6 Sales Performance MetricsThat Matter Most…

Are you managing an inside sales team? Are they failing to jump on the phone and make

the calls? If yes, what does the phone mean

to them?

Are you managing an inside sales team?

Are they failing to make enough phone calls & talk time?

The Sales Challenge

Are you managing an inside sales team? Are they failing to jump on the phone and make

the calls? If yes, what does the phone mean

to them?

How do you track the performance of a sales team?

Number of calls?

Quality of calls?

The Sales Debate

How Effective is Your Sales Team?

You need to drill down and understand the performance levels of each person. Here are our 6 suggested KPIs:

1. Number of Calls Per Day & Talk Time2. Percentage of Calls at Each Sales Cycle3. Conversion Rate4. Close Lost Rate5. Average Value of Merchant Won6. Performance Against Target

1. Number of Calls Per Day & Talk Time

• The number of outbound sales calls will differ greatly from one industry to another. In the payment industry, sales reps have a lot of pre and post-sale work to do. Very often they need to assist the merchant with underwriting, pricing, contracts, etc.

• The range of outbound calls will typically be from about 40 to 80+ a day. I normally aim for between 50-70

• With an outbound dialler, salespeople can potentially generate 100+ calls a day

• We recommend sales reps having a talk time target so they aren't just picking up the phone and dialling reception instead of talking to decision makers. Consider a talk time target of 2-3 hours

2. Percentage of calls at each sales cycle

It’s important to know how each salesperson is progressing along their sales cycle

Here’s an example of good and bad sales pipeline progression:

Good

Bad

The second example highlights the sales rep failing to get past the gate keeper, and struggling to schedule time with the decision maker.

Monitoring the sales cycle progression will help you identify coaching and training opportunities for the salesperson to help improve efficiency in their outbound calls

3. Conversion Rate

Some say that a 10% conversion rate for an inside sales team is quite good. But this can vary from company to company.

If your company is well known and with a strong market position, your salesperson could generate in excess of a 30% conversion rate, vs a startup which could be generating only a 5-10% conversion rate

4. Close Lost Rate

Although a sales rep may have a high conversion rate, make sure to monitor their close lost rate too, as that could also be very high. If it is, it could be that they are burning leads, in which case you need to put out the fire!

5. Average Value of Merchant WonWhen setting a sales target, you must consider the average value of a merchant to be won. I’ve worked with sales teams where they’re winning thousands of merchants, which was great, but the average win was so low that they were missing their sales targets by miles…not so great.

6. Performance Against Target

Sales targets are normally set at: country, team, and sales rep level. Consider also including targets for:

• Average merchant size• Close won rate• Close lost rate• Number of calls to be made each day, week, month• Commission target

In Summary…

I hope that these 6 KPIs can offer you a helping hand in managing your sales team, and understand the performance levels of each salesperson.

Naturally this is a long term effort, but it should pave the way for you to better implement the metrics necessary to measure sales performance, and keep track of how well your sales team is doing.

Thank you for your timeLiz Fulham, CEO

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