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 –
- 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.
- 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.
- 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?
- Opportunity win rate
The prospective lead opportunities must be identified and tracked in order to ultimately win them and improve the revenue of the business. The closing ability of the sales reps influences the sales performance of your sales team. If you think your reps are struggling with low opportunity rates, get them a Sales Force Automation Software. The Sales Force Automation Software helps your sales department to draw effective focus on the leads and help them to make major decisions and put in the necessary efforts to close a fruitful deal.
- Employee satisfaction
Employee satisfaction is an integral aspect of measuring the sales performance of your sales team. Employee satisfaction may depend on various factors but the major step to fuel your employee’s sales performance are –
- Motivate your employees : Sales reps are flooded by several external factors which affect motivation in sales management at the workplace. Your motivation in management can help them improve themselves for a much better themselves every other time.
- Equip them with right tools : It becomes your responsibility to provide facilities which makes your employee’s work easier and faster. Your employees require software which will make their work easier through technology. We have become so advanced with technologies that these technologies are playing an important role in every individual’s life. Get a CRM Software which will be a motivation in sales management as well as marketing management to work smarty with the help of CRM tools. SalesBabu Online CRM which is basically a cloud based CRM provides the best CRM Software with its added functionalities to enhance your management activities smartly. Feel free to request for a free demo on our website https://www.salesbabu.com/. You will surely not regret the use of Cloud based CRM software for your business.
Read our blog – Manage your Sales Team Smartly
- 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.
- 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
- 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?
- Get the metrics to the right people
- Choose a metrics to start
- Make use of customizable CRM Analytics and dashboards
- 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.
