Are you Tracking the Right Sales KPIs?

When it comes to successful sales management, Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are an effective way to measure the performance of your remote team. To be operational, sales KPIs need to be relevant to your sales process. Although revenue ultimately determines if a manager and their team are successful, in today’s data-driven sales world managers have a variety of metrics they can use to manage and measure their teams.

The right sales KPIs are different for every organization.

Most sales managers have a system for tracking their team’s key performance indicators and metrics to their pipeline and sales cycle. Reps enter their activity and their accounts into CRM software, and managers follow up with regular phone calls and face-to-face meetings (or Zoom check-ins these days.)

But how can you be sure that you have an accurate understanding of your entire team’s performance and efforts? After all, up to 40% of manually entered CRM data can be inaccurate and subjective. This means there’s good chance managers are missing something.

Sales Managers: Accuracy is Critical.

While many businesses operate CRM systems with manually reported, less than accurate activity data, more than half of companies utilize this data to assess the performance of salespeople. However, if your data is not accurate, there is no chance that your management can be truly effective.

Further, inaccurate data has proven to have a direct impact on the bottom line of 88% of companies, with the average business losing 12% of its revenue due to inaccurate data.

The answer to changing this pattern is simple. Emphasize accuracy, get a competitive advantage, and turn data into 100% accurate, actionable intelligence to optimize your sales team.

Determine Which Sales KPIs Matter Most

There are dozens of sales KPIs that managers can measure to gauge rep performance and overall team effectiveness. However, the metrics you focus on should be the metrics where incremental improvements will deliver the most value for your investment.

Here are three steps that will help you measure your sales effectiveness:

1. Establish a sales performance baseline for each rep. First, collect and analyze call activity data to get a feel for your sales cycle and the habits of your reps. Arguably, this is the hardest step, but it doesn’t have to be with the help of a sales acceleration tool. While reps make calls as they normally would, this type of tool automatically gathers 100% accurate activity data and reports it back in easy to consume, user-friendly dashboards.
2. Describe in as much detail as possible what your top performers are doing that other reps aren’t. It’s easier to have a meaningful discussion regarding a rep’s numbers when the conversation starts with accurate data and not just a hunch. Dashboards present 100% accurate data and call recording tools allow managers to coach reps on specific conversations (and playback successful calls of top performers) so that reps can understand where they can make improvements.
3. Set up training and coaching based on what you are hearing in an individual rep’s conversations. While your team is likely working remotely, a tool with listen-in capabilities allows managers to listen to sales calls as they happen, as if they were with reps in the office. These capabilities allow for real-time coaching and better follow-up training as managers have 100% visibility into rep activity.

Optimizing Sales Performance

On-demand, accurate sales activity data enables managers to answer the important questions they need to know to optimize team performance. Here are some questions our clients have answered with such data:

• Which scripts get the most positive responses from prospects?
• How many calls does it take to land an appointment?
• What time of the day or which day of the week are your prospects most receptive to your calls?
• What follow-up actions do your reps take that result in the most deals?

Learn how Gryphon can help your organization improve your team’s sales performance and track the KPIs that matter most to you.