As a sales professional, you wear many hats. Prospecting for new clients, meeting with current ones, following up on old leads, preparing presentations—the list goes on.
With so many tasks, some find it challenging to add another crucial element to their routine: sales analytics.
It's nearly impossible to improve sales performance without analyzing available data and extracting insights. However, some salespeople avoid analyzing sales data because, with dozens of metrics to consider, the volume is overwhelming.
Take any CRM, for example. The data volume is massive, with 100+ analyzable metrics. Doing this daily is not feasible.
To address this challenge, salespeople need to analyze key metrics that will improve their performance over time. So, how do you identify these key metrics?
Zoho Analytics asked salespeople on LinkedIn to share the metrics they track regularly. With their input, we created a dashboard to help other salespeople.
Without further ado, here are the key metrics they recommended tracking:
- Sales trends with forecasting
- Average deal size
- Sales funnel
- Conversion rate
- Customer acquisition cost
- Churn rate
- Year-over-year leads growth
- Conversion by sales reps
- Conversions by lead source
- Product performance
- Sales territory
- Sales activities
- Sales commissions
- Competitors analysis
Sales trends with forecasting
A sales trend shows the performance of sales results over a period of time. It visualizes the sales data to identify the trend—upward, downward, or flat.
Sales teams can also combine the sales trend with a sales forecast, which will help project future sales based on historical trends and other factors like seasonality and market conditions.
Tracking the sales trend and forecast together indicates whether the sales team is on track to hit sales goals.
By tracking the sales trend regularly, sales teams can identify the positive and negative changes early and optimize their strategies at the right time.
Conversion rate
The conversion rate calculates the percentage of leads or prospects that convert into your customers. Here's the formula to calculate the conversion rate:
Tracking conversion rates allows salespeople to track how effective their sales processes are. Tracking this metric regularly can help identify what's working well and what needs improvement in the sales process.
Average deal size
Average deal size is the average revenue generated per new customer from sales. Here's the formula to calculate the average deal size:
Sales managers set targets for average deal size as a way to drive higher revenue per customer. By regularly tracking average deal size trends, sales teams can spot major changes that may require adjustments in strategies.
Sales funnel
A sales funnel visualizes the flow of prospects from initial contact through becoming customers. The typical stages include the following:
- Qualification - This is the initial stage where prospects qualify your product by either registering for a demo or signing up for a free trial.
- Needs analysis - Sometimes, prospects ask for additional time to analyze your product to understand whether yours will suit them better.
- Initial offer - After understanding the prospect's needs, sales representatives put together and present an initial offer.
- Proposal - For larger deals, a formal proposal may be required.
- Negotiation - The prospect may negotiate on price, terms, and features.
- Closed won - When the prospect becomes a customer through a signed agreement.
Tracking the sales funnel enables sales managers to identify bottlenecks and assess performance. It also provides a big-picture view of all customer prospects at every stage.
Customer acquisition cost
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is a key sales metric that measures the money spent to acquire a new customer.
Regularly monitoring CAC enables organizations to optimize their sales and marketing spend.
Churn rate
The churn rate is an important metric that measures customer losses over a period of time.
Tracking churn rate enables sales and marketing teams to gauge customer satisfaction and loyalty. It can also provide early warning signs of problems needing attention, as well as identify customer segments that may be more prone to canceling.
Year-over-year leads growth
Year-over-year (YoY) leads growth is a metric that compares the number of new leads generated compared to the same period the previous year.
Tracking this metric over time shows the marketing and sales performance for acquiring new prospects. This metric also helps sales managers set lead generation targets and allocate resources.
Comparing leads growth across marketing campaigns, sales channels, and geographical regions provides insight into what's working well.
Conversion by sales reps
Conversion by sales reps measures the number of leads or opportunities that each sales representative converts into wins or customers over a given period of time.
Identifying conversion by representative enables sales managers to identify high performers as well as representatives who need coaching or development to improve. It can also reveal strengths and weaknesses in following up on leads.
The insights extracted from this metric will help plan sales training initiatives.
Conversions by lead source
Tracking conversion rates by lead source is an insightful sales metric that measures the number of leads from each source (ads, events, referrals, and the like.) that convert into customers.
This metric shows which lead generation activities and channels produce the highest quality prospects. Tracking conversions by source offers trends on the performance of specific marketing campaigns in generating leads.
Product performance
Analyzing product performance is important for sales teams to understand which offerings are generating the most revenue and seeing the most demand. Here are some key product performance metrics to monitor:
- New customers
- Revenue
- Revenue by pricing plan
Tracking product performance helps sales teams identify the best plans to double down on.
Sales territory
Monitoring sales performance by territory is paramount for optimizing coverage and resources. Here are some key territory-based metrics sales teams should monitor:
- Revenue by region
- Customers won by region
- Revenue by territory
Aligning territories, allocating representatives, and setting performance goals help improve sales results.
Sales activities
Tracking sales activities provides insights into how sales representatives are spending their time and which actions drive results. Key sales activity metrics to monitor include:
- Calls booked
- Demos booked
- Emails sent
- Events attended
- Meetings booked
- Win percentage
- Won potentials based on activity
- Activities and potentials closed by sales reps
- Average days taken for the first activity
Tracking sales activities and comparing representatives reveal levels of effort and engagement.
Sales commissions
Tracking sales commissions is important for motivating and compensating sales teams. Here are some key metrics related to sales commissions:
- Total commissions
- Top three sales reps based on sales made
- Monthly commissions
- Monthly commissions by reps
Adding these metrics to the dashboard helps sales teams optimize the commission structures and costs.
Competitors analysis
Analyzing competitors is critical for sales teams to keep their edge in the market. Here are some important competitor metrics to track:
- Customer satisfaction rating
- Market share comparison
- Financial performance comparison
Monitoring these metrics enables sales leaders to adjust strategy in order to compete on positioning, pricing, product features, and sales messaging.
Why should you use a sales dashboard?
As mentioned previously, CRM systems generate a huge volume of data for sales teams. With so much information, it's impossible to analyze and track every metric. A sales dashboard that displays only the most important KPIs enables sales professionals to better leverage CRM data.
That's why we've created a sales dashboard to show how consolidating key metrics can benefit sales teams. This dashboard features the core KPIs recommended by sales leaders and experts.
To create a sales dashboard like this, you'll need a modern BI and analytics platform like Zoho Analytics, which seamlessly integrates with most CRM systems.
Zoho Analytics for advanced sales analytics
Zoho Analytics offers a host of advanced capabilities to visualize sales data and extract insights. With Zoho Analytics as your BI tool, you can:
- Connect your CRM tool natively and access prebuilt reports and dashboards.
- Get AI insights in the form of straightforward narratives in a single click, which would otherwise take hours using manual data analysis.
- Make data-informed decisions, optimize your sales strategies, and achieve better results.
Zoho Analytics supports integration with most CRM systems, including Zoho CRM, Salesforce CRM, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, HubSpot CRM, Zoho Bigin, and Teamwork CRM.
You can also import data from other CRM systems, such as Insightly, Base, and Pipedrive using Flatly. In addition, you can import data from your local and cloud databases.
In today's data-driven business environment, leveraging sales dashboards is essential. Zoho Analytics is a valuable tool when it comes to deriving insights from CRM.
You can sign up with Zoho Analytics for a 15-day free trial, connect your CRM, and start gathering meaningful insights.
If you need a personalized demo, you can register for one and get an idea of how Zoho Analytics can help optimize your sales strategies. If you have further questions or need clarification, you can write to us at support@zohoanalytics.com.
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