As a Salesman, how can you define which sales metrics are most important to meeting your sales KPIs goals? People who can tell a good sales story will always sell more than people who can’t.
Sales Process Steps
- Plan, gather, and preparation
- Assess the need & solution
- Solve with a product or service
- Present and sell
- Ask for business
- Deliver promise
- Follow up
- Report & communicate
- Evaluate & improve
- Prospect (first step)
Sales KPI is a just 3 steps framework.
- Identify Your Main Objective
- Select the Metrics that Match your Objective
- Planning and Action Plan = Success
Having a reliable Sales KPIs format and staying Objective-minded will allow you to take the sales performance metrics data you have and pull it together into something comprehensive.
Once you begin doing this, it will feel like assembling a puzzle: you can see all the small details and how they interrelate to one another while appreciating the overall bigger picture as well.
1. Identify your main objectives.
Define your role? Do you want to be a –
• Hunter (Demand Generation Expert) or • Farmer (Sales Conversion Expert)?
Do you want to be a – Generalist (Handling entire Sales Cycle from Lead Generation to Closing the Sale)
• Specialist (Demand Generation Expert, Social Media Expert, Negotiation expert …)
To keep the process of defining your B2B Sales KPI as organized as possible, you want to first select your main objective or goal.
Are you looking to:
- Generate more new enquiries over Phone.
- Generate more new enquiries over email.
- Generate more new enquiries over social media.
- Generate more new enquiries through Networking or Business Events
- Close more Sales from New enquiries.
- Close more Sales from Old Inactive Enquiries
- Close more Sales from Referrals
- Close more Sales from Upsell & Cross-Sell etc.…
2. Select the metrics that match your objective
it’s time to page through those important KPIs for sales activity and choose the ones that are most relevant to you right now.
Let’s assume that your wish to close more Sales from Incoming Inquiries through Marketing.
In that case, then the Sales KPIs that may catch your eye would be the MQL, SQL, average sales cycle length, average revenue per Sales, or sales growth etc.
While it’s okay to switch metrics as your campaign progresses, you don’t want to keep stacking Sales KPI on top of Sales KPI.
Try to stick to five right sales metrics at any one time or as many as eight if you must. Too many metrics complicates everything, so keep to that sweet spot of about five.
3. Planning and Action = Success
Okay, so you have your objective(s) & Metrics selected; now comes the time to put this plan into action.
Watch and Update Metrics As Needed.
• Create an Excel Sheet with 4 Columns
• List Down all Key Metrics in First Column
• List your Current Performance alongside the Metrics in the Second Column
• List your Desired Performance in Third Column along with Timeline
• Update Metrics each Week to identify Gap between current & future state
• Keep Improving your weakest metrics to upgrade your Performance.
That said, don’t discard a metric because the results are negative. You need to pay more attention to negative metrics even more than positive ones, as the negative metrics are showing you weak spots in your company.
Happy Selling.
Read More: How to deal with Sales Objection?
