“If you can predict the rate at which you create (or create and grow) qualified pipeline, and you know your average close rate(s), then you can start predicting your revenue”.
Aaron Ross
If you’re not measuring, you’re not maximising.
As soon as you begin to collect and track the right data, revenue and success quickly become predictable.
So whether you’re responsible for a team, or your own performance alone, how can you be at your best if you aren’t tracking your progress?
Across any business, it is vital to analyse and track the right data to get the most from every opportunity. In sales especially, the stakes are supercharged due to the pressure to close business and grow revenue.
Those companies that are relying on intuition, over facts, to guide their decisions are playing with fire.
That’s why successful organisations obsessively measure everything from pillar to post. To ensure decisions are made from a position of strength and knowledge.
Without tracking, you’re flying blindfolded, left to implement improvements based off hunches and guesswork.
Why Do Metrics Matter?
Consider this analogy…
“Imagine your ship is in battle and you have no command centre giving you visibility.
You’ve no idea whether or not your ship has been hit until 30 days later, nor visibility on whether enemies (competitors) are behind you or in front of you.
What do you think will happen to your ship?
You sink”.
Daymond John
Now translate this across to you and your team. Without live data, you become vulnerable to competitors and left to react only when it’s too late.
To identify your strengths and weaknesses, you need to track the right metrics.
But, with so many moving pieces, the volume of data available can sometimes feel overwhelming. So how do you choose which sales metrics to focus on?
We’ve put together the following 15 essential sales metrics to help you prioritise the data points you track.
So rather than burying your head in the sand in avoidance or drowning in data, you can hone in on these metrics and watch your success grow.
The Top 15 Essential Sales Metrics You Should Be Tracking
1 – Win Rate
Let’s start with the basics, and arguably the most essential sales metric of them all, Win Rate.
How can you measure success if you don’t know how much business you’re winning?
Easily calculated by dividing the number of closed won opportunities by total number of closed opportunities, this metric will allow you to see how often you’re making the sale.
Beyond the Win Rate we can take a deeper dive, but for a high level metric, this is one you can’t do without.
2 – Enquiry To Quote Conversion Rate
Win Rate is invaluable. But without breaking it down and digging into conversions, you’re still left to guess at what point the process is succeeding or falling down.
A great idea is to split the process in two, by first tracking your Enquiry To Quote Conversion Rate.
This metric allows you to identify how effectively your business is garnering an initial interest at the start of the sales cycle.
If this conversion rate is high, you can infer that your team are performing well when it comes to engaging potential customers and getting the ball rolling.
3 – Quote To Sale Conversion Rate
Now for part two of the process conversion rates, Quote To Sale.
The customer is engaged in the process, now can your team close the opportunity?
These are two hugely different conversations requiring different skillsets.
The more granular you go into the essential, revenue defining activities, the easier it becomes to highlight areas for growth and development.
Imagine you have a strong Enquiry To Quote Conversion Rate but a weak Quote To Sale Conversion Rate. If you’re still guessing at why business isn’t closing, you may think you need to improve across the early stages of the cycle.
Digging into the detail, through the use of metrics, would instead allow you to identify that the problems in fact lie in the backend.
From here, you’re now in a position of knowledge and can concentrate on improving the specific areas of the sales process currently lagging behind.
4 – Average Order Value
Now you know the percentage of business you’re winning, how much does an average opportunity bring in?
Average Order Value (AOV) is one the the most essential sales metrics as it helps form the foundations of successful sales planning.
Working this figure backwards through your sales process is a highly effective way of ensuring you hit your individual or team targets.
Sales can often becomes a numbers game; knowing your AOV allows you to calculate precisely the steps you need to take to achieve your goals.
Imagine the following example to see this in action…
Revenue Target = £5000. AOV = £1000.
My Quote To Sale Conversion Rate = 3:1. And my Enquiry To Quote Conversion Rate = 2:1.
Therefore, I need to generate 30 opportunities this month to hit my Revenue Target.
Average Order Value (AOV) Calculation
5 – Time To Close
Another key metric for managing an individual pipeline and larger team projections is to know how long it takes to complete a sale.
By understanding the average number of days to close an opportunity, you can project whether or not you’ll hit this week, month or quarter’s targets with what is currently in the pipeline.
It can also be worth looking at seasonality across the metric. If you know the business experiences “busy” periods, how does this impact upon the average time to close?
By allocating resources accordingly, this metric can be shrunk to as short a time as possible.
6 – Time At Each Stage Of The Journey
As with metrics #2 and #3, the devil is in the detail.
Dissecting Time To Close even further, and tracking Time Spent At Each Stage can be illuminating for any business operating a multi stage sales process.
Is there a blockage at a particular stage in the cycle?
Does a breakdown in communications occur between Estimators and Sales leading to delays?
Do Third Party Suppliers take longer than desired to begin enacting a request?
Instead of guessing where, and why, delays occur, use your metrics to find out and tackle the issue before it spirals out of control.
7 – Enquiry Response Time
“New enquiry leads are 10 times less likely to respond after 5 minutes.
Whilst conversion rates are 98% higher when following up within 5 minutes“.
Harvard Business Review
Interest peaks at the time of enquiry and subsequently wanes at an alarming rate.
If you want to maximise your ROI from your efforts to secure the enquiry in the first place, you need to be jumping on every opportunity straight away.
Only then can you maximise your chances of turning whatever piqued their interest into solid revenue.
8 – Percentage Of People Hitting Quota
Being able to take a quick glance at how your team are performing allows you to focus time either filling up the top of the funnel or focussing your coaching time with those who need you most.
This metric can also be illuminating for a pastoral manager. If someone who is normally a top performer is down on their numbers, you can enquire why that is.
With increasingly remote teams, we may not see what is affecting our people in the day to day. Company care and compassion and tracking essential sales metrics do not have to be mutually exclusive.
9 – Percentage Progress To Target
Similar to the above, knowing your Percentage Progress To Target helps you focus on hitting your goal.
Coupled with #4, these metrics help those in Sales quickly and easily identify what actions they need to take to hit, and exceed, their targets.
10 – Monthly & Quarterly Revenue
Sometimes we can’t see the wood for the trees. All we need to do is take a step back and gain a birds eye view.
For those higher up the chain of command, how easy is it for you to pin point your monthly, quarterly or annual progress?
Are you up or down on projections?
Going back to Daymond John’s analogy, are you lacking a “command centre” from which to navigate the challenges of the business?
Without broad metrics, a nasty revenue surprise could be lurking just around the corner, ready to rear it’s head only when it’s too late for you to do anything about it.
By having easy access to the “big picture”, reporting becomes much easier and adjustments more seamlessly introduced to ensure all revenue targets are met.
11 – Number Of Active Opportunities
Which salespeople, teams or regions are performing better than the rest?
Who in the business is generating the highest number of opportunities?
Rather than requesting hand written reports or sifting through a ton of individual recording systems, Anthill puts the data in the palm of your hand.
By knowing how many opportunities are in the pipeline, and what stage they’re at, projections become a breeze.
12 – Product Sales Comparisons
Product led offerings will, more than likely, have more than one range available.
By having a Product Sales Comparison metric, you can dive into which of those lines is most popular.
Tying this metric with marketing, if you have recently made a big campaign push around a particular line and aren’t seeing the results, where is the breakdown occurring?
Equally, if there is a long lead time due to stocking issues, will that customer go elsewhere to find their in demand product line?
By doubling down on the most popular streams, revenue generation can be that little bit easier.
13 – Closed Lost Reasons
“Closed Lost Reason is a growth hack metric”.
Aptitude 8
Unlucky number 13, but certainly not one to miss out on!
As a business, you absolutely have to know why opportunities aren’t closing.
Is it price? Is it service? Perhaps a Competitor is beating you to the finish line?
Either way, by knowing the negative, you can mitigate the impact.
Only through acknowledging the issue can you find a way to overcome it. For this alone, the Closed Lost Reason metric is essential.
14 – Percentage Of Overdue Tasks
Intrinsically linked to metric #6, how many of your outstanding tasks are overdue?
By knowing the figure, you can investigate the why. Is there something you can fix to stop the delay or is it something outside of your control?
If it’s the former, you now know where to make the change. With the latter, consider how to avoid it happening again in the future.
Either way, any delay can have a detrimental knock on impact on Customer Experience. Keeping clients informed is an easy way to minimise the ill feeling whilst the cause of delay is ironed out.
15 – Engagement Rates
The last of our essential sales metrics is Engagement Rates.
Do clients open your emails? Are they answering our calls? All up, how effective are your communications?
By knowing the highest performing stream, you can optimise your Customer Service offering.
By meeting people where they are, the Customer Experience becomes more enjoyable which can only have a positive impact on the most important metric of all, #1, your Win Rate.
Tracking the essential sales metrics, at the very minimum, will allow you to make better informed business decisions.
Planning for the future becomes much easier when you know the state of play.
Anthill’s dashboards can give you all of this information and more, available at the click of a button.
Ready to find out how you can stay on top of the essential sales metrics that matter most to you? Give us a call.
Intrigued to learn more? Check out our Insights Hub to keep your business at the cutting edge.
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- April 8th, 2021