Which Sales Metrics to Track by FTE, Role, and Team

While elements of the sales process fall outside the control of your sales team (I.e. ultimately whether a company chooses to purchase), the sales process can be managed to produce a set number of closes. We want to empower your sales team to thoroughly understand the control they exert over the sales process and the objectives they need to meet to reach their defined goal. Implementing a system for the regular review of individual and team sales metrics accomplishes these goals.

The impact: Establishing a metric-focused sales approach helps your team to focus its efforts on the activities that most impact movement through your pipeline. Opportunities will flow more effectively through your pipeline, resulting in higher revenue production for each sales rep and for the team.

The goal: Align the sales team around a key set of sales metrics and establish a system to track and regularly review these metrics to inform sales team strategy.

How can Golden Section Assist?

Background

Potential metrics to track: Ultimately, you want to track metrics related to the details/steps that actually move deals forward, or shut them down. Look through the template Golden Section has provided to learn more about the sales metrics we recommend tracking.

Additional possibilities include:

1. Lead data
2. Response time
3. Conversions
4. Loss reasons
5. Seasonality trends
6. Revenue factors (new, churn, upsells)
7. Length of sales cycle
8. Average deal size (per customer segment)

Steps

1. Preparation: Research and then choose 3-4 sales metrics you believe would be most effective to track. Also, thoughtfully prepare to share the vision for using a metric-based approach to the team.
2. Meeting 1: Vision and Brainstorm
3. Share company's overall goal and objectives in the mid and long term, painting the picture for where the company is going and what is most important to it.
4. Set vision and objectives for establishing a metric-based sales approach.
5. Identify the 3-4 sales metrics you would like to track and why.
6. Ask for feedback from the team. This will increase buy-in and allow room for insight from the team. Would they change or add any metrics?
7. Decide on 3-4 metrics your team wants to track. Any more metrics than this will dilute the insight and focus that comes from tracking them. Your team can only concentrate on meeting and improving on a few metrics at a time.
8. Determine the processes for tracking and reviewing metrics.
9. Ongoing efforts: Track and course-correct
10. Weekly meetings: Sales Team
11. Agenda
12. Status of Sales Pipeline
13. Current lead needs
14. Market / competition intelligence collected
15. Set priorities for week
16. Monthly meetings: Sales Team and Senior Leadership
17. Agenda
18. Review of metrics
19. Plan adjustments for next month to stay on target for quarterly goal
20. Quarterly meetings: Sales Team and Senior Leadership
21. Agenda
22. Review of pipeline and wins in prior quarter
23. Review of sales team performance in prior quarter
24. Plan adjustments that need to be made moving forward
25. Set targets for next quarter
26. A note on course-correction: The effort put into tracking and monitoring sales metrics is only worth it if the team is held accountable to reaching their metrics. When you fall behind on one metric, what can be done to get back on track? If the team is regularly falling behind, where is the issue or bottleneck? What can be done to solve it?
27. Make sure to share the metrics with the company as a whole and use information discovered to give appropriate feedback to appropriate teams, even outside the sales team.
28. Some additional advice on coaching Sales Reps: https://openviewpartners.com/blog/how-to-coach-a-b2b-sales-team-to-win-(https://openviewpartners.com/blog/how-to-coach-a-b2b-sales-team-to-win-bigger-and-better-deals/#.XcWUOuhKg9A) bigger-and-better-deals/\#.XcWUOuhKg9A(https://openviewpartners.com/blog/how-to-coach-a-b2b-sales-team-to-win-bigger-and-better-deals/#.XcWUOuhKg9A)

Special Case: Ramping Up

As a new sales rep joins the team, there is a natural period of ramp up as she gains understanding of your company's product, customer and sales process. She shouldn't and can't be held to the same metric objectives as established sales reps.

Performance objectives can be set from the first week of work for a new hire, but the objectives should mirror your sales process. These initial performance objectives should simultaneously give your new rep the experience she needs while allowing her time to

improve her effectiveness. If the first step in your sales process is to set meetings, then a first week's objective could be related to setting a specific number of meetings.

Overall, the period of ramp up will track with your sales cycle. If you're sales cycle is three months, then it will take at least that long for a new sales rep to get to speed.