Setting business objectives and measuring them as you go is critical in order to succeed in your decision making. It’s super important that all of the business objectives are well communicated across the organization, without a cross-functional alignment, your team will be working towards different goals.
But where do you start? Who does what? In order to successfully succeed within each department, you need to start with defining the overall organizational goal. Once you have this nailed, each team should have visibility of what they need to do in order to deliver on the main goal.
The beauty of having KPIs is mainly that you’re able to constantly improve. Create a visual dashboard where you test, measure and tweak as you go. Soon, you’ll see improvements across all departments. In this article, we’ll be sharing what KPIs you should be tracking within the sales organization.
Who are you targeting?
Depending on your role in the organization, you have different KPIs to follow. Sales managers need to know how their team is performing, sales executives care about their own sales results, and SDRs track metrics such as calls made and meetings booked.
The larger and more complex your sales organization gets, the more dashboards of metric groups are needed. For a smaller team, one dashboard might be enough. At Zaplify, we have three levels of metrics: management, account executives, and SDRs.
Leading and lagging indicators
Metrics can be broken down into two types, leading and lagging. Leading indicators give a prediction of how sales are going while lagging indicators show the results of your efforts. For example, leading indicators could be meetings booked, while a lagging indicator could be net sales.
Metrics for management and operations
These metrics are important for measuring company-wide performance.
Total sales: refers to the net sales done.
Total Sales per channel: Net sales broken down by acquisition channel to get an understanding of what channels are working.
Average deal size: refers to the average net price of closed deals.
Meetings booked over time: refers to how many meetings that have been booked during periods. We track over weekly periods.
Customer Lifetime Value (LTV): Refers to how much an acquired customer is worth over time for your business.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Refers to how much it costs to acquire a customer.
Metrics for Account Executives
These metrics track the performance and results of the account executives.
Closed Deals
Opportunities in each stage
Meetings
Proposals sent
Metrics for SDRs
These metrics track the performance and results of the sales development representatives.
Meetings Booked
Calls Made
Emails Sent
LinkedIn Connection Requests Sent
What do I use and how do I do it?
There are multiple tools out there that you can use to track, share and measure your KPIs. Whether it’s business intelligence software, data visualization, dashboards, CRM, or web analytics – ensure that the data is digestible, sharable, and most importantly – actionable. Many small to mid-sized organizations use a CRM system, such as Hubspot, Pipedrive, or Salesforce to both collect and visualize data. For those who have extended needs in the form of visualization, we recommend Databox, Klepto, or Klipfolio.
Summary
Setting an overall company goal and communicating this goal across the board is the first step in the process. It’s crucial that each department understands the role and responsibility in delivery towards the wider organizational goal. Visualize your KPIs, make them visible in the office, monitor them, and tweak accordingly. It’s the source of truth in ensuring that you’re tracking on point.
Enforce monthly meetings where you review the KPIs together. Hold each other accountable and act as a team. The data will inform better decisions and ultimately help your business grow.
We hope that this gave you some guidance in building your strategic framework of sales KPIs.
All the best,
Ludwig Hedlund
