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Measuring sales success is traditionally achieved through basic sales Key Performance Indicators, or KPIs. KPIs, such as the revenue each sales representative accumulates every month, are worth measuring – but it’s not the full story.&nbsp;Basic sales KPIs don’t always deliver the valuable insights your business needs to grow and drive more revenue. Throughout the <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/blog/sales-cycle/">full sales cycle</a>, various challenges can crop up. Plus, there will be different reasons that some sales representatives don’t meet their monthly targets.&nbsp;Developing more relevant KPIs is the key to understanding why you might lack results, and what you need to do about it when <a href="https://www.nocrm.io/admin/pages/academies/implement-activity-based-sales-strategy?locale=en">developing a sales strategy</a>.A firm grasp of your <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/sales-funnel-everything-you-need-to-know">sales funnel</a> is crucial to your business’s future success. When you understand what’s happening and why, you are in a more powerful position to forecast, predict revenue, and better understand whether your current processes are relevant or worth taking action on.&nbsp;<h1>Understanding data</h1>First of all, it’s worth noting that smart sales KPIs start with intelligent data.&nbsp;The customer data gleaned from your <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/blog/top-sales-enablement-tools/">software sales enablement</a> system must be accurate, up to date, and deliver a single source of truth. Doing this means you are able to connect a customer with their details immediately, and save time searching for key information.&nbsp;Keep on top of your customer data by conducting regular audits so that any member of your sales team can pick up a deal that’s in progress and get it over the line in the most efficient way possible.&nbsp;<h1>15 sales KPIs you should be tracking</h1><h2>1. New business revenue</h2>Kicking off with perhaps the most tangible KPI, new business revenue tells you how much income you’re receiving from new customers. This metric explores your <a href="https://www.giosg.com/blog/sales-prospecting-lead-generation">sales prospecting vs lead generation</a> methods.&nbsp;The most efficient route to tracking this KPI is against a goal percentage. For instance, say you want to shoot for 40% of your business’s revenue generated by new customers, you’d calculate:<blockquote>Revenue = Number of Units Sold x Average Sales Price&nbsp;&nbsp;</blockquote><h2>2. Trials</h2>This KPI counts the number of new accounts converted from a trial within a specified period of time. It also helps <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/how-to-ensure-sales-marketing-alignment">marketing and sales teams align</a> with the same goal. If marketing teams can escalate a significant number of new accounts, sales teams have a higher volume of leads to qualify and close.<h2>3. Sales qualified leads</h2>As a successful outcome of trials, you obtain sales qualified leads (SQLs) to work with. This customer segment is defined by conditions set in the sales processes, and are highlighted as prospects with an intent to buy. Tracking this KPI ensures that your business is aware of how many SQLs are in the pipeline and identifies whether more targeted marketing is required to encourage additional prospects.&nbsp;&nbsp;<h2>4. Projected pipeline sales value</h2>This KPI measures the value of projected deals in your sales funnel, and acts as valuable oversight to see how likely it is that your business will meet its sales targets. Determining the projected value of deals in your pipeline, together with the probability that they will close, defines your projected pipeline sales value. Many companies track this metric monthly as a monetary amount of potential revenue expected to close within a defined timeframe.&nbsp;Use this formula to calculate your business’s projected pipeline value:<blockquote>Projected Pipeline Sales Value = Deal Value x Probability of Closing</blockquote><h2>5. Number of monthly onboarding and demo calls</h2>This metric is a fairly obvious one, but no less important.&nbsp;Onboarding and demo calls are essential steps to closing deals, which is why they should be included in your tracked KPIs. At a more granular level, you can segment data to measure this metric by individual sales representative performance.&nbsp;<h2>6. Call volume per sales representative</h2>Similar to the above KPI, this metric looks at how many outbound calls each sales representative makes to prospects. The way your employees <a href="https://business.yocale.com/5-efficient-ways-to-manage-your-sales-leads-2/">manage sales leads</a> is important, but so too is the volume of calls they’re making.&nbsp;This KPI can be further analyzed by checking calls answered or email open rates, length of calls, level of engagement, and how many potential prospects were discovered per number of calls.&nbsp;<h2>7. Average cost per lead</h2>Average cost per lead tells you exactly how much each lead costs your business. This metric takes into account every aspect of lead generation, including marketing spend and employee salaries. Understanding this KPI means you can be vigilant about customer acquisition costs a little further down the line and effectively meet <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/sales-quota-how-to-ace-the-sales-game">sales quotas</a>. &nbsp;<h2>8. Customer lifetime value</h2>Customer lifetime value (CLV) determines how much income you can expect to generate from a customer throughout the lifecycle. Businesses use this metric to decipher the most profitable customer segments, along with the most accurate costs to spend on acquiring new customers.&nbsp;The formula for customer lifetime value is:<blockquote>Customer Lifetime Value = Gross Margin % x Retention Rate x Average Revenue per Customer</blockquote><h2>9. Customer acquisition cost</h2>The lower your business’s customer acquisition cost, the better at acquiring customers you are. This metric determines the most profitable customer segments and highlights where marketing and sales should focus their efforts.&nbsp;If you can grow customer lifetime value and revenue per customer whilst reducing customer acquisition rates, you are in a strong position to increase business revenue.&nbsp;Use this formula to calculate customer acquisition cost:<blockquote>CAC = Total Cost of Acquiring Customers / Number of Customers Acquired</blockquote><h2>10. Sales per representative</h2>Sales per representative enables managers to see the level of sales each employee generates. This metric is used to set personal goals and define a company baseline for bonuses and targets.&nbsp;Tracking this KPI enables you to ascertain individual performance and decide whether to incorporate sales strategies and tools such as <a href="https://www.pandadoc.com/blog/best-quoting-software-tools/">sales quoting software</a> into your business.&nbsp;<h2>11. Customer churn rate</h2>Also known as customer turnover, your business’s churn rate refers to the amount of customers you lose over a set period of time. Knowing your churn rate will empower you to find out why your customers are leaving so you can do something about it.&nbsp;Calculate your churn rate by using this formula:‍<blockquote>Lost Customers / Total Customers at the Start of Time Period x 100</blockquote>For example, if your business had 200 customers at the beginning of the month and lost 15 by the end of the month, you would divide 15 by 200. Multiplied by 100, you would have a 7% monthly customer churn rate.&nbsp;<h2>12. Retention per representative</h2>There’s more to success than just closing deals, which is why this metric examines how many customers your employees retain. After all, it’s a well known fact that retaining customers is less costly than attracting new ones.&nbsp;It’s essential for business growth that your representatives close the right deals with the right customers to optimize retention rates. The retention rate per representative helps managers to identify particular behaviors surrounding closing wrong deals and encourage staff training accordingly.&nbsp;Track retention per representative by monitoring customer churn rate and repeat business revenue. A high churn rate or low repeat business ratio typically indicates that there’s an issue with your business’s sales funnel or customer support system.<h2>13. Win rate</h2>Your business’s win rate is the most obvious indicator of how your pipeline is performing. Tracking this metric regularly ensures that you know if your sales representatives are closing enough deals to hit your targets.&nbsp;Win rate allows you to step in and take action if your team is nowhere near their monthly sales targets.&nbsp;Use this formula to calculate win rate:<blockquote>Win Rate = Number of Won Opportunities / Total Number of Opportunities in a Specific Period</blockquote><h2>14. Repeat business revenue</h2>This metric defines the amount of revenue generated from your current customer base, and typically arises from tactics such as upselling, reorders, and cross-selling. Tracking this KPI helps you identify the value of your current customer base to focus your attention on the right customers to nurture for maximum sales opportunities.&nbsp;If your company experiences low repeat business revenue rates, it might be worth investigating aspects of your current processes. For example, you may need to reconsider your <a href="https://www.brightpearl.com/ecommerce-guides/pick-pack-ship-best-practice">pick pack and ship services</a> if you think your shipping speeds need improving.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;Businesses typically track repeat business revenue monthly (MRR), quarterly, or annually (ARR) against a target percentage.The following formula calculates MRR:<blockquote>Monthly Recurring Revenue = Number of Paying Customers x Average Revenue per Customer</blockquote><h2>15. Customer feedback scores&nbsp;</h2>Whether you deploy <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/blog/csat-vs-nps/">CSAT or NPS</a>, you’ll get a good sense of how your business is performing through the lens of your customers.&nbsp;CSAT surveys are one of the most popular tactics businesses use to improve customer interactions and enhance the customer experience.On the other hand, your NPS score is a metric that indicates how likely your customers are to become brand advocates (or not!). Through running an NPS survey via call or email, you’ll glean valuable information as to whether your customer base are typically promoters or detractors. &nbsp;<h1>What’s next?</h1>This article includes valuable KPIs to deploy for your business. But remember, KPIs are only&nbsp; effective in practice, not theory. Take the time to proactively approach KPIs with strategies for regular tracking and buy-in from the rest of your team.&nbsp;Once you have established the best processes, use them to measure the performance of your sales tasks. Then you can monitor, review, and adjust as necessary to move towards hitting your business’s closed deals and revenue targets.

How to Measure Sales Success (And Develop More Relevant KPIs)

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Acing a <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/sales-quota-how-to-ace-the-sales-game">business’s sales quota</a> is a challenge for every company.&nbsp;The fact you’re reading this article means you’re looking for ways to improve your sales team’s productivity rates, and that’s great news. Being aware of an issue in your sales department is the first step to fixing it.&nbsp;There are many reasons why your sales aren’t hitting the levels you want. To start with, it can help to ask yourself questions like:<ul><li>What’s the average time to complete deals?</li><li>How do your reps utilize content and marketing collateral in sales calls and emails?</li><li>Where in the sales cycle are your team experiencing bottlenecks?</li></ul>The measurement of your organization’s sales productivity is marked by how your business harnesses the tools, processes, and resources to achieve core business goals whilst reducing time to value and customer acquisition costs.Read on to discover five principles to improve your sales team’s productivity levels and help with your business’s productivity strategies (spoiler alert: one of them is to <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/blog/sales-coaching/">start a sales coaching program</a>).&nbsp;&nbsp;Firstly, let’s examine some mitigating factors to sales inefficiency to recognize potential problems:<ul><li>Inconsistent sales processes and strategies.</li><li>Lack of communication from managers to team members.</li><li>Ineffective sales training sessions.</li><li>Performance pressure to meet sales quotas.</li><li>Incorrect ideal customer profiles.&nbsp;</li><li>Negative sales culture within teams.&nbsp;</li></ul>Every sales team experiences issues, some of which are probably above. In a competitive market environment, it’s crucial that you take stock of the <a href="https://www.onepagecrm.com/blog/sales-chaos/">sales chaos</a> that influences your team’s challenges and understand exactly what is causing a lack of productivity. Let’s move on to what you can do to solve this:&nbsp;<h2>1. Implement sales coaching</h2><h4>What is sales coaching?</h4>At its essence, sales coaching is teaching your sales teams how to consistently improve their skills to hit their sales targets. A mix of incentives, support, skills-based training, and technology help is all part of a sales and <a href="https://www.the-entourage.com/business-coaching/sydney/">business coaching</a> program.&nbsp;

What about <a href="https://www.bizmanualz.com/better-sales-and-marketing/differences-sales-training-sales-coaching-business-learning.html">sales coaching vs sales training</a>? Sales training is delivered at the onboarding stage and provides sales reps with the very basics of how to sell the business’s product or service. Sales coaching, on the other hand, provides sales reps with opportunities to continuously improve their skills and work towards reaching sales goals. You may also look into mentoring as there are also a lot of very positive <a href="https://www.pushfar.com/article/mentoring-statistics-everything-you-need-to-know/">mentoring statistics</a> that show how impactful this can be.As mentioned, the first aspect of your sales productivity strategy should be to take a closer look at how your sales team is currently performing, and take steps to improve the rates with sales coaching or <a href="https://www.prialto.com/blog/sales-support">outsourced sales support</a>.It’s common for companies handling outbound sales calls to approach sales coaching live on sales calls. In this method, managers use technology to give sales reps tips during customer calls to enhance their customer service.&nbsp;Another way to coach your sales team is through post-call analysis. Using call metrics, you can analyze things like call duration and call volumes to determine the success of sales calls. Some businesses use a <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/blog/sales-automation/">sales automation system</a> to streamline sales coaching for tasks such as customer follow-ups and pipeline updates to save reps valuable time.&nbsp;To make sales coaching a valuable tool in your sales processes, ensure you:<ul><li>Use the right tools</li></ul>The rise of remote working means that you probably aren’t going to sit next to your sales team whilst they’re receiving sales coaching. Use the best technology to help your team learn and put their new skills into practice.<ul><li>Run regular reviews</li></ul>Your sales team needs to know how close they are to hitting targets, so run regular reports on metrics like deals closed, customer sentiment, and sales quotas to <a href="https://www.polly.ai/blog/5-tips-to-foster-feedback-culture-and-improve-employee-productivity">foster a firm feedback culture</a>.&nbsp;&nbsp;

<ul><li>Coach behaviors</li></ul>To make sales coaching as effective as possible, concentrate on coaching behaviors.Since each of your sales team members has a different set of skills and personality, coaching behaviors rather than styles is the easiest way towards cohesive selling strategies. For example, instead of focusing on exactly what each sales rep says, make a plan for them to make a specific number of <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/how-to-get-outbounds-sales-emails-right-a-guide">outbound sales emails</a> per day. This way, you’ll have a simpler time measuring the success of each rep.&nbsp;Key takeaway: Position your business’s sales coaching in a way that suits your team, skill sets, and experience.<h3>2. Speed up sales prospecting</h3>A significant factor in your sales team’s productivity downturn could be attributed to focusing on the wrong prospects.&nbsp;It’s essential that your sales team understands that not every customer is your customer. Speeding up the sales prospecting process at your business means quickly establishing who the prospect is, what they want, and how you can help them. If any of these variables don’t align with your company’s values, products, or services, encourage your team to move on to the next prospect.&nbsp;Teach your sales team to learn buyer intent signals. For instance, some companies develop methods of qualifying leads. Based on a point scoring system, allocate points to leads defined by the content they engage with and behavioral actions. When the set number is reached, only then can your sales team reach out to the prospect.&nbsp;&nbsp;Other ways to speed up sales prospecting include being transparent about your business’s service prices. Doing this eliminates prospects that are out of your market range and therefore not part of your company’s lead database.&nbsp;Help your sales team close more deals by including detailed product information on your website. FAQs are a great way to handle potential customer objections, and allow your team to answer customer inquiries like product testing or demos to drive them closer to making a decision.&nbsp;Key takeaway: Prospect analysis done properly saves your team from wasting valuable time on chasing <a href="https://outplayhq.com/blog/mastering-the-basics-of-outbound-prospecting">outbound prospecting</a> non-starters.&nbsp;

<h3>3. Streamline sales processes</h3>If the right processes are not in place, you can’t expect your sales team to <a href="https://www.empowersuite.com/en/">be their best at work</a>.For example, one process could be setting up regular sales teams meetings to encourage informal interactions amongst reps to share knowledge and gather valuable staff feedback.&nbsp;&nbsp;Becoming a <a href="https://www.dialpad.com/blog/enterprise-collaboration/">collaboration enterprise</a> improves standardization across your entire company and allows different departments to work together more efficiently. Without a robust set of workflow processes, you’re leaving your sales quotas to chance. Implementing rigid processes enables everyone to know what to expect and what is expected from them.&nbsp;Key takeaway: Make sure managers and team leaders develop sales processes that are intuitive and understood by the entire team. &nbsp;4. Know your sales teamExpecting your sales team to hit their sales quotas every month when you don’t know who they are is an unachievable goal.&nbsp;Closing deals is inherently linked with knowing your sales team. Take the time to learn their unique selling styles, how they handle difficult calls, and what motivates them. For example, discovering how each sales rep reacts to <a href="https://databricks.com/learn">Databricks training</a> will give you valuable insights. You’ll be in a better position to engage your sales team and encourage them to take action to meet their goals.&nbsp;Communicate as much as possible with your sales team. This is a crucial skill to possess as a sales manager. Checking in with each of your reps regularly works wonders to increase sales productivity rates and will make your team feel valued. For newer team members, this is even more essential.&nbsp;Good practice is to book in regular one-on-one’s to find out how everyone is feeling, how motivated they are to reach sales quotas, and anything you can do as a manager to help them reach their goals. These meetings are great to discover common problem areas to address as a team.&nbsp;Key takeaway: The more engaged your sales team is with you, the higher the productivity rates.&nbsp;

<h4>5. Understand your team’s challenges</h4>This last method of improving your sales team’s productivity relates to the previous one, but goes one step further. Being aware of your team’s challenges, both individual and common customer problems, means being able to resolve objections and close more deals.&nbsp;During chats with your sales team, you may discover that a typical pain point is a lack of synchronization between selling products and your company’s <a href="https://www.brightpearl.com/best-amazon-inventory-management-software">Amazon inventory manager</a> system. It’s your responsibility as your team’s manager to find solutions to their problems. Other sales team challenges could include:<ul><li>Poor communication skills</li><li>Unable to handle customer rejection</li><li>Lack of product understanding</li></ul>Key takeaway: Whatever the challenges may be, you can face them together as a team and drive more sales in the process.<h3>6. Time sales calls effectively</h3>Your sales team should know the best time to make cold calls, when to use an <a href="https://contactout.com/email-finder">email finder</a> to find and send sales emails, and how to get the most from your CRM system.Closing deals is intrinsically linked to time, as well as customer mood and personality traits.Think about it—a cold call on a Monday morning is the last thing anyone wants. Thoroughly research the peak times for sales calls and communicate these with your team to optimize their calling opportunities.&nbsp;Key takeaway: Take into account your business’s industry, market trends, and historical data to determine the best approach to outbound sales calls.&nbsp;Summing upSeeking to improve your sales team’s productivity is not a one-and-done.&nbsp;It’s a continuously evolving process that needs all team members to achieve. By giving your team the tools they need to complete their sales calls and spread brand awareness, they will be able to go forth and increase sales and productivity rates.&nbsp;

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6 Ways to Improve Your Sales Team's Productivity

Jessica Day

All Posts by Jessica Day

Outbound Sales

How to Measure Sales Success (And Develop More Relevant KPIs)

Outbound Sales

6 Ways to Improve Your Sales Team's Productivity