Guest post by Emma James
To stay relevant in the market today, organizations must make data-driven decisions. Many businesses are switching to customer relationship management software as they offer complete sales, marketing, support, and help desk modules in a single platform. This means all the data from various teams are stored in a centralized CRM software database. So, this will increase the volume and accuracy of metrics and enables you to take proper data-based decisions.
What Are the Major Sales Metrics to Analyze and Evaluate?
Good CRM software monitors many sales metrics. But many additional metrics and KPIs need to be monitored as well such as social media websites. So, here we present key sales metrics that the sales department must embrace today for organizational growth and drive sales.
a) Lost Opportunities in CRM
It becomes easier for sales representatives to track and assess the number of lost opportunities and the ratio of created opportunities to lost opportunities. When your sales team representatives are generating more number of new opportunities but eventually are losing most of them, then you need to find the reason behind it.
This becomes very easy to monitor when you are using the best CRM software. Many CRM solutions offer customizable dashboards, through which, managers and sales representatives can check in daily and receive the complete visibility they require.
So, when a sales representative is losing a greater number of opportunities, managers should leverage reporting features in good CRM software to understand the reasons that are causing it. Call recording features can also be used in order to record calls made out to the clients by representatives so managers can recognize their weak points and guide them accordingly.
b) Overall Sales Count per Month
Every sales department monitors the overall sales count every month as it is a critical sales metric in the digital age. The top customer relationship management software offers CRM reporting tools that help you to view how each sales representative is performing.
After evaluating, if you find that your overall monthly sales are dropping, you can simply look into the data and know the reasons behind it. After recognizing the cause of the fall, you can utilize the available data and help your sales representatives in order to get them back on track.
c) Monitor Conversion Rates
Usually, marketing qualified leads have shown a higher tendency to purchase products and are more ready to talk to sales. So, once the marked qualified leads are passed to the sales team, do they get converted into a client?
Conversion rates can be measured by taking the number of converted leads divided by the total number of qualified leads.
When you find conversion rates are too low, a probable cause can be that your marketing department is ready to qualify leads too early. The other cause can be the sales representatives are not efficient enough to close deals. You can figure that out through CRM data and sales reporting features provided by CRM software.
d) Sales Funnel
Modern sales departments can easily track data and sales metrics in customer relationship management solutions automatically. By simply checking the dashboard, you can view the total number of leads every sales representative has in their sales funnel. Through this complete visibility, managers can take a look at which sales representatives are pushing leads and turning them into customers. Also, managers can track which sales representatives are facing challenges moving leads through the sales funnel.
Such granular insight enables your sales managers to focus on that particular stage where there is a bottleneck and to fix the problem so that leads flow smoothly through the sales funnel again.
e) Social Selling is Important
Today, social selling has gained a lot of importance in order to build strong relationships with the customer. For this, you need to go beyond LinkedIn profiles and track each and every social platform that you are using. By providing some useful content on social media issues can be resolved and you offer visibility into relevant topics instead of selling the product directly.
You can easily track your prospects on social media by evaluating and monitoring these below metrics.
- The number of likes per post.
- The total number of comments your posts receive and the number of comments each post you share.
- Post engagement and number of shares.
So, when you are engaging prospects efficiently on social media, these metrics should keep on improving.
f) Expertise in Selling Products and Services
Sales representatives must have thorough knowledge about the products and services they are selling. They need to understand every prospect and do their homework properly before reaching out to the customers and explain about the products that can meet client requirements.
According to SAP, a survey shows that more than 45% of executives state that their major frustration with suppliers is that salespeople lack proper knowledge on the subject matter about the requirements of the prospect. Sales representatives must have knowledge of the product so they can answer any question no matter how difficult it is.
Product features get added constantly, so intensive training on every product and service can be very helpful for representatives. Evaluation tests after training course can be useful to view how much information they have actually learned.
g) Lost Customers
The major objective of salespeople is to close more deals as quickly as possible. For this reason, many sales representatives may over-promise about a product they want to sell by mentioning the advantages or features that the product actually does not have. So, salespeople tend to close more deals, make money, but leave their client with some unrealistic expectation on the product they are paying.
As soon as the customer comes to realize the truth, they leave you and go for a competitor. When a salesperson is closing deals but at the same time a high number of clients are leaving your company, it is the right time to investigate the matter.
It is better for salespeople to be sincere and honest while selling their products and services. Over promising clients about a new product can leave a bad impression about the salespeople as they may lose their clients for a lifetime.
h) Competitor Pricing
It is important for business owners to monitor each and every move of their competitor and stays aware of competitor pricing details. When your prices do not differ then you can create a price-matching strategy in order to guarantee your clients the cheapest price.
By monitoring the average retail price of the products and services, it is easier for you to calculate the right sales strategy.
i) Engaging Customers
Building a strong rapport with clients is crucial to ensure a long-term business. Keeping contact with customers on a daily basis gives a clear idea of how things are running. When sales representatives are always available and ready to help, the client knows very well that they have somebody to support their business requirements.
This is not only good for your business outlook but keeping contact with customers also supports business strategic goals too. Sales representatives can keep track of each and every customer interactions and compare the total number of touches with the average length of the customer relationship.
To Sum Up
Today’s sales departments use data to make more strategic decisions to help businesses flourish which can be done by monitoring KPIs and sales metrics continuously. Measuring metrics appropriately can fix issues whenever they occur. Implementing an automated CRM software like SutiCRM for monitoring, measuring, and assessing KPI’s and sales metrics makes it easier for your sales team to win more deals, enhance productivity, and speed up the revenue process.
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Emma James
Emma James is a freelance content writer at SutiCRM, who frequently blogs on Business, Marketing, Sales, ERP and SaaS trends.
