These indicators also allow you to monitor your sales model on a daily basis and to implement small corrective actions before it is too late. For example, you notice that your sales representative X is far from his objectives for the month. You can then schedule time with him to manage him and understand what is holding him back. 

Performing a more detailed analysis - The "ANALYSIS" Module

In addition to daily monitoring, you can - or at least you should - monitor and evaluate the commercial efficiency and the commercial effort made by the company (in other words, your commercial model). To do this, your CRM will once again be your best friend. 

Let's take the example of Koban and its specific analysis module. It allows you, among other things, to analyse all your data by creating customised dashboards: pie charts, curves, tables, histograms... 

You can pretty much analyse everything and very easily. More complete than flash figures, dashboards really allow you to bring out relevant analyses: what worked in your model / what didn't work so well / which segment generates the most turnover / a summary table of the sales of each of your salespeople etc. Because just as "working hard" does not necessarily mean "making money", it is necessary for any company, large or small, to calculate the efficiency and profitability of its commercial actions in order to concentrate efforts on the best actions.

But let's remember that you don't just manage your sales activity in your CRM, but also your marketing actions to generate qualified leads for your sales people. And this data must be an integral part of your analysis in order to identify areas for improvement and optimisation: conversion rate of leads from marketing, number of leads from marketing, etc. The point is to be able to compare all sales and marketing data in order to identify areas for improvement.

Let's not forget that the point of all this is to evolve your business model.

It cannot be repeated often enough: a business model is forged over time and through feedback. It will never be set in stone. Hence the importance of having a tool that centralises all your data and allows you to keep the history in order to compare and challenge the data between them. This is how you will gain in performance, and consequently, in turnover. 

Indicators not to be missed 

Well, obviously too many indicators kill indicators. The risk is to get lost in a lot of useless studies and not to get any relevant analysis. With Kestio, we have selected the indicators that you must - at least - follow if you want to produce relevant analyses. Of course, other indicators will be added depending on your environment and your organisation: 

• THE COST OF CUSTOMER ACQUISITION

This one is really a must-have!

The customer acquisition cost is the average amount spent to turn a prospect into a customer. This investment can include the marketing expenditure as well as the cost of the time spent by the sales person to convert the prospect into a customer.

Your business model is largely based on which customer segments to focus on to generate the most margin. But to do this, you need to take into account the cost of customer acquisition.

Indeed, if I realise that my "Gold" customers cost me almost as much money as they bring in (because I have a high acquisition cost), this may lead me to review certain elements of my business model: if at the same time, my "Silver" customers are certainly less interesting in terms of "pure" turnover, but cost me almost nothing in acquisition compared to what they bring in (thanks to a low acquisition cost), this finally makes them more interesting than expected...

What do I do? Clearly, there is a temptation to switch "Gold" clients to "Silver" and vice versa. 

Don't get me wrong, your "Gold" customers may have had a lower cost of acquisition when you set up your business model, but again, the environment changes and so do your costs... Hence the importance of analysing your model after a certain period of time and implementing the appropriate corrective actions. 

• COMMERCIAL EFFORT BY TARGET

This indicator allows you to optimise the time of your salespeople. Thanks to it, you can judge the effort of each salesperson on a type of target. You can also make a comparison between your salespeople, to see which one allocates its effort the best. This is not to "monitor" your salespeople. But it is interesting to know, for example, that salesperson A made an average of 10 physical appointments on a target while salesperson B made 15 for the same result. 

Beyond that, it allows you to identify targets on which your sales people are putting too much effort for little result and, conversely, on which you are not putting enough effort. This way, you can adjust your sales model accordingly (if necessary).

• THE COMMERCIAL TRANSFORMATION RATE

The conversion rate identifies the performance of a sales person or team in converting a prospect into a customer.

You can not only analyse the general transformation rate (i.e. of all your salespeople), but also the individual transformation rate (i.e. salesperson by salesperson). Once again, this is not to "spy" on your salespeople, but to identify the sources that are holding back development and thus implement appropriate actions. 

• AVERAGE BASKET BY ACCOUNT TYPE

The average basket definesthe average amount spent by each customer. This indicator can be monitored per order or for a given period of time, for the entire life of the customer. It can be used to identify which customer segment has the highest average shopping basket, for example, or conversely, which customer segment has the lowest average shopping basket. 

• THE NUMBER OF OPPORTUNITIES CREATED

The number of opportunities created is a simple indicator for monitoring the effectiveness of marketing and sales.

Indeed, a high number of opportunities created will reflect several things: 

• Marketing generates a lot of qualified leads
• And / or your sales people have opportunities on existing customers or via another channel than marketing (word of mouth, customer recommendations etc)

In short, your sales and marketing people are well aligned and doing a good job!

On the contrary, a low number of opportunities created will force you to analyse other indicators. In particular, where do the opportunities come from?

Do they come from marketing or from the sales people themselves?

You will then know on which channel you should act to generate more opportunities. 

Once again, this list is by no means exhaustive (we are thinking in particular of indicators linked to the margin!). These are "standard" indicators that any company can analyse to develop its business model. But there will obviously be other indicators to take into account depending on your internal strategy and your environment. 

This is the end of this joint series between Koban and Kestio... We hope you enjoyed it and especially that these articles helped you! In any case, on our side, we had a lot of fun combining our skills and visions in order to offer you a complete and operational methodology. 

And to get to the bottom of things, we have more surprises in store for you very soon, including a summary white paper and a webinar to discuss the subject with you and answer your questions live! 

To find out more about CRM and to help you in your projects, find all our methods and tools here: