KPIs – You Get What You Inspect, It Isn’t Always What You Expect

We’re back for Part III of our series on KPIs that every sales leader should assess.

Before we launch into three more KPIs, we need to again establish why they are so important to track.

To illustrate this, perhaps it is easier to show what happens when they aren’t tracked. Failing to track KPIs is essentially like failing to weigh yourself when on a weight loss exercise regime. You see results (or lack thereof), but not specifics, making areas for improvement hard to identify.

Sales leaders want to ensure that hidden weaknesses aren’t getting in the way of their team producing the intended results. Let’s dive back into some KPIs that, if tracked, will prevent this from happening.

KPI #7: Content Usage

Content usage measures how much a piece of content is retrieved and shared with buyers, and how and when it was used during key points in the buying process of a sale. If sellers are not using content, then the time and money spent to create the content is wasted.

To eliminate this wastage, sales leaders should track which content their sellers are accessing, how frequently it is shared with buyers, and where in the sales cycle it is being used. From this data, a sales leader can identify wasted content creation costs and where in the buying process to maximize content usage.

KPI #8: Improving Lead Quality

A lead is only as beneficial as its quality. Improving lead quality helps sales reps turn more leads into customers. Understanding your target buyers and what their goals and needs are helps to define a high-quality lead.

To improve lead quality, Sales leaders should work with Marketing to create and fine-tune a lead score methodology based on the ideal buyer profile. They should then track and monitor leads closely, adjusting the methodology accordingly as leads convert or fall out of the buying process.

Once a lead is in the sales pipeline, a sales rep can assign it a score, helping them to identify and focus on quality leads, thus increasing sales.

KPI #9: Reducing Customer Churn Rates

Churn rate is the percentage of customers who stop doing business with an organization over a specific time period. For obvious reasons, it’s critical to minimize churn rate.

Churn can be an indication of customer dissatisfaction, product quality, unfavorable prices, better competitor offers, poor marketing, or simply the natural customer life cycle. By measuring and tracking the above items against the churn rate, sales leaders can identify areas of weakness that need to be improved in order to maximize renewal revenue.

As you can see, tracking the right KPIS in a sales team reveals a lot about the wider organization’s health. Step on the scales, measure these KPIs, and see your company’s excess weight fly off while its revenue skyrockets up!

In the meantime, we invite you to follow our LinkedIn Page for more insights and weekly tips.