You, as a business owner, want to know the results of your marketing efforts. Without a way to measure it, it can be difficult to determine if the advertising dollars spent are worth it. This blog will address sales performance measures.
Sales performance measures can help you increase your revenue and pinpoint the areas where you need to put more effort. This article will discuss 15 sales performance metrics that can help improve your business. Enjoy this informative read!
How Do You Measure Sales Performance?
The most important indicator of a company’s overall health is its sales performance. Every business must measure its sales performance. There are many ways to measure sales performance. Each has its advantages and disadvantages.
It is common to measure it by looking at revenue growth. This is how much the company’s sales revenue has increased over some time.
This is useful in measuring the overall market demand for a company’s products and services. It does not account for changes in product mix or prices, which could distort the results.
Gross margin is another common metric. Gross margin is the amount of profit a company makes for every dollar of sales. This includes changes in revenue and costs.
This measure can be especially useful for companies that sell products and not services. It reflects the product creation cost or value. This metric does not provide any information on how much money the company spends to acquire new customers or keep existing customers.
Current performance metrics have a major drawback: they tend to focus on past results and not future potential. This makes them less useful for planning.
The company’s revenue may have increased because of factors beyond its control, such as market trends and competitors’ decisions. These factors can make it difficult for them to duplicate in the future.
A business that sells digital products may experience strong growth if a larger competitor invests in a new product line. If the competitor does not maintain the investment, this growth may not be long-lasting.
Big data analytics is a newer method to measure sales performance. This method uses large amounts of data to find patterns and correlates in customer behavior.
This information can be used to forecast future sales trends and optimize sales and marketing efforts. This method is still in the early stages of development and is not yet widely used.
There are many ways to measure your sales performance. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Businesses should choose the metrics most relevant to them and their industry.
Businesses can use the right metrics to improve their understanding of customers and align marketing and sales efforts with customer demands.
10 Important Performance Indicators that Matter to A Sales Manager
Sales managers have many responsibilities. Sales managers have a lot to do. They need to not only develop and implement sales strategies but also keep track of performance indicators so that the team stays on track.
A sales manager can track many performance indicators, but not all are equally important. These are the top 10 performance indicators for a sales manager.
1. Sales pipeline – Any sales organization needs a strong sales pipeline. All potential deals should be included in the sales pipeline, from the initial lead to the closing deal.
2. Sales velocity – This refers to the speed at which deals move through a pipeline. Sales velocity is a measure of how efficient your sales process is.
3. Average deal size – This is a measure of your total revenue potential. It also indicates how much you can expect to earn from new deals in your pipeline.
4. Opportunity close rate – The opportunity close rate is the ratio of the number and size of closed opportunities to the number and size of your sales pipeline.
This metric allows a sales manager to understand the ability of his team to convert leads into customers and to determine which opportunities are most likely.
5. Win close rate – If an organization looks only at its win/loss ratio it might overlook important information about the sales process.
You can track your team’s win close rate to see how often they are winning deals. This measure also indicates which products or services are most in demand with customers.
6. Time to close – The time taken from the moment a deal is won to be closed is called the Time to Close. This can be used to help sales managers determine where they may have bottlenecks and track the efficiency of their sales team.
7. Customer churn rates – This is the rate at which customers have stopped doing business or canceled their services over a certain period.
This can be used to help sales managers identify reasons customers are leaving, and where they can improve.
8. Gross margin – The amount your company makes from every sale less the cost of the goods sold is called gross margin. This helps sales managers to understand the profitability of their products and services.
9. Sales expenses – It is crucial to track sales expenses for two reasons. First, it helps you find areas where you can save money, and second, it shows how much your marketing and sales efforts are costing you.
10. Ratio of lead to opportunity – This measures the number of leads that are converted into opportunities. This is an important metric because it allows sales managers to determine the effectiveness of their lead-generation efforts.
These are just some of the key performance indicators that matter for a sales manager. A sales manager can track metrics to gain valuable insights into their team and pinpoint areas that need improvement.
15 Steps to Track Your Sales Performance
1.) Google Analytics is the best way to measure your sales performance. Use Google Analytics for information about which pages and blog posts are most popular on your website. You can see which products and services are most popular, as well as the number of visitors that you have each month.
2.) Determine how much traffic each post generates by using WordPress plugs like “Google Analyticator”, Wopra (in beta), and WP Stats, all completely free!
There’s still hope if you don’t want any plugins installed. Bitly links will show you the origin of users when they visit your blog. It’s great if people share it with their friends after reading about a topic that is important to them, such as young people sharing travel tips.
3.) Determine how influential your blog is by tracking the number of social shares (Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook) for each post and then averaging them out – you can use a tool like SharedCount or Cyfe to do this automatically without having to lift a finger!
Good content will be shared more and increase your reach if it is valuable.
4.) Compare monthly leads generated from organic search traffic against paid search traffic; this will tell you if allocating some budget towards SEM makes sense for your business.
It is important to measure how many leads you are generating as a result of your email marketing efforts. Track unique opens, Click-through Rates (CTRs), and conversion rates.
5). Keep track of how much it costs you to generate a lead (CPL) and try to reduce this number over time by tweaking your marketing strategy; use tools such as Google AdWords Keyword Planner, UberSuggest, and Moz’s Open Site Explorer to help you find keywords that have a low CPC and high monthly search volume.
6.) To find the best CTAs for your audience, you can A/B test them all.
7). You can gauge how effective your lead nurturing process has been by counting the number of MQLs (marketing qualified leads), and SALs (“sales accepted leads).
This will allow you to decide if it is worth your time and resources to convert more website visitors into customers.
8). You should also keep an eye on customer turnover rates. If customers are returning products or canceling subscriptions, you must find out the reason and take corrective actions. Baremetrics can help you identify which cohorts have the highest rates of churn so that your efforts are focused there.
9). To help you calculate CLV, you can use a tool such as a Customer Lifetime Value Calculator. Once you know how valuable each customer is, you can begin to work on ways to increase your CLV.
10. Determine which channels generate the most leads or revenue, and then focus your marketing efforts more on those channels. For example, if paid searches are generating lots of leads, you might consider investing more money in them.
Google Analytics and similar tools can be used to determine where visitors are coming from to allocate resources appropriately.
11). To determine if you are making enough profit, compare your monthly sales with the budgeted amounts. You could have too many units or high prices.
12. Make sure each post includes a clear CTA at its end.
13.) Conduct an annual audit of all marketing channels so you can determine whether or not they are still providing value for money – if not then stop spending money on them!
It might be helpful to use tools such as Moz’s Marketing Grader or Hootsuite’s Social Media Analyzer for free to assist you in this.
14.) Regularly survey your customers to find out what they think of your products/services, what their needs are, and how likely they would be to recommend you to a friend; use tools like SurveyMonkey or Qualaroo for this.
The feedback you receive can be used to improve your marketing strategy.
15.) Use Google AdWords’ Display Planner tool to identify new websites that could potentially serve as display partners for your ad campaigns – these sites will have a similar audience demographic to yours which means the traffic you generate from them will be more relevant.