7 Sales Metrics to Track

I love sales, I really do. Unfortunately, it took me many years to fully appreciate it. You see, I’m a product guy — I love the nuts and bolts of the application. Naturally, I thought that if I helped build a great product the world would beat a path to our door. It didn’t happen. What did happen is that after struggling for 3+ years, I realized I needed to become a sales person myself and learn how to build a customer acquisition machine.

After managing sales people for almost 10 years now, and helping build a sales team from scratch to 28 people, I’ve found seven simple sales metrics to track:

1. Calls logged — Some sales people love picking up the phone and dialing. Most don’t. Calls logged is the simplest of metrics that reflects activity.
2. Conversations logged — What good is making calls if no one answers the phone? Conversations are more important than calls logged and are a combination of effort and skill.
3. Demos scheduled — With a conversation underway, the goal is to get a web demo on the calendar, build rapport, and more fully understand their problems before proposing a solution.
4. Demos completed — Not everyone shows up to scheduled demos. It’s just as important to track demos completed as it is demos scheduled.
5. Proposals sent — Once the budget, authority, need, and timeline (BANT) has been established, it’s time to send a proposal. Without BANT, more nurturing is needed.
6. Deals lost — No one wins them all. Tracking lost deals, and reasons why the deal was lost, is critical, and sales people rarely do it.
7. Deals won — Victory favors those who are prepared. Nothing is more satisfying to a sales person than a new customer win.

Sales people hate tracking their activity in a CRM. What gets measured gets done and sales is no different — zealously track sales metrics and hold the team accountable.

What else? What are some other sales metrics to track?