The characteristics and advantages of sales performance indicators
Sales performance is an essential aspect of an overall strategy to ensure the sustainability of a company. It is its ability to generate maximum turnover from the human, financial and material resources available to it. To measure sales performance, it is necessary to use key performance indicators (KPIs): metrics that determine the profitability of a sales action in relation to a target, over a given period (increase in turnover, increase in sales volume, rate of return, bounce rate, etc.).
Why measure your sales performance?
In general, commercial performance is linked to the overall performance of a company. It helps identify the growth levers that work and establish an effective action plan to strengthen them. Commercial performance is also a reliable measurement indicator to determine the weaknesses of a company and allow finding solutions or anticipating the different problems that may arise.
How to measure a company's sales performance?
To analyze a company's sales performance, it's necessary to use the right tools to track key performance indicators, including a sales dashboard or CRM software.
The structured interface of a performance dashboard allows you to clearly visualize the sales indicators that you decide to track. Thanks to this type of tool, you can also identify your company's trends, communicate the right data to your sales teams, and use it to help you make the right decisions for your marketing and sales strategy.
CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software allows you to easily and effectively analyze and track the progress of sales performance indicators. Using this type of tool centralizes all data related to customer profiles, sales appointments, and the sales pipeline to facilitate their analysis and communication around these different success indicators.
What are the main sales performance indicators?
Sales performance indicators are used to evaluate the numerical aspect of a company (increase in turnover, conversion rates, etc.) but also its qualitative aspect (customer loyalty, etc.).
These types of measurement indicators are generally concrete figures based on the performance of your company's sales representatives. They can be tracked monthly or annually and allow you to evaluate the productivity level of your teams.
Quantitative performance indicators
Here are the most important quantitative sales performance indicators to track:
- the number of telephone calls made as part of prospecting;
- the number of qualified leads;
- the number of visitors to your website;
- the total number of appointments made;
- the recorded sales volume;
- the length of the sales cycle (long or short);
- the number of sales in progress and the number of sales lost;
- the number of new clients signed;
- the average sales basket;
- the number of abandoned shopping carts;
- The revenue generated.
Qualitative performance indicators
Because the quantitative results of commercial performance do not only depend on the commercial teams, it is important to also take into consideration the qualitative criteria to evaluate the overall skills of your sales representatives.
Here are the most important qualitative sales performance indicators to track:
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- the qualification level of the prospecting file;
- The real causes involved in the loss of opportunities
- the level of customer satisfaction (thanks to CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software);
- the number of complaints to customer service;
- The objections raised by customers and the quality of the responses provided.
To further define, optimize, and analyze your digital sales and marketing strategy, you can also determine KPIs in the form of rates.
Sales performance indicators in the form of rates
Among the most relevant, we recommend you follow:
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- Appointment booking rate: this is the number of sales appointments concluded from the prospecting carried out by your teams. This sales performance indicator helps analyze the skills of your sales representatives in transforming an encounter into a presentation appointment;
- Conversion rate: this concerns the volume of appointments that led to a sale. This KPI is notably used to evaluate the skills of your sales representatives in terms of negotiation;
- Customer retention rate: this is the number of recurring customers from year to year. It allows you to evaluate customer loyalty;
- Attrition rate: this KPI is used to evaluate the number of customers who, on the contrary, did not reorder this year. It helps identify potential problems in lead nurturing;
- Open rate: this allows you to measure the impact of your e-mailing campaigns on your target audience. It concerns the percentage of people who opened your email after receiving it;
How to choose your indicators?
To choose your sales performance indicators wisely, we recommend that you first consider your objectives. A sales KPI must be linked to a SMART objective that has been previously determined and is beneficial for the company. It is therefore necessary to use KPIs that will be useful to your company's growth when you analyze them.
Be precise and choose the key performance indicators that will resonate most with your sales teams and align with your sales strategy and action plan. Choose no more than 10 to avoid getting lost in the results. Use the right tools (CRM software, management dashboards) to effectively track KPIs without getting lost.
Finally, select the key indicators based on your company, its needs, and its expectations. The analysis of KPIs should be carried out logically, based on the size of your company and your expectations.
Want to get more information about sales performance indicators?
Do not hesitate to contact us. We would be delighted to help you choose them to boost the performance of your sales strategy!