Article • 10 min read
10 sales performance metrics you should track every week, month and quarter
You’re probably already tracking sales performance metrics... but are you getting good use of your data? Learn what metrics to track, and when.
By Molly Murphy
Last updated June 9, 2023
With today’s modern technology, you can track pretty much anything about your sales performance. But just gathering data isn’t enough.
To make the most of your data, you need to strategically choose the metrics you want to track and how often you want to track them. Taking this intentional approach, you’ll have meaningful information to pull insights from — not an overwhelming pile of data.
What are sales performance metrics?
Sales performance metrics are measurements that help you gauge the effectiveness of your agents, your systems and your sales strategy.
You can use sales performance metrics to measure your team’s short-term progress toward sales goals or to gauge improvement opportunities for individual team members. Some metrics can even measure long-term objectives, like whether your sales strategy is working.
The key to using sales performance metrics is tracking them consistently at an appropriate cadence:
Some metrics will give you almost no information if you look at them over a week but are very valuable when zoomed out to look over several months
Other metrics give you the best information when you evaluate them weekly
In this guide, you’ll learn about ten metrics that can help you better understand your sales performance.
Weekly sales performance metrics
Setting weekly metrics gives your team a micro view of their performance, so they can regularly assess their areas of improvement.
A weekly report shows them just five days’ worth of activity, so they can break their goals up and look for short-term improvement opportunities. Zooming in on the sales process like this helps reps set mini goals to reach throughout the week.
Call/Contact volume
# of unique contacts made (weekly)
What is it?
The number of calls, emails and live chats your reps initiate within a week.
Why measure it?
Use contact volume to understand your sales reps’ current capacity and set weekly goals.
How do you use it?
Choose a weekly contact goal for your team based on the average contact volumes in past successful weeks. Be sure not to set this goal too high — if reps feel pressured to meet a lofty contact goal, the quality of their conversations may drop.
Percentage of appointments set
# of unique contacts that ended with an appointment/# of unique contacts made = % of appointments set
What is it?
The percentage of unique contacts made that ended in an appointment.
Why measure it?
It shows you your reps’ ability to convert cold prospects into warm leads, effectively moving your prospects down the sales pipeline.
How do you use it?
Don’t use this metric to gauge employee performance. Instead, use it to make sure you have the right people in the right stage of the sales funnel. Position reps with consistently high appointment setting percentages at the beginning of the sales cycle to capitalise on their talents.
Lead response time
Time it takes for reps to reach out to a lead
What is it?
The length of time (typically measured in minutes) it takes reps to make contact with generated leads.
Why measure it?
Lead response time tells you whether your reps are reacting with urgency so leads don’t get away. Studies show a rep needs to respond to a lead in five minutes or less. Otherwise, the possibility of conversion drops significantly.
How do you use it?
Use this metric to ensure your team is consistently responding below the five-minute window.
If they aren’t, take a look at what factors may be preventing them from answering quickly. Maybe they’re overwhelmed with their current leads and you need to hire more staff. Or maybe the sales technology you’re using is out-of-date and it’s slowing the process down.
If the latter is true, check out Zendesk Sell. Our powerful sales platform lets you customise weekly reports. Send a weekly performance report to each rep so they can set activity goals for the following week.
Monthly sales performance metrics
It’s common for the sales process to take over a week to complete. Monthly metrics cover a wide enough time range to measure completed cycles, not just initial contact.
Number of Marketing qualified leads (MQL)
# of MQL (in a month) on your reps’ to-be-contacted list
What is it?
The amount of monthly leads marketing has determined as ‘quality’.
Why measure it?
Your number of MQLs is a starting point to gauge whether you’ve sourced enough good leads for your sales team to act on.
How do you use it?
A great way to understand if your MQLs are really good candidates for sales is to look at the conversion rates from MQL to sales qualified leads (SQLs). The higher the conversion rate, the higher quality your MQLs.
If you’re short on MQLs, consider increasing your marketing budget or using a lead generation tool like Sell Reach to build up your list.
Business Development Representative (BDR) capacity
Max # of daily leads x # of business days in the month x # of BD reps = monthly BDR capacity
What is it?
BDR capacity is a formula that considers daily leads, how many reps you have and how many work days are in the month to give you a total number of leads your business development team can source in a month.
Why measure it?
This metric, when compared to MQL targets, will tell you if your business development team is properly staffed or overwhelmed.
How do you use it?
Compare BDR capacity and MQLs.
If BDR capacity is greater than your monthly MQLs, your business development team should be able to take on more work.
If your monthly BDR capacity is less than your monthly MQLs, there are roadblocks that need to be removed for your team to reach their full potential.
Account Executive (AE) capacity
Max # of daily deals x # of business days in the month x # of AEs = monthly AE capacity
What is it?
AE capacity is the maximum number of deals your account execs can handle in a month.
Why measure it?
AE capacity helps you determine staffing and workload for your account executive team.
How do you use it?
Compare your monthly AE capacity to the number of monthly sales deals won.
If your AE capacity is greater than the number of deals won, you aren’t using your account execs to their full potential. Think of ways to fill your pipeline or double down on prospecting.
If your AE capacity is less than the number of deals won, your account execs are working too hard. You need to hire a couple more AEs or up the requirements for your BD team to pass prospects along.
Win rate
# of deals won/# of deals created = win rate (%)
What is it?
A ratio of how many deals you won out of how many you attempted to win.
Why measure it?
Win rate is a quick way to gauge how effective your sales techniques are. It can shed light on whether your reps are succeeding or need more support.
How do you use it?
Segment your win rate by industry, channel, size or by each rep or team of reps to look at how it changes based on the group.
Keep in mind, what qualifies as a ‘good’ win rate depends on a lot of factors, like your customer base and the product being sold. Look at previous monthly win rate averages for a baseline and strive to outperform your past months. You can also use win rate as a metric for friendly competitions between sales teams, with monthly incentives to outperform other groups.
Quarterly sales performance metrics
When it comes to building a strategy around your data, you want more than a month’s worth of information.
Quarterly metrics give you trends over long periods of time instead of a snapshot of just a few weeks. Use these metrics to analyse your costs against customer value to be sure you’re investing in the right segments for your business.
Acquisition cost
Total sales and marketing expenses/# of new customers = customer acquisition cost (CAC)
What is it?
A ratio that takes your expenses and number of new customers into account to determine how much it costs your business (in pounds) to win one customer.
Why measure it?
It helps you look at how best to invest your sales and marketing budget, based on which customer segments are the most expensive and valuable.
How do you use it?
Use customer segmentation to compare CAC by markets. This information can be a great jumping-off point for which markets your business should focus its efforts on. Calculating your total sales and marketing expense to determine CAC isn’t always straightforward. Check out this resource for a deeper dive.
Lifetime value (LTV)
Average total revenue generated over customer lifetime — average associated costs per customer = lifetime value (£)
What is it?
LTV is a pound sterling amount of total profit you can expect a customer to bring your business over their whole lifecycle.
Why measure it?
LTV shows you which customer segments are the most lucrative and worth focusing on.
How do you use it?
Getting an accurate lifetime value can be tricky since so much goes into calculating an average cost per customer. Partner with your finance department to get accurate values for your LTV formula and to determine your target LTV.
‘Magic number’
(Difference in total recurring revenue between 2 quarters) x 4 / total sales & marketing expenses for the earlier of the two quarters = magic number
What is it?
A ratio of monthly recurring revenue (MRR) to sales and marketing expenses to measure the efficiency of subscription-based business models.
Why measure it?
The ‘magic number’ metric is a way for SaaS and other subscription-based services to determine how efficient their spending is.
Subscription-based services can make calculating revenue and expenses hard. You have to make an upfront investment, and your profit then trickles in over a period of months, so identifying if your strategies are working isn’t very straightforward.
The magic number helps you put a value on whether your sales and marketing investments will yield the profits you expect.
How do you use it?
Use the magic number in annual and quarterly business planning to gauge whether your go-to-market approach is working.
You want your magic number to be 0.75 or higher. If it’s below 0.75, revisit your CAC — they’re probably too high. If it’s more than 1, you may want to spend more money on sales and marketing to support your growing revenues.
The magic number is vital for subscription-based SaaS companies. But getting the right values to plug into the formula can take some teamwork. Use this resource for step-by-step help to determine your business’s magic number.
Choose the right CRM for ultimate flexibility in reporting
Tracking so many metrics on varying schedules can be a full-time job if you aren’t careful. One solution to streamline your tracking is to use a CRM. This software can automatically record and create reports for data on the schedule you select.
Zendesk Sell is a sales CRM that gives you full control of your metrics gathering and reporting. Contact us today to start a free trial.
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