Eight key metrics to fuel your sales performance

Sales is an art and science of the business process. And managing the sales of the organisation effecticiently, is no less than a challenge. The sales performance of the business is measured by the sales activities against the goals outlined in the sales plan.  

If you want to manage the sales performance, you need to measure it. By focusing on the key areas of your sales activities, the sales performance and revenue of the business can be improved in an effective way. 

What are sales performance metrics?

Sales Performance metrics are a measure of the business’s or sales employee’s sales activities and tasks. The sales performance is measured over a particular time period. These metrics are tracked and ranges are selected in order to identify the ideal performance. 

Thus, let us discuss the major 8 key metrics to fuel the sales performance of your business – 

1. Selling time

Time waits for none! Until and unless you make the best use of your time, you can neither sell more nor make use of time rightly. So, how do you manage time efficiently as a sales rep? Here are certain ways to manage time efficiently – 

• Set target and path
• Prioritize steps
• Take a proactive approach to work
• Clear the hurdles
• Avoid deviation
• Keep check points
• Learn to say no when necessary
• Focus on one task at a time
• Plan rightly

As a sales rep invest your time wisely and measure the actual time spent on selling. This will help you to analyze and identify the bottlenecks which are troubling the sales performance. Try to eliminate these bottlenecks or roadblocks. If you think your sales reps are unable to prioritize their sales tasks and ultimately sell more, provide them with useful tools. 

2. Sales cycle metrics

The time period it takes for your sales reps to close the deals is an essential aspect of the sales performance. The sales funnel stages will simply portray how leads pass through your sales process from start to close. It’s a visual picture of the number game in the form of a funnel. It is important for your sales team to make efforts to retain the ones who are ready to buy your product or services. But, when the number of leads are given, that fill your funnel, sales teams will have a tough time converting those leads into customers as they cannot predict it. This results in un-qualified hot leads in the top of the funnel that either drop out due to slow response times, or remain stuck in the middle of the funnel, eventually becoming cold leads. 

3. Lead response time

A speedy response is crucial to win more leads. It can improve the performance of your sales team significantly as you are able to provide quick responses to your leads. If you are unable to manage leads and ultimately close leads, you can make use of the lead management software. The lead management software allows you to track leads, acquire leads, assign leads, follow-up leads and qualify leads etc. 

Read our blog – How to follow up sales leads smartly and how frequently?

4. Opportunity Win Rate

Recognizing and detecting prospective lead opportunities is paramount for gaining the deals and improving the business revenue. The sales team members capability to close deals remarkably affects complete sales performance. If you notice your sales team members are coming across a low opportunity win rate, think about introducing the Sales Force Automation Software. Such technology encourages your sales department to deliberately pay attention to leads, create data driven decisions, and introduce the essential efforts to actively close profitable deals.

5. Employee Satisfaction

Employee satisfaction is an important metric for evaluating the sales performance of your team members. Several aspects adds up towards employee satisfaction, but the important steps to encourage your employees’ sales performance include:

• Motivate Your Employees: Sales team members mostly contend with external aspects that can impact their motivation at work. Efficient management motivation can encourage consistent self-improvement among your sales team members.
• Equip Them with the Right Tools: It’s pivotal to grant facilities that eases and accelerates your employees’ work. In the domain of technologically advanced landscape, software delivers an important role in easing tasks. Ensure to introduce a CRM Software to encourage both sales and marketing management. SalesBabu Online CRM, a cloud-based solution, grants prompt CRM tools to improve management activities intelligently. You can ask for a free demo on our website https://www.salesbabu.com/, and experience the advantages of cloud-based CRM software for your business.

Read our blog – Manage your Sales Team Smartly

6. Cost of sales to revenue ratio

The sales activities are not a cost effective task until and unless managed correctly. This metric reflects the entire efficiency of the sales activities as it helps to measure the level of investment required to attain a particular performance level. Gauging the cost of sales to revenue ratio against the industry average helps you to check the sales productivity of the business.  

7. Average deal size

The average deal size refers to the average cost incurred per close of deal. Increasing the average deal size helps to track the health of the pipeline. How to increase average deal size?  Here are certain simple ways to increase average deal size to ultimately fuel the sales performance of the sales team – 

• Understand the decision process
• Talk to the right people
• Nurture with personalization and precision
• Sell your unique value
• Leverage your existing connections and clients

8. Use of marketing materials

Over the years, content marketing has increased the importance with regard to lead generation and client engagement. Investment on content marketing has played a significant role in improving the sales performance of the company. 

Making use of the right marketing automation software to enhance content marketing methods can help you fuel up the sales performance of your company. 

Some Other Important Sales Performance Metrics are :

• Percentage of sales team hitting quota

Quota attainment, or the percentage of salespeople meeting or distinct quota, tells you regardless of whether your quotas are too high or low. As an estimate, your quotas are likely unrealistic if less than 60% are hitting. It is also possible that you just need to hire better salespeople and remove the underperformers. Your sales compensation plan. Take a look at your pay structure to see if you are pulling the right levers to get reps to sell. On the other side, if 90% to 100% of your salespeople are hitting quota, they are likely coasting. Review your quota-setting methods; you might need to increase your targets.

• Sales Funnel leakage

Measuring sales funnel leakage will tell you where leads drop out of your funnel at the best rates. To identify your leaky points, track step-by-step conversion rates. For example, say 40% of the latest leads agree to a discovery call. Half of these make it to the demo stage. Just 5% find yourself buying. That steep drop-off indicates your salespeople are likely not qualifying enough, giving bad demos, and negotiating poorly. Knowing all these potential issues, you can perceive them more closely to identify the true culprit. By finding and improving these weak points, you can improve results.

How to measure sales performance by implementing analytics?

1. Get the metrics to the right people
2. Choose a metrics to start
3. Make use of customizable CRM Analytics and dashboards
4. Set sales activity goals based on analytics

Conclusion 

Sales managers should look beyond quotes and revenue in order to analyze the factors influencing improvement in the sales performance of the company. The above mentioned eight key metrics will help you to view the dips and spikes of the sales performance of your company.