Sales KPIs. What they are and which are the best

Gamco

Gamco Team

Achieving business goals and tracking success is an important aspect of improving any business. In sales, measuring progress through KPIs Key Performance Indicator (KPI - key performance indicator) can help you optimize the sales process, increase profits, be more productive and be able to outperform your competitors..

Sales KPIs drive accountability and provide quality opportunities for the right business decisions.

In this article, we explain "what is a sales KPI" and, in addition, we provide you with a list of the main sales KPIs in any business environment so that you can gather useful information, whatever your business is; but first:

What are sales KPIs?

Key performance indicators, or KPIs are quantifiable benchmarks that can be used as a reference point for the indicate the success of a company. In sales, KPIs emphasize customer interactions, sales figures and employee productivity. 

Both individuals and organizations as a whole can have KPIs that they use to track sales growth and make strategic decisions.

Why are sales KPIs important?

Moving without a specific objective is like being carried away by the currents Moving without a specific objective is like being carried away by the currents without knowing where your company may end up. Sales KPIs help companies achieve their strategic and operational objectives.and identify weaknesses that are slowing progress across the board. KPIs are an important way to ensure that your sales team is helping to achieve the organization's overall objectives.

At GAMCO, thanks to the use of ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and AUTOMATIC LEARNING in sales, it enables your business to have a better knowledge of the end customer, being able to monitor through the application of customized sales KPIs and providing suggestions for the optimization of campaigns for their loyalty.

The 5 most important sales KPIs that suit any business

The 5 most important sales KPIs

The most important thing to keep in mind when choosing the key indicators for your company is that it should be convenient and profitable as a whole and should be monitored at all times:

1TP3Q1 - Sales Growth

KPI sales growth measures the rate of sales growth. increase or decrease in a company's revenues for the sale of its services. This is a key indicator for any organization. Regular monitoring is becoming an important part of revenue forecasting and plays an important role in strategic decision making.

#2 - Sales funnel

The purchase funnel analyzes the customer acquisition process. This indicator will help you understand how potential buyers find your product or brand and, most importantly, how they end up becoming loyal customers.

In terms of measurement, this indicator can be measured in 5 stages: 

  • Awareness
  • Interest
  • Attention
  • Preference
  • Buy

The good thing about an indicator is the ability to consolidate a company's strengths and reduce its weaknesses to zero. The sales funnel allows you to see the complete cycle and influence the process based on objective information.

#3 - The service's ability to meet the needs of consumers

This KPI makes it possible to evaluate the sales effectiveness based on the analysis of the profitability of the service portfolio. The purpose is to report on which services are in high demand. When monitoring this indicator, it is important to compare the sales software to promote specific services

#4 - Sales plan

KPI sales targets measure current sales and compare them to targets or with the figures for the same period last year. The purpose of the plan is to determine the causes of deviations from the plan or forecast.

#5 - Dropout prediction

We would also like to share with you one of the Key sales KPIs ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE and AUTOMATIC LEARNING are becoming fashionable in large companies.

GAMCO has a commercial optimization and CRM software implemented in its SAIL solution, where it incorporates a KPI for the prediction of customer churn up to 60 days in advance and products or services.

Thanks to this module, it detects patterns of behavior that are repeated in order to improve end-customer understanding thanks to the collection of quantitative and qualitative information to prevent customer abandonment and its causes.

The 21 key business indicators to monitor sales

These are some of the Common sales KPIs used by different departments to measure impact of their efforts on business success and consumer behavior:

Monthly sales growth

Month-over-month sales growth or decline is a good metric for tracking a company's performance over time. It can show trends in consumer habits, allowing companies to investigate the cause of dramatic increases or decreases in sales and then adapt sales strategies to accommodate the changes. 

Tracking monthly sales growth over time can eventually provide sufficient data to predict sales trends and project future revenues.

Quota success rate

Measuring how many salespeople reached their sales quotas each week, month or year can help you determine if you are setting realistic goals for your staff. If all members of your sales team exceed their sales goals for each evaluation cycle, you might consider setting new, more ambitious goals. 

When most employees do not meet their sales quotas, this could indicate unrealistic expectations or structural problems. These sales KPIs can also help you identify the best employees and thus improve long-term sales by addressing productivity issues directly with the most qualified people.

Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction with their sales experience can have a direct impact on a company's reputation and brand. Companies often measure satisfaction rates through a percentage of positive customer feedback responses.

Sending quality surveys or questionnaires to customers about their buying or service experience will allow you to identify which salespeople leave the best impression on customers and how their behaviors impact increased sales.

Length of sales cycle

The amount of time it takes for an interested prospect to make a purchase is known as the sales cycle time. Long sales cycles tend to require more hands-on effort on the part of salespeople and may cause inefficiencies. 

Measure the average sales cycle time for each salesperson to determine if some employees can close deals faster than others, then identify how they achieve that result.

Number of customers in the sales funnel

To accurately predict future sales, it is important to know the volume of customers who have entered the sales funnel but have not yet completed their purchase at a given point in time. 

Knowing how many sales are currently in progress can show you when leads are leaving the sales funnel. 

You can measure customer performance at each part of the sales cycle to gain a more detailed understanding of projected profits and customer behavior.

Value of sales in progress

The total value of ongoing sales in your sales funnel can also be a valuable metric for measuring performance. This will help you forecast the amount of revenue you can expect at the end of the sales cycle. 

By considering other metrics, such as the percentage of leads that convert to customers, you can use the total value of all purchases in the sales funnel to accurately anticipate revenue and compare your projections to actual close rates.

Sales KPIs by channel

When using multiple sales channels and contact methods, you should record how many sales each one generates. If direct sales calls comprise 75% of your sales, you may want to consider investing more in hiring and training salespeople rather than other channels.

Companies wishing to diversify their revenue methods can set a goal of having the same sales in each channel, tracking sales by channel over time to determine whether to invest in one channel or the other.

Recurring monthly income

Companies that have regular recurring revenue, such as subscription-based software companies, should measure monthly recurring revenue or MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue). Calculate MRR by multiplying each company's average monthly revenue by the number of monthly subscribers. 

For example you can use MRR to determine the value of customer upgrades, new recurring purchases and existing contracts.

Interactions per sales representative

Sales KPIs that measure productivity can help managers and company leaders rank employee performance based on the number of calls and emails they send during a sales cycle. 

Knowing how many calls or emails a salesperson sends each month can also help you calculate response times and success rates.

E-mail open rate

You can use digital marketing tools to determine what percentage of email recipients actually open the emails a team sends.

Understanding which email subject lines result in the highest open rates, what time of day most customers open emails and other similar details gives you valuable feedback to optimize future marketing campaigns.

Potential customer

Tracking how many leads convert into customers can help you project expansion rates and determine the success of your current sales funnel. A low lead rate could mean that your sales methods are ineffective and require adjustments. 

You can also use these Sales KPIs to predict how many leads your team must generate to meet its minimum sales expectations. These predictions will be more accurate if predictive models are built using Machine Learning, based on all known variables.

Cost of customer acquisition

The amount of resources a team invests in attracting new customers can have a significant impact on your long-term sales strategy. Determining how much you have to invest in sales to get a new customer can help you set salespeople's salaries and determine a reasonable budget. 

Tracking the cost of customer acquisition as you implement new sales techniques or hire new staff can give you insight into the efficiency and effectiveness of these changes.

Customer lifetime value

Customer lifetime value refers to the amount of money you expect a customer to spend over the entire course of their business relationship, from their first sale to their final sale. Because onboarding new customers is a costly step in the sales process, the lifetime value of your customer can have a serious impact on overall profitability. 

Record the total customer lifetime value and the average customer lifetime value for each vendor to look for trends in what increases the overall value of each consumer to the company.

Average purchase value

Knowing how much money customers spend each time they make a purchase can help you develop strategies to get the most purchases from each customer. If you want to implement new incentives to encourage customers to buy more at a time, you should track the average purchase value to evaluate the performance of each incentive plan.

Average profit margin

Understanding how much profit you make from the average sale is essential to predicting future revenues and creating a reasonable budget. 

Calculating the average profit margin of all your products and services can help you determine the overall efficiency of the company's operations and project how much money you can reinvest in your team. 

This metric can help identify when operating costs begin to exceed revenue, allowing you to adjust pricing or seek more affordable sales methods.

Profit per product

Once you know which products are most profitable for your company, you can target different sales strategies. Profits by product can also show you which products do not generate significant profits, allowing you to divert resources to other areas.

Customer retention rate

The proportion of existing customers who choose to renew their contracts and make repeat purchases is known as your customer retention rate. Determining customer loyalty by measuring customer retention allows you to assess customer satisfaction and recognize the factors that help you retain customers. 

Measuring customer retention is an excellent way to evaluate how well salespeople manage customer relationships and convert one-time buyers into consistent sales opportunities.

Abandonment rates

Just as customer retention rates measure how many customers decide to stay with your company, customer churn rates express the proportion of customers who stop doing business with a company over a period of time. This can include customers who cancel their recurring subscription and customers whose payment methods expire. 

Tracking churn rates gives you insight into what might cause a customer to lose interest so you can address common problems.

Thanks to our SAIL system, which is based on Artificial Intelligence predictive models, we define what product or service to offer, to whom, and how to offer it, improving customer retention rates and reducing churn rates.

Average response time

This KPI measures the time it takes sales reps to respond to customer inquiries. The sooner you can connect with customers, the faster you can start the sales funnel and close a purchase. Sales managers should track the call and email response time of their sales employees to encourage productivity and identify scenarios that cause delays.

Follow-up success

Recording success rates for follow-up attempts can show trends related to which types of customers are most likely to respond and which types of follow-up messages generate the greatest instance of response. 

Marketers and managers should be able to review these response rates in order to create more attractive outreach strategies to attract more potential customers.

Sales by zone

It involves measuring the number of purchases from each sales location to find out which areas have the highest demand. Sales managers measure sales volume by area by comparing stores and sales territories. 

This KPI is ideal for situations where you want to customize sales strategies to meet regional needs or initiate expansion efforts in new areas.

Conclusions

In short, having knowledge of the different sales KPIs will help you at all times to have control of the company and if you also bet on our intelligent sales software, SAIL (Sales Artificial Intelligence Launch), it is more than a conventional CRM.

All the information collected, both internal and external to the company, will be used to automatically adjust customer behavior patterns, predictive models and to calculate the best actions to build customer loyalty and develop their full potential. In addition, this information is integrated with the company's systems to incorporate it into all decision-making and reporting processes. Furthermore, knowing how to choose the different types of sales KPIs will help you to measuring success against specific business objectives and targets of your company.

Commercial Optimization

Want to try our intelligent CRM at no cost?

Get a free diagnostic and assessment based on your actual business data

Share:
How AI models attract potential customers

The acquisition of new potential customers is one of the most important and difficult processes for a company. Traditionally, it has been necessary to [...]

Read More »
Optimal order or assortment for a customer

In the previous articles ("Basic concepts to build a commercial software with artificial intelligence" and "How to materialize the opportun [...]

Read More »
2 case studies on Artificial Intelligence: sales and risk

How is artificial intelligence helping us? Artificial intelligence (AI) has gone from being the stuff of science fiction movies to a [...]

Read More »
Basic concepts for building commercial software with artificial intelligence

The first thing you need to know is the limits of AI and after mastering the basic concepts you will be able to build a large commercial software with intelligent [...]

Read More »
See more entries
© Gamco 2021, All Rights Reserved - Legal notice - Privacy - Cookies