KPIs are Key Performance Indicators. In any business endeavor, we are seeking to build revenue and to do this, we need things like customers, productivity, and good public relations. We need to track our progress by looking at the assets, systems, and practices we use to achieve the things we are measuring. Therefore, the purpose of KPIs is to monitor the things we need for our business to be healthy and grow.
Every KPI should be filled out with metrics like Measure, Target, Source, and Frequency. For an example of what this looks likes from a sales strategy point of view, let’s suppose that we are interested in tracking our customer base:
- Measure: See how many new customers we acquired last month.
- Target: Compare that to our target of, say, 1,000 new customers.
- Source: View the health of our source. In this case, it would be Customer Relations Management or Outreach tool and determine whether or not the source is healthy, effective, etc.
- Frequency: Establish the frequency of our metrics, which could be monthly, quarterly, and so on.
KPIs are one of the best and most important tools a sales representative or sales leaders can have. Not only do they tell you how well a company is doing, but they give sales reps insights into tracking their own productivity as sales professionals. As a sales rep, KPIs are your bread and butter. But equally important is their usefulness in giving you the information you need to report on your success as a sales representative. In an increasingly competitive profession, reporting is indispensable!
But the point of all this is to curate and leverage the information we need to be successful in the sales process. Tracking the right KPIs will make the things that are most important to your business more predictable. It will make your life less stressful, and help your sales team and sales managers know where to focus their efforts. So, let’s get into what the most important sales KPIs are, and what to do about them!
The Best Sales KPIs To Monitor & Use
Average Response Time
When qualified leads make contact, you need to act as fast as possible to secure their loyalty. When qualified leads present themselves, the prospective client has still got critical pain points on the top of their minds. You need to act while those pain points are still felt and drive their motivation to make a purchase.
This indicator shows you the average amount of time it is taking your sales reps to respond to leads and catch them.
System Touches
In most cases, the number of contacts made with qualified leads needs to be kept to a minimum. This KPI might also be called Accuracy because it is about improving the effectiveness of qualified leads outreach with the aim of improving the effectiveness of your efforts. Higher system touch rates run the risk of becoming a source of irritation to leads, increasing the risk of losing them.
Meeting Acceptance Rates
Getting consistent appointment acceptance is the mark of a great sales rep. When this metric is high, it means the sales representative is effectively convincing prospects that the product or service on offer is a viable solution to the prospect’s pain points. When a potential customer says yes to a meeting, they are more than halfway to making a purchase.
SQL-to-Customer Conversion Rate
This metric tracks the number of leads that are converted into paying customers. It can show whether or not there is an issue with lead generation, the lead qualification process, and the effectiveness of follow-up action. If SQL-to-Customer Conversion Rate is poor, sales reps might need further training or customer demographic profiles may need to be updated.
Deal Win-Loss Ratio
This KPI is an indicator of the quality of the experience the prospect has when interacting with sales representatives and the journey from the time they became aware of the offering up to the point of purchase. This metric is critical to measuring the success of sales. But most importantly, it is key to the development of long-term customer loyalty.
Remember, the most loyal customers are the ones who enjoy interacting with your brand.
Customer Retention Rate
This metric has significant overlap with Deal Win-Loss Ratio and shows how well a sales rep meets the customer’s needs. It can be seen as the result of the previous metric and can be measured in tandem with it. Customer retention rates can be seen as a backup to the Deal Win-Loss Ratio in cases where there is no data to act on. If a customer failed to report on the quality of their experience leading up to a purchase, looking at customer retention rates can give you important clues about those experiences.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
This KPI shows the total revenue a business can expect through its relationship with a single customer or account. It measures the projected value of expected purchases and the projected lifespan of the relationship with that customer. With this KPI, we can measure the overall projected fiscal health of an organization by measuring the value and longevity of its accounts.
Monthly Recurring Revenue
This metric measures the total amount of predictable revenue a company can expect to take in on a monthly basis. This metric can be used to project and measure fiscal health over a year, or longer. It can also be used to analyze the average deal size and can be expounded on to deliver a number of other key metrics.
Client Acquisition Rate
Another critical metric for sales teams and sales managers, client acquisition rates are a way to show the effectiveness of a sales team overall. It is related to some of the first KPIs on our list and can be seen as an indicator of the health of the processes that are measured in those metrics. The meaning of a client acquisition rate is directly related to customer lifetime value. If CLV is low, we might need a higher acquisition rate. Conversely, if CLV is high, we might be satisfied with a lower acquisition rate.
Share of Voice
A rather abstract idea, share of voice is meant to be a measure of how loud you are in the average customer’s sphere of perception. You might think of a small crowd of people all speaking at the same time. If those people represent commercial enterprises, then how audible each one is would be a good way to think about this metric. Share of voice can be tough to measure. It is an aggregate effect of your outreach, branding, reputation, public relations, and more. It is a high-level metric that’s tough to get numbers on. One way to measure it is through polling, surveys, customer feedback, and the like. If you can get an accurate handle on this metric, then you’re doing well.
One of the most interesting features of KPIs is the way they often overlap. This overlap, when detected, can improve the accuracy of these metrics, give you more information about your company’s sales process performance, and help you improve.
Accurate Sales Metrics With iDecide
In the introduction to this article, we mentioned the importance of KPIs as a means of showing the progress and effectiveness of what your sales team is doing. This is critical not only to deliver value to the company you are working for but to prove that value to decision-makers in the company as well.
Here at iDecide, we provide create-your-own-adventure presentation software as a standard feature of our comprehensive analytics platform. You’ll be able to view close rates, measure video and page views, meetings scheduled, and all of the metrics that matter to you most.
iDecide gives you access to prompt and efficient follow-up messaging with email or text to the client immediately after they have viewed your presentation with easy appointment setting options available.
You will increase engagement, boost your credibility, and monitor and deliver meaningful performance data quickly and easily. Let iDecide help you create your next sales presentation and close your next deal.
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