James MeinckeYou’re probably already tracking many key performance indicators (KPIs) such as percentage of reps who make quota, average customer value, average lead response time, and more. But in the pursuit of taking a data-driven approach to sales, it can be helpful to expand the scope of your KPIs.
Here are 7 unusual sales KPIs that you might not be tracking but should consider adding to your arsenal:
1. Leads generated by LinkedIn
Studies consistently demonstrate that the highest-performing sales representatives are superstar LinkedIn users. Sales managers need to encourage their reps not only to be on the platform, but to use it regularly to make new connections. To do this, try tracking how many leads each representative generates through LinkedIn. You’ll also want to track the quality of these leads: how many become customers? What’s the average deal size?
This metric is useful not only for encouraging strategic LinkedIn usage, but also produces useful data. From the data you collect on LinkedIn lead generation, you can teach your sales representatives how to identify good prospects on the platform. Of course, you can also track leads generated through other social media platforms, but for B2B sales few will be as relevant as LinkedIn.
2. Sales quotes provided
While you’re already tracking the number of outbound calls and emails, it can be difficult to measure how many prospects are serious about a purchase. But if an opportunity has gotten to the point where a sales representative has sent out a quote, it’s a good bet that you at least have a chance of making a sale.
Track how many sales quotes your sales representatives send out. Your target frequency will obviously depend on deal size and length of your sales cycle. If a representative is significantly off-track, it’s worth investigating why. Conversely, some representatives may be sending out a lot of quotations but generating relatively few sales. This suggests that work needs to be done when it comes to closing the deal.
3. Quote to close ratio
Related to the number of quotes sent out is the quote to close ratio: How many quotes sent out turn into paying customers?
This KPI is useful both because it measures your sales representatives’ success at closing and it can help you to forecast future sales. Once you know your typical quote to close ratio, you can more accurately estimate future sales volume based on the state of your sales pipeline.
When combined with data about how much you’re spending per lead, quote to close ratio offers a wealth of information about your department’s efficiency and ROI.
4. Usage rate of marketing collateral
Even when that first sales contact is made after successful inbound marketing, content produced by marketing is still very relevant for making the sale. Yet many sales representatives underutilize marketing content.
Strong content helps build rapport and convince prospects to make a purchase. To encourage your sales representatives to start making better use of content, start tracking the rate at which reps use it. Useful metrics to track within this category include:
- Rate of content usage by representative
- Rate of content usage by content type
- Popularity of individual pieces of content
- Rate of closing the deal by content type
Tracking this information is helpful to both the sales and marketing teams. Marketing learns what type of content is most effective for making sales, while the sales team learns what content is best to share with future prospects.
5. Win rate by opportunity value
It’s not enough simply to track your overall win rate. You also need to know your win rate by opportunity value. Are your reps closing lots of lower-value deals but fumbling the higher-value deals? If so, you need to know about it so that you can delve into reasons why.
Many CRMs do not automatically track this value, but it is possible to set up a formula to track it. There are several different ways to calculate opportunity value, including quote provided, size of company, etc. It’s also useful to break this metric down by stage in the pipeline. Where are you losing potential deals?
Take a look at how individual representatives are performing on this metric. What are your highest-performing sales reps doing that lower-performing reps are not?
6. Win rate by contact method
Another useful way to break down is your win rate is by initial method of contact. You want to know if some channels of outreach and inbound marketing are more effective in producing paying customers than others. Track your success in the following contact methods, plus any others that you use:
- Cold emails
- Cold phone calls
- Trade show contact
- Website visitor (broken down by how they found you)
- Referral from another customer
- LinkedIn and other social media platforms
The Pareto principal applies here. Once you know where your customers are finding you, you can devote more resources to those channels. Although you shouldn’t cease your presence on lower-performing channels, you should devote fewer resources to them.
7. Dollars paid to sales team vs. revenue generated
This metric is great for evaluating the overall sales efficiency, and is also fairly simple to calculate.
This metric is crucial for identifying whether your company is generating less revenue than you should, given the size of your sales department. It can be especially insightful to look at this metric in the context of your average salary. Ideally, the average sales rep should be generating at least two times their annual salary—and preferably more, especially for enterprise sellers.
Poor performance may indicate that you have a lot of lagging performers. It may also point to department-wide inefficiencies that are preventing you from achieving your full sales potential.
Sales departments are complex organisms. By tracking a few unusual sales KPIs like these, you can better diagnose what’s going on in your department and how to make things better.
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