It can often be difficult for sales managers to track the performance of their sales teams and business operations. But by measuring Key Performance Indicators, they can track the progress of a business, department, and individuals against goals that have been assigned to them.
The key to successful use of KPIs is to choose the metrics that are most relevant to your business goals. With this in mind, we have collated some of the most commonly used KPIs when it comes to managing sales organisations.
Measure new leads and opportunities
This is the most commonly used metric to monitor the success of salespeople. It’s simple to measure performance by tracking how many of your salespeople are meeting their quota, then assess whether the quotas that have been set are too high or too low.
This information can also be shared with your sales teams, so they can see their performance against one another – and fuel their competitive juices.
Measure customer success
How well you are delivering on customers’ needs and expectations is always a strong measurement for the success of your business. Regularly touch base with customers after the initial sale to get their opinion on how things are going and identify any areas for improvement and even areas for upselling.
Ensuring your salespeople are consistently available will build trust, and you can rest assured that your customers are happy. A good way to measure this is to ask salespeople to keep track of interactions they have with customers and compare that against the average length of client relationships. You can then analyse this information and amend your salespeople’s approach accordingly.
Measure customer satisfaction
Customer satisfaction measures your clients’ feelings towards their sales rep and your brand or product. Evaluating customer satisfaction should focus on how happy customers are in their interactions with your business, and can be measured in several ways.
One of the most common is through Net Promoter Score (NPS), which asks customers how likely they are to recommend your product or service to someone else. This provides both quantitative and qualitative data about your customers, through both a numeric rating and reasons for their decision. This information is vital in assessing the experiences you provide to customers.
Measure employee satisfaction
One of the biggest challenges facing your business is ensuring that sales teams are motivated and enjoying their work. Indeed, research by sales strategist Marc Wayshak last year found that less than one-fifth of salespeople (17.6%) rate their job satisfaction as “outstanding” and less than half (47.1%) rated it as “good.”
It’s therefore clear that work is required to boost motivation, ensure salespeople feel challenged and part of a team, and are comfortable with the sales methods you implement. Gaining their feedback is crucial to measuring their levels of happiness, as well as the performance of your business. Implement employee satisfaction surveys that assess their level of job enjoyment, what makes them happy or unhappy, and learn from the results to enhance your processes.
Assess sales cycles
The length of sales cycles can provide crucial insight into the effectiveness of your sales organisation’s performance. Discrepancies in times it takes different salespeople to close a deal or churn rates at certain points after onboarding could be tell-tale signs of underlying issues.
Examine whether sales cycle length affects your number of deal wins and how successful those deals are after onboarding. For example, if you have a salesperson closing deals quickly but their customers are unhappy with the solution and move on a few months later, then it may be beneficial to establish a longer sales cycle that encourages healthier long-term success.
Review competitor pricing
It’s not healthy to be fixated on competitors’ offerings, but being aware of their pricing can inform a competitive sales strategy. For example, if you discover your prices are similar, then consider implementing a price-matching strategy that guarantees a lower price to your customers.
You should also provide appropriate training, such as roleplay exercises, to help salespeople handle pricing objections from customers. The better prepared they are to discuss price without defaulting to offering discounts, the better your sales results.
Monitor cross- and up-sell success
The best new lead opportunities available to you are your existing customers. So your team’s success in selling new products or services into customers is, therefore, an important barometer of your sales organisation’s success.
Track their progress in cross- and up-sell opportunities and use that data to look for patterns in customer responses to specific products or approaches by salespeople. For example, if a salesperson routinely has good success selling a specific feature to clients at a certain time into their contract with you, then could be an significant measurement to counter into your strategy.
Most importantly, measure when, how, what and to which customers your salespeople are upselling and cross-selling and adjust your sales strategy accordingly.
Measure your way to success
How you measure your sales organisation’s success will differ depending on your target industry and business objectives. But what’s clear is that assessing the performance of your sales team is crucial to the success of your business. So choose a KPI that meets your specific requirements, or try a mixture of several to unlock the potential of your salespeople.
