What B2B Sales Metrics Are Most Important to Your Company?

The right sales metrics tell the chief sales officer and CEO everything they need to know about how they are tracking towards their company’s revenue objectives.   For some companies it’s a complex, finely tuned set of calculations, reports and charts.   Others are just as successful with only a few simple ratios and percentages.

What matters most when it comes to sales metrics is what works for your company.

  • Sales dashboards that are very labor intensive to prepare run the risk of being dropped when schedules get busy.
  • Overly complicated dashboards that can’t “speak for themselves” may be a challenge when shared outside the presentation room.
  • Going too simple may mean missing important indicators of where your year is going.

We’ve seen companies with multi-billion dollar revenue quotas do just fine with three or four rock solid metrics.  We’ve also seen smaller organizations with under $50 million in revenue manage from a sophisticated set of sales gauges.   Here are some examples of sales metrics to consider for your organization.  Some will be familiar, others may be new to you and possibly applicable to your organization.

Current Cycle Metrics

  • Qualified Pipeline to Quota Ratio
  • Pipeline by Source (current account, new logo, channel, etc.)
  • Pipeline by Forecasted Closing Period (day, week, month, quarter, etc.)
  • Opportunity Aging Report

Mid-Cycle Metrics

  • Average sales cycle duration
  • Win to Loss Percentage
  • Win to Bid Percentage
  • Walkaway Ratio (no bids)

End of Period Metrics

  • Percentage of Sales Team Achieving Quota
  • Year over year change in average contract value
  • Year over year change in top line revenue

As we said earlier, what matters most is what works for your company.