The Critical 15 Sales Metrics to Monitor

Every business owner’s goal is predictable sales. Consistent sales closing each month and quarter they can count on. When you have consistent, predictable sales, your Revenue Generation System is working effectively. You can’t achieve your revenue goals without monitoring sales and marketing metrics.

You can’t achieve your revenue sales goal without monitoring interim sales and marketing metrics.

Why Sales Metrics Fail You

Most business owners focus only on the end goals: closed sales and net new clients. These are, after all, the bottom-line metrics you care about because they signify goal attainment. But the problem is that focusing only on the end goal won’t ensure you’ll achieve it.

The B2B sales process has multiple steps and happens over time. You have to examine how you’re doing throughout the sales process, not just the closes. That’s the only way you will know what to adjust that will positively impact your revenue sales target and new business development objective.

If all you measure is the final step, you won’t know until opportunities close if you’re going to make your revenue and margin targets. Without more data, your key performance indicators will fail you.

Now the question is, what to watch?

The Sales Metrics To Track Daily, Weekly, and Annually

There are 15 sales metrics you can monitor to identify what is – and isn’t – working within sales. The right sales metrics give you visibility into potential problems before missing key targets. They provide the baseline data to diagnose issues and quickly identify what needs to be done to assure you will reach your annual sales and growth goals.

Overall Sales Performance Metrics

These metrics look at sales performance overall. Expand beyond the top two and set metrics that give you insight into existing client growth and client retention. An added benefit is that you’ll demonstrate to reps that you are looking for more than net new sales revenue from them. To emphasize your focus, align the compensation and bonus plan with the metrics you set here.

Monitor Overall Sales Performance Metrics weekly, monthly, and annually:

1. Total sales, either revenue or margin, based on how you compensate sales reps
2. Net new clients
3. Current client account revenue
4. Sales growth
5. Client retention

Sales Activity Metrics

Set these metrics based on daily, weekly and monthly performance based on the sales role. For example, an inside sales person whose role is primarily cold calling would have a daily cold call metric. An outside salesperson who is responsible for managing the full sales process would have a weekly cold call metric.

Monitor Sales Activity Metrics daily, weekly, and monthly:

6. Cold calls (This could include cold calls and emails combined, but an email really isn’t the same effectiveness as a phone call. If you want to include emails, set a separate sales activity metric for prospecting emails.)
7. First-time appointments set
8. New proposals
9. New referrals

Sales Conversion Metrics

These are the metrics that help you determine if your sales process is working and what you need to change. You’re monitoring conversion of opportunities through the sales process. If you see a significant opportunity loss at one phase in the sales process, you know you have a problem that needs to be addressed in that phase.

Monitor Sales Conversion Metrics monthly and quarterly:

10. Marketing qualified leads converted to sales qualified leads
11. New opportunities entering the pipeline
12. Opportunities that convert to proposals
13. Proposals that convert to sales

MQLs and SQLs are not the same.

The distinction between MQLs and SQLs is critical to understand when you examine Sales Conversion Metrics. Many business owners, and even marketing experts, incorrectly classify MQLs as sales leads. When you do this, your data is skewed and your decision making will be faulty. If you aren’t sure you are handling them correctly, read this post to confirm: The Important Difference Between MQLs and SQLs.

Marketing Metrics

Use these metrics to examine how well your lead generation is working and where you need to make adjustments. If you aren’t getting the number of marketing qualified leads (MQLs) you want or the MQLs aren’t converting, then you need to look at your messaging, target markets, and content as a start.

Monitor Marketing Metrics monthly and quarterly:

14. Marketing qualified leads received
15. List growth

Then, examine the Sales Conversion Metrics to identify how well MQLs are converting to SQLs. As you examine performance, you’ll identify if adjustments need to be made on the marketing side, the sales side, or both.

There are other marketing metrics you’ll monitor regularly. These will align with the marketing strategies you are using, such as SEO, email campaigns, social, digital ads, PR, and others.

Sales Metrics Identify Process Problems

As you read through these metrics you can see how they build on each other, painting a clear picture of what’s working in your sales and marketing process, and what needs adjustment. The metrics start all the way at the beginning of your sales process with list growth and marketing qualified leads, then follow each opportunity from lead identification through closed sale.

If you’re monitoring these sales and marketing metrics, you’ll know where you need to focus your attention.

You’ll clearly see if you have enough leads to convert to the number of new opportunities you need to achieve your sales goal and if those leads are moving smoothly through the sales process – or not. You may not know how to change the problem, but you’ll have a pretty good idea where the problem is that you need to fix.

You can’t optimize your Revenue Generation System without measuring and analyzing key sales and marketing metrics.

Setting Sales Performance Expectations for Metrics

After reading these metrics, I know you want me to share what the target performance expectations should be for each one. Of course, it’s not that easy!

Sales performance expectations are based on 6 factors:

1. The sales role
2. The person’s skill set
3. Time on staff
4. Your product maturity
5. Company Recognition ROI
6. The account base, both prospect list and current customer base

Consider Sales Rep Role and Tenure

You will have different sales metric performance expectations for a new rep than you will for a sales rep who has been with you for 3 years, as well as different expectations for a Hunter versus a Farmer. Consider all these factors as you set performance expectations for your sales team.

When To Begin Tracking Sales Metrics

Don’t wait until a new year or quarter to begin tracking metrics. Put them in place as quickly as you’re able to determine how to do it in your systems. Start with a few and add to them until you’re measuring all 15 metrics.

The faster you establish and begin monitoring sales and marketing metrics, the sooner you’ll gain visibility into the overall performance of your team and what to adjust to fine-tune company results.

We frequently work with clients to define these metrics and performance expectations when they’re establishing their sales process, hiring new salespeople, or their current reps aren’t meeting their new business development goals. If you’re establishing or building your sales organization and need help setting metrics with measurable performance expectations, we can do that. Contact us and we’ll set a time to talk about your sales and marketing metrics and how we can help.

Editors’ Note: This post was originally published in January 2019 and updated in December 2023. It has been expanded and updated for accuracy and comprehensiveness.