Conventional wisdom holds that revenue-per-sales-rep is the one and only sales metrics that ultimately matters in sales management. Partially true but sales process optimisation is all about identifying key strengths and coalescing the sales team into an efficient and scalable sales machine.
Keeping your eye on very tactical KPIs is one of the best ways to keep your overall sales strategy on track.
I want to give you an inside into our very own Sales Dashboard. We use it internally but also in reports to our clients to track our sales results and to illuminate areas we have to improve – and this is a moving target…
These KPIs are useful for all outbound sales strategies in complex sales to large enterprises.
Sales Metrics – Distinguish between activities and conversions:
Sales Activities:
New prospects shows us how many new target companies we approached within the past 30 days (for a particular client) and how much of our time we spent for identifying the companies, their buyer personas and their email addresses and to finally reach out to them. Similar for new presentations: how many prospects did we present our client’s solution for the first time.
New deads are prospects were we found out within the past 30 days that they don’t have an immediate need or that they already have an alternative solution in place.
Sales Conversions:
We track most important conversions in sales metrics. Prospects2presentation for example tells us that in average we need 8.2 new prospects to get a single presentation with a decision maker. The numbers depend heavily on the industry and the value proposition. The same for email responses: In this case we have an email response rate of 62%. These are intro emails to CxO and VP level of larger enterprises in West-Central Europe.
Time2prospect tells us that in average we need half an hour to identify and pre-qualify a new target company, find their buyer personas and reach out to them by email.
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Conclusion:
So what are outbound sales metrics good for? If you track your KPIs along the whole sales cycle you can easily identify your weak spots. For example if prospects2presentation is getting too high you have a problem with the value proposition (message, benefits, customer values) but when your opportunities2won ratio is getting too high you have a problem in the sales execution when it comes to closing deals.
Without KPIs you know that you’re not making the revenue numbers according to your plan but you have no measures in hand where to improve your sales machine.
What KPIs do you use along the sales cycle?
