Sales KPIs, Are You Tracking the Right Ones?

Revenue. It’s the only Sales KPI that matters. Right? Wrong.

Sales KPIs can be a great way to measure your sales reps performance. To be effective, a KPI needs to be relevant to your sales process. Although sales revenue ultimately determines if a sales manager and his team are successful. In today’s data driven sales world, managers have a variety of sales metrics at they can use to manage and measure their team.

Think about the wealth of data you could collect just from listening to and recording your sales teams’ phone calls. As Peter Drucker says, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.”

How Accurate is Your CRM When it Comes to Measuring Sales KPIs?

So many sales managers have hacked a system to track their team’s sales performance, key performance indicators, and metrics to their pipeline and sales cycle. Your reps enter their activity and notes on their accounts into your CRM software, and you follow up with regular phone calls and face to face meetings whenever the whole team is in town.

But can you be sure that your reps are making the most of your companies CRM? Up to 40% of manually entered CRM data can be inaccurate and subjective. This means there’s a good chance you’re missing something.

For a Sales Manager Accuracy is Critical. Is Your CRM Painting a Complete Picture?

A study by Demand Gen found that 85% of businesses operate CRM systems (or sales force automation databases) with between 10% and 40% bad records.

A second report from Experian Data Quality study shows inaccurate data has a direct impact on the bottom line of 88% of companies, with an average business losing 12% of its revenue due to inaccurate data.

If inaccurate data is causing so many businesses to lose so much revenue, how did it get there in the first place? The answer is simple. People and the continued adoption of antiquated sales management tools and techniques put it there.

Emphasize accuracy, get a competitive advantage, and turn data into actionable intelligence to optimize your sales team.

Determine Which Sales KPIs Matter Most

There are hundreds of key performance indicators (KPIs) you could measure and track to gauge your reps’ performance and the overall effectiveness of your team. The metrics you focus on should be the metrics where incremental improvements will deliver the most value for your investment.

There are three steps that will help you measure your sales effectiveness.

1. Establish a sales performance baseline for each rep. Collect their activity data for 90 days 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: it’s a lot easier with tools like Gryphon Sales Intelligence. (Through this system reps make calls as they normally would while the system automatically gathers activity data and reports it back into easy to consume, web-based dashboards.)

2. Describe in as much detail as possible what your top performers are doing that other reps aren’t. This step will help you establish a benchmark for what a successful rep looks like and coach to those standards. Simple follow-up conversations can help you flush out many of the details – may be an underperforming rep is taking the same actions but hasn’t mastered the right delivery.

3. Listen to voice recordings and set up training and coaching based on what you are hearing in the individual rep’s conversations. 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.

Optimizing Sales Performance

On-demand, accurate sales activity data can help you answer the important questions you need to know to optimize sales performance.

Here are some questions our clients have answered with such data:

• What language/which scripts get the most positive response from prospects?

• How many calls does it take to land an appointment? More than two but usually less than 15 – that’s when prospects can become agitated and opt-out of future correspondence. 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? Following up a demo with relevant reading material aimed to help a prospect get internal buy-in does the most to land a second meeting.

Would like to learn how Gryphon can help your organization improve your team’s sales performance and track the KPIs that matter most to you? Click here for a demo!