Measuring key metrics in our sales process is something we should all be doing as salespeople to help us stay on track to achieve our targets.If you don’t measure your progress in sales, yes you might achieve some success in bringing deals over the line, however if you want to achieve consistent sales success, these are the metrics you should be measuring.
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1. WHERE YOU ARE AGAINST YOUR TARGET
If you’re reading this post and thinking “I don’t have a sales target”, then i’m going to tell you to go back and put one in place!If you don’t know where you’re going, it’s impossible to know if you’re doing what you should be from a sales perspective.So, once you’ve got a target in place, sit down and assess how far you are from achieving that target.Are you 60% of the way there or only 10%?If you’re miles away then you know you’ve got a lot of work to do before the end of the month, quarter or year (whichever time period you have set yourself).This assessment should be done every week without fail to measure your progress in sales. Doing so will keep you focussed on your target and motivated to reach it.
2. THE DEALS YOU HAVE AT DIFFERENT STAGES OF PROBABILITY IN YOUR PIPELINE
In my own business, I have 3 key probabilities that I use in order to measure my progress in sales and judge how close to converting my lead is.Firstly, 25% chance of conversion. This is an opportunity on the horizon- i’ve still got a lot of work to do in order to qualify that they’re right for me and vice-versa and to move it forward to being a prospective piece of business.So a lead I have at 25% is not necessarily a deal I expect to close anytime soon.
A 50% lead is a lead that I have qualified- I’ve asked the right questions around budget, authority, need and timing and I’ve got a really good sense that the prospect is interested in working with me. Therefore there is a 50/50 chance of me winning the business.
Finally, 75% probability means the prospect is displaying strong buying signals and just needs a little more work to get them over the line.
So, when I’m assessing my sales pipeline, I look at the deals that are at 50% or 75% probability because those are the deals I know I have a better chance of converting and will help me hit the targets I have set.I then identify what I need to do to give these prospects the last gentle push towards becoming a customer.
3. THE CONVERSION RATE AT EACH STAGE OF YOUR PIPELINE
How many deals do you move from 25% to 50% or from stage 1 of your sales process to stage 2?You should be measuring the number of leads you have at each stage and how many you convert to the next stage in order to effectively measure your progress in sales and assess where you are going wrong.
If you’re not measuring this metrics on a regular basis, it’s impossible to make improvements that will benefit your sales process and your numbers at the end of the month.It could be that your script needs some work at stage 1 of your pipeline or your demo isn’t converting many prospects at stage 3. When you know the weaker areas of your process, you can make necessary improvements and start converting more prospects into customers.
4. HOW MANY NEW LEADS YOU ARE GENERATING
New leads are essential to every business to grow and if you don’t have new opportunities coming in at the top of the funnel, you’re going to struggle to hit your sales targets. Without new leads coming in, you’re going to be reliant on the existing deals that you’ve got and we all know that some of those deals may never convert for a number of different reasons!Therefore, lead generation is vital and you need to measure if the number of leads coming in from the top are enough for you to hit your sales target or whether you need to be generating more leads every week, month or quarter.
If you’re still not sure how to measure your sales progress with these metrics, reach out to me here and I can answer any questions you might have. I also have a free resource that will help you to calculate what you need to do in order to hit your sales targets, download it here.
