How often should you review your sales metrics? Good question.
We work with a lot of sales leaders, but the most successful ones tell us they review sales metrics daily.
It makes sense. Sales metrics help you understand what your salespeople do each day.
I’m not talking about lagging indicators like revenue or market share. Research tells us that those metrics are unmanageable, no matter how hard you try. Lagging sales metrics represent outcomes. But sales leaders can influence them by directing sales activities.
If you’ve already defined your key selling activities, reverse engineer your sales process to determine how much of each sales activity your team needs. Divide those activities among your reps and assign them as sales metrics.
But that’s only the first step.
Don’t set goals and forget about them. After putting activity metrics into place, you must monitor them on a daily basis. Here’s why.
3 reasons sales leaders must review sales metrics daily
1. Sales metrics track pacing to goal.
Your revenue goal is clear, and you mapped out the path to get there with the activity metrics. Wouldn’t like to ensure your team is on track? Review metrics daily to ensure sales reps perform the right activities. If those leading indicators fall behind, then revenue will surely follow.
When your team focuses on the activities that you know lead to closing business, they make better decisions on how to spend their time. You get more productivity from your team. And you enable transparent leadership.
2. Sales metrics enable course-correction.
That transparent leadership comes in handy when metrics fall behind pace. Use a sales scorecard template or sales activity management system to track daily activities. With the scorecard template, you’ll monitor pacing manually. Sales activity management automatically tracks activities and alerts team members when pacing slows.
This is where sales leaders can shine. When you see a rep isn’t performing enough of one metric, you can coach them around that activity. If your entire team needs to focus on one activity, you’re able to rally them with a quick contest or spiff.
3. Sales metrics reinforce recognition.
When you review metrics daily, you’re able to celebrate the small wins on your team. Congratulate reps on hitting their weekly live conversation goal or the number of proposals they sent out this month. This keeps momentum high. Letting your team know you appreciate all of their accomplishments becomes an excellent source of motivation.
You can also use these metrics to build a sales playbook of best practices for your team. Interview reps who always achieve their activity goals and share those strategies with the rest of your team.
Not monitoring your sales metrics often communicates that they aren’t important. Whether you’re congratulating a successful rep or offering guidance to get him back on track, daily sales metric reviews are vital to be in control of your sales organization.
