Sales Enablement: 7 Pivotal KPIs You Need to Be Tracking

No one can be perfect at sales. Trust me, I’ve tried. Between personability, strategy, and sales success, there are always ways to improve your selling tactics. However, in order to know how to improve, you need to know what’s not working.

That’s where your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) come in. These are statistics of your team’s performance that you can track with the help of a CRM, or just a pen and paper if you have all of the time in the world. By focusing on specific KPIs, you can make course-correction plans, or change up your strategy on the fly to land a major account.

If you’re looking to improve your team’s selling potential, check out these seven crucial KPIs that you should always keep an eye on.

1. Lead Conversion Rates

People like to say that “time is money.” However, that’s not always true. In fact, when it comes to lead conversion, less time equals more money. I’m not going to pretend like the math checks out, but the sooner you turn your leads into clients, the sooner you can close out a deal.

When you spend less time converting your leads, you end up spending fewer resources overall to push them to your sales funnel. You could be saving hundreds on your marketing efforts, email campaigns, and the cups of coffee necessary to keep track of your leads. But once you convert your prospects, you need to focus on pushing them through your pipeline.

2. Time Spent in Each Pipeline Stage

Quick disclaimer: you should never rush your clients when they’re making a decision during a sale. It comes off as selfish and rude with a hint of desperation. On the other hand, when you guide your prospects through your funnel at a faster rate, you seem more professional and knowledgeable of your product…

Double standards, am I right?

Personal biases aside, understanding how to quicken the stages in your sales pipeline is crucial to boosting your sales. It all comes down to getting more value out of each of your clients. Once you push a client through your sales funnel, you can prioritize your next client sooner, so chipping away at the time spent in each pipeline stage lets you maximize your revenue.

3. Quarterly Revenue 

While this KPI feels like a no-brainer, it’s vital that I mention it. If you’re looking to track your performance and improve as a salesperson, you need to see growth in your quarterly revenue.

You can sell every last product in your warehouse, and dish out demos until the cows come home, but if you aren’t seeing reliable growth in your team’s revenue rates, you’re doing something wrong. 

Imagine quarterly revenue as the benchmark for how you’re performing overall. Every other KPI on this list feeds into the revenue your team is earning for your business, so you can imagine this as the K-KPI (key, key performance indicator) if you wish.

4. Customer Churn Rates

Despite what it might seem like, customer churn rates aren’t how much they’re willing to turn milk into butter. Unless you’re selling butter churns, in which case, let’s not get lost in the semantics. A churn rate tells you how many leads you lose over the course of a month.

Aside from learning experiences, and maybe a secret family recipe you overhear on a call, clients are only valuable to you when they make a deal. So, if you’re trying to improve your sales and boost your revenue, churn rates can help you understand what factors might cause your clients to leave.

5. Cross-selling and Up-selling Success Rates

When a client says “yes” to a deal, odds are, they’re willing to say yes again. So once you close out a sale, you can’t just call it a day, pack up your briefcase and go home. That’s the point where you focus on up-selling your current products, or convincing them to purchase other products or services you provide.

It’s hard for a single product to fix 100% of your client’s problems, so there’s always a reason for them to make another purchase. Find out what other pain points they have and drive home another sale or two. Once you can do this consistently, you can start tracking how successful your products are, and how useful they are when paired together.

6. Average Client Response Time

You can have the most excited, interested, and willing client humanly possible, but if they take two weeks to respond to an email, it can feel like you’re wasting your time.

When clients drag their feet through every step of your sales funnel, you need to spend more resources to keep the door open for them. However, there are steps you can take to lower the chances of that happening.

The biggest question to answer is “how can you keep your clients engaged at all stages?” Once you can solve that riddle, you’ll save more resources per lead, and quicken your pipeline.

7. Overall Lead Quality

I’m not saying you should judge the quality of a person, unless they pour ketchup on their fries, you know, like a crazy person. It’s important to clarify how much value each lead brings to the table. For example, a multi-million-dollar business is going to buy more product than the average accountant.

If you’re looking over your performance in a quarter, keep the quality of your leads in mind. You can make the same revenue with fewer leads if they’re willing to make a more robust deal.

It’s not just about your team’s performance.

Unfortunately, there are KPIs that you can’t have full control over. Leads can lose interest unexpectedly, clients might take their sweet time during your sales funnel, a bear might be loose in your office. It’s important to understand that there are factors you can’t fix at a moment’s notice.

But when you focus on how you and your team interacts with clients to account for these un-bear­-able circumstances, you’ll find work-arounds that’ll drive up your revenue in no time.