10 Sales Operations KPIs Every Leader Should be Measuring

Jay Khiroya, founder at house of operations shares his 10 KPIs every sales leader should be measuring. 

 1) Sales cycle length

The first of my sales KPIs is sales cycle length. When I mention the sales cycle length, I break it out into 5 parts:

a. How long does it take you to enrich the data so it’s ready for prospecting?
b. How long does it take to get that first meeting booked with the key decision maker?
c. How long does it then take to close the deal? And how long does it take to lose a deal?
d. How long does it take to get the customer up and running with your product, that you, as a business are comfortable that they are on the road to success?
e. Identifying an upsell opportunity and the length it takes to close

2) Product performance

Don’t let this metric define where the sales team should focus more of their time.

What I mean by this is you may find that one product seems easier to sell and the conversion is higher – but this could well be down to the sales team feeling more comfortable selling that product.

Think of the Business Strategy and the market, and if it’s another product with a low conversion rate, is it because further training is required? I’d put an additional incentive in place for the sales team to spend more time on selling that product if it’s the next business direction.

I’d also look at these metrics by product line:

a. Average deal size
b. Average conversion rate
c. Is one product easier to convert than another? Do you use this as leverage to hit the sales monthly target when in panic mode?

3) Pipeline inflow and outflow

Ensure you enter the month with enough pipeline, ensure that you’re converting and ensure that you’re creating new pipeline. You don’t want to be eating into your pipeline every month!

a. Are you continuously creating new pipeline (and from which sources)?
b. How much pipeline typically drops out (closed lost)?
c. How much pipeline gets pushed out (into another month / quarter)?
d. How much of your pipeline changes in value (increase and decrease)?
e. How much converts into closed won?

4) Touchpoints

Number of touchpoints to get the first meeting booked. The number of touchpoints, which touchpoints, and when to close a deal.

5) Activity methods

Which activity method has the better conversion rate to booking that first meeting?

Cold calling is not dead!

6) Closed won deals: Number of leads into the funnel

What’s the ratio between closed won deals to the number of leads put into the funnel?

This will help you reverse engineer how many leads need to go into your funnel, to get to a number.

7) Seller performance

I like to break this up into 3 parts:

a. Of course, this is the standard metric of % closed revenue against target by month / quarter (how you as a business set targets). This will show you who is and is not consistent when hitting a certain acceptable threshold in your business. Don’t assume 100% is the target, your business financial model should be employees hitting 70 – 80%.

b. The conversion rate by employee between each sales stage. This shall give you an indication of their strengths & weaknesses. Spend time with the rep on the weaknesses and this shall improve their conversion which will lead to an improved performance. Find what is working well across the team (higher conversion rate between a sales stage) and share the learnings. Leverage what has been tested to show results, amplify it within the team and scale it.

c. Consistency. This may not be an indicator for a lot of people but ask yourself whether you want a team that is consistently delivering a number, or unpredictability. If it’s consistency, then how do you increase elements in your sales process and provide the right support to increase that performance throughout the team.

8) Number of actions

Number of 'actions' reps need to carry out throughout the entire sales process.

I like looking at how many ‘actions’ a sales rep needs to do from the moment they enter information into the CRM to sending out a contract, having it signed and handed over to the Customer Success Team. As the number of actions increase, the inefficiency increases. What do I mean by actions? Amount of information that needs to be manually filled in, the number of fields in Salesforce that the Rep has to go through or fill in, the number of ‘mouse click activities’ the rep has to do throughout the entire sales process. These all add up to inefficiencies within the process.

The idea is to have a view of these actions and:

a. continuously find ways of cutting down the number of actions
b. question whether what you’re asking to be inputted into your CRM etc is actually required from a business perspective
c. implement processes, workflows and structure (reports, forecasting etc) so it's as automated as possible to make your entire sales process as efficient as possible.

9) Size of sales teams vs. workload

How many leads, meetings, opportunities and onboarding customers each rep can handle before it becomes too risky for the team and business?

Have a threshold within your business that highlights risks to your monthly and quarterly outlook. If a rep has too many opportunities (or by value) this is a risk to your forecast.

If a rep has too less, it’s also a risk:

a. This takes time to analyse with data (unless you have the right tool!) but set a minimum and maximum target each rep should aim to have, when it comes to number of leads, opportunities and customers they can handle for the month or quarter.
b. This will give you an indication of risk (if any). If your sales team is overworked, do you hire another? If your sales team is too big, how do you pump in more so they are productive. Use your weekly one-on-ones to encourage them to push out anything that is above the threshold to mitigate the risk, but increase the efficiency that shall drive towards a particular overall target.

10) Stage tenancy

And the final KPI in my top 10 sales KPIs is stage tenancy. This is the time each lead and opportunity spend in each stage:

a. Is the time it spends in a stage enough? Is it too long or too short?
b. Are you forcing deals through the sales stage?
c. Are sales moving opportunities into a sales stage just to show progression in weekly meetings?
d. Do you have an enter and exit Sales Stage Criteria? i.e. when an opportunity can enter a sales stage, and when can it exit that to move into the next?
e. When is the best time to lose a deal and focus your efforts on another?

Summary

So there you have it. My 10 tried and tested sales KPIs every sales leader should be measuring. With these KPIs in your tool kit, you'll have increased visibility into your salespeople's performance, alongside the ability to make strategic decisions that increase revenue.