reps will gain more motivation to sell better.
2. Average deal amount
This measures the sum of all your deals’ amounts and then divides that by the total number of deals. This lets you see if your deals are getting more valuable over time. If you see your deal amount is increasing but the number of deals is decreasing, you might find it’s more valuable to try and decrease your deal amounts and increase your number of deals.
If you see that a sales rep has a low deal amount average, it can be a signal to look closer at their performance. It’s possible they are quoting too low, or that they are focusing only on small easily closed deals, and not spending enough energy on higher value deals.
3. Percentage of won deals
This metric will show you what percentage of your deals have turned into customers. This percentage, or conversion rate, lets you know if your performance is meeting your goals.
You can look at past conversion rates to assess whether they are increasing or decreasing. If they are getting lower, you might want to look into possible problems with your sales strategies or sales team.
4. Average Sales Cycle Length
It’s very helpful to know the average amount of time it takes to close a deal. With this information, you can determine when an opportunity is getting cold, and the best course of action to take. For example if you see a deal is going past the average sales cycle length, you can reach out to the prospect and offer a discount or another enticing offer.
This metric can also help sales reps gauge their personal sales cycle lengths. If they are lagging behind timewise, they can try to see where there is room for improvement. Reps that close deals faster might have some helpful strategies that others can learn from so that your business can hit targets more efficiently.
5. Stages of lost deals
You can keep track of the stages where you lose the most leads. This information is crucial to improve those areas of your sales process that are costing you new customers. Measure your conversion rates for each stage to determine where the problem lies.
For example, if 50% of your leads agree to a call, and 40% of those leads move on to the demo, and only a small fraction actually make a purchase, you can see that their may be a problem in the demo performance. You can use this data to take a closer look into your demo approach, and make the necessary fixes.
Tracking sales performance metrics in a CRM is the best way to determine your business activities. In Fireberry, you can use the ready made templates on the Dashboards page, or create custom dashboards to monitor the specific metrics that’s most important for your business.
