12 sales metrics to kick-start your sales analytics

12 sales metrics to kick-start your sales analytics

• What is sales analytics?
• Why monitor sales analytics?
• Sales analytics reports and dashboards
• Sales leaderboards for general consumption
• 12 examples of sales analytics to monitor
• The key reasons to build a sales leaderboard

Few teams within an organization are as data-driven as your sales team. Each and every activity is measurable, and your challenge is often knowing what to track. With the proliferation of sales software tools like Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Hubspot, you now have more data at your disposal than ever before.

The question is, do you have more control over your sales performance than before?

In this post, we’ll help you unlock the power of your sales metrics using sales analytics. Read on to empower you team.

What is sales analytics?

Sales analytics is the practice of generating insights from sales data, trends, and metrics to set targets and forecast future sales performance. The best practice for sales analytics is to closely tie all activities to determine revenue outcomes and set objectives for your sales team.

Analysis should focus on improvement and developing a strategy for improving your sales performance in both the short- and long-term. A common example of a sales analytics activity is setting role-specific objectives for your team in the form of KPIs or metrics. For instance, setting a revenue target for your sales director while setting a sales productivity goal for your account management team.

Why monitor sales analytics?

If your business was a rock band, sales would be the lead singer. All eyes are on sales and revenue performance, and a strong (or weak) performance can become a potent rallying force for your entire team.

Monitoring sales analytics in the form of sales metrics helps increase your performance, optimize sales activities, and improve accountability. Your sales team has a wide range of activities to focus on and operate in a fast-paced environment. A well-defined sales analytics strategy provides your team with focus and clarity so they can concentrate on doing what they do best.

Sales analytics reports and dashboards

Data transparency when it comes to sales analytics is tricky. Many members of your team lack the training required needed to do ad-hoc reporting in CRM tools and are more focused on revenue generating activities like logging calls and completing demos.

That’s fair, too. You want your best reps selling, and your sales analysis should accelerate that, not hinder that.

A solution for team analytics is to display analytics on a sales dashboard. Ideally, the dashboard will be straightforward, intuitive, and communicate a clear message. This can be done using free tools like Google Sheets, PowerPoint, or Excel. Or it can be hooked up to a dashboard software solution like PowerMetrics.

Here’s an example of a sales analytics report generated using Klipfolio.

Sales leaderboards for general consumption

Another positive way to increase transparency and accountability for your sales analytics process is to display a sales leaderboard. A leaderboard can be displayed on a TV and used to track revenue performance against a time-bound target. For example, tracking your team’s performance towards a monthly revenue objective.

12 examples of sales analytics metrics to monitor

When implementing sales analytics at your organization, you will want to start by taking stock of your sales metrics. Think about which metrics will inspire action and provide your team with focus.

If you’re just learning about sales analytics, then you may find it helpful to review a few examples. Here are 12 sales analytics metrics you may consider tracking.

1. Sales Growth

Sales analysis revolves around your ability to grow revenue. A small blip in your trend line will do more than furrow brows, it’ll have your team digging through the data for definitive answers. Learn more: Sales Growth

2. Sales Target

This KPI tracks current performance against a business objective. Sales may be represented as revenue, number of accounts, units sold, or any other measure that is relevant for your team. Learn more: Sales Target

3. Opportunities

In a perfect world, you’d be able to prioritize your sales efforts based on the likelihood to close. Barring the sudden appearance of a crystal ball, your current opportunities is the best way to track and measure that. Learn more: Opportunities

4. Sales to Date

Perform rapid analysis by comparing your current sales against the previous period, the same period the previous year, and get a sense of historical trends. Learn more: Sales to Date

5. Product Performance

For teams selling multiple products and with targets for each product, it’s important to track sales for each line. Learn more: Product Performance

6. Lead conversion Rate

Insights like lead conversion rates help keep sales and marketing teams aligned throughout the customer journey. Conversion analytics allows for teams to continuously optimize performance to steadily improve customer experience. Learn more: Lead conversion rate

7. Sell-through rate

If you’re selling physical goods, tracking your sales versus the total inventory is an important analytics undertaking. It will inform your supply-chain and help in sales forecasting. Learn more: Sell-through rate

8. Cannibalization rate

A new product to sell may be exciting, as innovation often is, but sometimes it can adversely impact sales for an existing product. By tracking product cannibalization in your sales analytics, you can better manage customer experience. Learn more: Cannibalization rate

9. Quote-to-Close

Quote-to-close is an excellent sales productivity metric because it demonstrates how effective your team is at closing a deal. This metric gives analysis into the quality of leads and the quality of your sales process. Learn more: Quote-to-Close

10. Sales per Rep

The composition of your sales team is an important factor when developing sales analytics. Experienced reps and account managers are more likely to outperform junior reps, and forecasting this into future analysis is one example of how this metric can be used. Learn more: Sales per Rep

11. Average Purchase Value

One of the most effective ways to increase sales revenue is to increase the average purchase value of each sale. Incorporating this metric into your analysis and to track historical trends is a smart strategy. Learn more: Average Purchase Value

12. Sales by Region

Even global businesses will find they have regional differences in sales and revenue. Tracking this metric will give visibility into the territories in which you are competitive and profitable. Learn more: Sales by Region

Now that you have your hand in sales analytics...

A bit of friendly competition goes a long way. A while ago, our Sales Team wanted to ignite their competitive side and developed a dashboard that would help them track their progress and performance... Thus the Sales Leaderboard was born. Now, we want to share it with you. Watch this short tutorial to learn how to build your own leaderboard for your team!

What are the key reasons to build a sales leaderboard?

• Track individual sales performance in real-time
• Track team sales performance in real-time
• Directly compare performance across multiple sales metrics or KPIs
• Use friendly competition to fuel motivation in the sales team
• Create a transparent, data-driven work environment
• Make quick decisions based on the data instead of waiting for end of quarter reports

Also see:

The 19 sales KPIs of modern sales teams

The death (and rebirth) of the salesman

How to create a KPI dashboard