Sales Team Performance: How to Measure (Complete Guide)
As a business owner, sales manager, or distributor, your sales team is the link that connects the customers with your products. It’s essential to track and measure your team’s ongoing performance in order to be able to manage and deliver your objectives effectively. A simple and clear picture of your team’s collective performance is the starting point for measuring sales team performance.
There are numerous ways to measure the performance, namely metrics or KPI measurements, various productivity benchmarking tools, creating various visual dashboards, transparent periodic meetings, annual profits, etc.
You can use either the tools or other ways to measure the sales team’s performance and establish a strong business with the desired profit. Here, we are going to discuss everything about measuring the sales team’s performance, various KPIs, metrics, and more.
Complete Guide to Measure Sales Team Performance
It is quite critical to measure your sales team’s performance in order to lay a strong foundation for your empire. Here are a few aspects that you need to focus on while measuring the performance and productivity of your sales team.
1. Setting goals
The best way to measure your sales team’s performance starts by setting goals and expectations. Now, the catch here is that you have to set goals that are realistic, achievable, and agreed upon by your sales team, too. The reason to discuss the goals with your sales team before setting them is that you can involve them, discover any hurdles, and even work a bit harder in achieving them.
2. Measure short and long-term goals
To effectively monitor and improve sales team performance, you have to focus on short-term as well as long-term goals. There are chances that the short-term failure might demotivate your sales team, but the long-term success rate can help them in keeping their momentum high. On the other hand, if the short-term goals are straightforward and achievable, but profits don’t reflect in the long term, then you will have to change your goals or sales strategy.
3. Visual board creation for different stages of the pipeline
You can successfully measure the sales team performance if you can see their progress and focus in each stage of the sales pipeline. Create a visual board that reflects various stages of a sales pipeline, such as lead generation, nurturing, scoring, etc.
4. Consistent and continuous follow-ups with team
The actual sales team performance can only be derived if you are equally involved with the team. With continuous follow-ups, catch-up meetings, solving any small or big issues immediately, etc., you can measure your sales team performance along with giving them room for improvement. If you get a chance, then you should also check in individually with each team member to know their progress or issues they are facing.
In Flowlu, you can easily leave comments to any opportunity or client using mentions. You can also request a response if you require an immediate action from your employee. Plus, you are even able to create a separate chat for the sales team or a workspace to discuss important matters and improve sales team communication.
Metrics & KPIs to Measure Sales Team Performance
1. Sales productivity
The best way to measure the efficiency of sales team performance is by tracking sales productivity. As per experts, the sales team spends less than half of their time in direct calling and the rest in networking, meetings, coordination, etc. These things might appear to be normal but can turn out to be harmful in the long run. So, increase your sales productivity to rise as a highly strategic organization.
2. Sales cycle length
This matrix focuses on the time taken by the sales team member to close the deal after getting an inquiry. The sales cycle length plays a crucial role in determining the sales team performance as a shorter cycle indicates more sales. So, you have to train your sales team in reducing the average sales cycle length as much as possible to achieve more profits.
3. Lead response time
Your lead response time has to be minimum in order to improve the sales team’s performance. You have to ensure that you consistently check on the time taken by your leads to respond or the sales team members to take a follow-up.
Time is a very critical aspect when you are existing in such a ruthless and competitive era. If lead response time is within five minutes, then the chance of prospect moving to the next level increases by 100 times as per Hubspot.
4. Average deal size
When you are measuring the sales team performance, along with the number of wins, you also have to measure the size of each win. The deal size determines your team’s efforts and the need to rethink adjusting the sales goals. Also, you have to direct your sales team to focus more on the leads with average or big size rather than bagging smaller wins over the course of time.
5. Win rate
Win rate or opportunity win rate simply measures the number of opportunities that are converted into won deals. So, as a part of measuring the sales team performance process, you have to check the opportunity win rate.
If the win rate is high, you don’t need to worry, but if the rate is lower or declining, you need to figure out the reason. You can see the best practices of team members with a high win rate and educate the other team members as well.
6. The volume of sales by location and product line
One of the key metrics that you can focus on while measuring the sales team performance is to track the various product lines, how each one is selling, and in which location has the sales increased. The information thus gathered can turn out to be very valuable in gauging the performance of your entire sales team as well as individuals based on different locations.
7. Product performance
By tracking the performance of each product, you can identify which product is the best-selling one. Once you have a list of the best-selling products, you can then figure out which team/team members were working on the said products. So, now you can easily measure the sales team performance to know their efforts. Also, you can focus on the less-selling or non-selling products more and refine the goals for your sales team as well.
8. Outreach attempt ratio per contact
By identifying the number of outreach attempts done by the sales team per contact, you can gauge the lead nurturing efforts put in by your team on any lead. This number can vary depending on the type of lead, salesperson or representative efforts, type of point of contact, etc.
But, lead nurturing is a very crucial step in the sales pipeline and needs to be focused on by the team. Thus, the sales team performance can also be effectively measured by tracking the outreach attempts per contact by the sales team.
The Takeaway
A sales team performance measurement is crucial to ensuring that the team is moving in the same direction as the company. You will not be able to accurately forecast how your sales team is contributing to broader company goals if you do not evaluate both leading indicators and revenue quota achievement.
Those smaller performance metrics around activities and funnel progression help with revenue prediction, and they play an important role in guiding business decisions. You can optimize your sales team performance by measuring how they perform.
Sales team performance is the measure of how well a sales team is doing in terms of generating revenue, closing deals, and meeting quotas. There are a number of factors that can affect sales team performance, including the skills and experience of the sales team members, the quality of the sales leads, and the effectiveness of the sales process.
Measuring sales team performance is important for a number of reasons. First, it can help you identify areas where your sales team is excelling and areas where they need improvement. Second, it can help you track your sales team's progress over time and identify trends. Third, it can help you make decisions about how to allocate resources, such as training and coaching.
Some common sales team performance metrics include:
- Revenue: This is the total amount of money generated by the sales team.
- Quota attainment: This is the percentage of sales team members who met their quota.
- Close rate: This is the percentage of leads that the sales team converted into customers.
- Average deal size: This is the average amount of money generated by each deal closed by the sales team.
- Sales cycle length: This is the average amount of time it takes for the sales team to close a deal.
There are a number of things you can do to improve sales team performance. These include:
- Provide training and coaching.
- Set clear goals and expectations.
- Provide feedback.
- Motivate your sales team.
- Reward success.
