If you are in sales, your responsibility is to build and maintain a strong pipeline. What is a pipeline? How can you create one that keeps prospects interested until they become customers? Continue reading for the answers.

Are you looking for the most effective metrics to track the health of your sales team? Many sales development reps struggle to track their activities effectively. Every week, there’s a new tool, app, or piece of technology that our team must use to tracklist view, among other things. Although this may seem overwhelming, it’s not!

It can be difficult to keep track of all the tools. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by all the data available. Sometimes it can even prove difficult to find the right data if data has been incorrectly logged. It is important to monitor your sales pipeline metrics.

What are the most important things to pay attention to when you track your well-planned sales pipeline? Let’s know!

1. Numerous Opportunities

Your pipeline’s number of opportunities is a key indicator of your pipeline health. Opportunities can be described as a combination of revenue and the likelihood of a sale closing. If you have many opportunities, you likely have a strong sales pipeline.

2. Average Group Size

The average deal size, or group size, is simply your total forecasted revenue divided by the number of deals in your pipeline. If your average group size or deal size is declining, it means that you are losing more deals than you are gaining. This can lead to larger issues like missed forecasts or salary cuts (if those projections were accurate).

3. New vs. Total Deal Ratio

Another helpful way to see how many deals are “new” is the new vs. all deal ratio. Opportunities that are at the top of your funnel. A high number of deals means that your sales team is booking new business consistently, which can indicate momentum in your pipeline. If there aren’t enough opportunities, or if they are not moving through the pipeline, it could be a sign that your marketing effectiveness or the number of leads is poor.

4. Win rate

Your win rate simply refers to the percentage of total opportunities won from all opportunities that were closed within a given time frame (e.g. You can use this to determine how successful your reps are closing deals over a specified period (e.g., year, quarter, or month). This provides valuable insight not only into your reps’ success in closing deals but also into your sales pipeline metrics and whether your company is closing enough to meet its revenue goals.

5. Won to Lose

This metric asks the following question: What percentage of closed opportunities resulted in a sale? This means that your sales team is closing enough deals to meet your revenue goals.

6. Pipeline Coverage Ratio

The pipeline coverage ratio is a measure of how many deals you expect to close in a given period. It typically shows the number of sales that you can expect to close in a month or two weeks. This data is usually viewed between one and two months from the date you view it. These numbers should give you an indication of whether your sales team can close enough deals each month.

7. Time in Queue

The time-in metric can be used to determine how many potential leads are still waiting for you to contact. This is a great opportunity to improve your sales team’s performance. You can see which leads are still waiting and then remove them from your lead list.

8. Average Lead Conversion

You can calculate the average lead conversion metric to see how many leads turn into opportunities each month. This will help your team determine if they are focusing enough on quality leads and if they need more marketing effort. It is possible to track it using sales pipeline metrics.

9. Pipeline Turn Rate

The ratio of closed wins to pipelines is the pipeline turn rate. Let’s take, for example, 200 deals that were in your pipeline at the month’s beginning and 78 total close wins. Your pipeline turn rate is (78 closed wins / 200 total deals in the pipeline at the month’s beginning) or 39%. Your team should make more outreach efforts to convert leads if this number falls below 30%.

10. Qualified Lead Conversion Rate

The qualified lead conversion rate is a measure of how often a qualified (i.e. A qualified lead conversion rate shows how many times a “qualified” (i.e., sales-ready) lead converts to an opportunity in a given period. It is usually one day or one week. If there aren’t enough opportunities, it could be that there isn’t enough demand for your product or service.

The numbers that measure your company’s efficiency, productivity, and growth are called sales metrics. These numbers can be found in all areas of your business including sales, marketing, and finance.

Activity Sales Metrics

Activity metrics are a measure of how well your company is doing and where you can improve. These metrics are usually representative of actions taken by a percentage of the company’s team. They can help you track progress over time and identify areas for improvement.

Some examples:

• A series of meetings with potential clients, such as phone calls, Skype chats, or phone calls. 

• The Percentage/number of trial offers that are sent to qualified prospects every week, which results in trial users becoming paying customers after their trial ends.

• Percentage (also called win rates) of potential clients who become paying clients after following up with outreach emails/calls.

• Pipeline Sales Metrics

Pipeline Sales Metrics

The numbers that indicate where your company is at the moment in terms of sales are called pipeline metrics. They can be used to look at current figures and project future figures based on what you see. Some examples:

• Number of qualified prospects in your funnel currently (e.g. Leads, Trials, and Opportunities)

• The number/percentage of active opportunities in each stage of the selling cycle (i.e. Discovery, Proposal, or Closed Won)

• The average time each sales rep spends per prospect/lead (the lower the better).

• Average deal size (how many units/how big is the client expected to bring in) )

Outreach/Lead Generation Sales Metrics

The numbers that measure how well your company generates leads and contacts potential customers are called outreach metrics. These numbers are often a measure of the success of one team versus another, so they can be used to compare your company with other organizations. Some examples:

• Each week, there are approximately 2,000 email outreach campaigns.

• Each sales rep generates an average of ten qualified leads per week

• Percentage of prospects who are reached by cold calling/email follow-ups and become buyers (also known under the name win rates).

• All sales reps, in all departments, combined total sales

Key Performance Indicators (Key Sales KPIs)

These numbers are what show how your sales are performing, regardless of whether you’re looking at long-term or short-term performance. These numbers are often used by leaders and the C-suite for understanding how their teams perform. Other groups that regularly track sales KPIs include marketing managers, who want to know if their marketing drives increased website traffic and lead generation, finance departments to forecast future revenue based upon projected sales volume, and sales managers who want a way to track the overall performance of their sales teams to determine where they can improve.

Let’s look at some key performance indicators (KPIs), that you need to be aware of to assess your company’s current sales cycle performance. You will also find tips to track each of these KPIs, whether you are using Salesforce or another tool or system. Make sure you read the entire article!

Note:

When looking at these KPIs, keep in mind that they may be more important depending on the industry in which your company operates. Gross Margin Percentage, for example, is important in SaaS businesses but not in retail sales. Percentage increase/decrease in total revenue over the previous year.

What does it tell us?

This simple but crucial metric shows how your company’s overall top-line performance is trending. Is the company growing? Stagnating? Declining? This number can be used to determine the impact of recent changes on your company. You might find that your revenue is decreasing because of the new pricing. However, you can still maximize revenue without losing potential customers. This metric could be used to measure the success of these changes.

How do you track it?

Take a look at your monthly reports/statistics over the last few years, or however long you’ve been in business. The revenue increase or decrease from one year can be calculated and compared to the previous year. You can also measure this KPI against a target number, rather than using the prior-year performance to guide you.

Monthly gross margin

Compare the price of your products to what it costs to make them!

What does it tell us?

This is a crucial metric to determine if your pricing strategy is financially viable. A low gross margin percentage means that a company spends less money to make their product or service, and they must find ways to lower costs without sacrificing quality. They can’t keep their business afloat if they don’t. You might not be able profitably to offer your product or service at that price, even if customers are willing to pay a high price.

How do you track it?

This number can be accessed by reviewing your financial statements, which are pulled from several sources, including Quickbooks Enterprise and FreshBooks. Some companies outsource administrative functions, so the number may need to be found elsewhere. Based on your timeframe, the percentage increase/decrease in total customers (net new clients) over the last month, quarter, or year.

Monthly Net Margin

What does it tell us?

Your monthly revenue will increase month-over-month if you have more customers. If the trend is upward, your company’s marketing campaigns, if they use them at all, are more successful in closing sales and attracting new leads. It could also mean that your marketing campaigns aren’t working. If the number of customers you have is decreasing each quarter or every year, then something needs to be done.

How do you track it?

This metric is easy to find; virtually every market reporting tool will automatically give you these numbers. The percentage increase or decrease in the total number (the customers who purchase most often) of key customers over the past month, quarter, or year, depending on the timeframe.

Your company will be better able to weather market fluctuations if your customers are loyal and engaged. You can pull reports from Desk.com, Zendesk, or Salesforce that show customer engagement levels. This information can be found in any other reporting tool. Based on the timeframe, the percentage increase/decrease in key products sold during the last month, quarter, and year.

It focuses on product sales and not customer loyalty. This metric can be used to determine which products are performing better than others if a company has many different types of products. If Product A sells more than Product B for two consecutive months, it could be a sign that Product A requires more attention in marketing campaigns.

Per Transaction

How do you track it?

This data can be used by service-based businesses to identify needs or opportunities within customer accounts. They should be able to find the number in their reports or use a reporting tool. The percentage increase or decrease in the average purchase price of key customers in the last month, quarter, and year, depending on the timeframe.

What does this tell you?

This KPI measures how much each customer spends on each transaction. It can be used to identify areas where you should focus your efforts to sell more expensive items. If this number rises by 20%, customers are likely to purchase more often than before.

Wrapping up

Your product’s sales pipeline is your roadmap to success. The sales pipeline outlines the steps that you must take to reach your goal. It can be used by all types of business owners, regardless of whether they sell products or services. Which steps would you like to include? Which would be most beneficial to your company? These are important to know so you can be ready for when the opportunity arises.