The Essential SaaS Sales Metrics

More than any other department, sales relies on tracking and measuring. Metrics are the heartbeat of a high performing sales team. You may start with just the basic reporting available in your CRM, but to scale and to improve your team you will need specialized reporting as well. Your CRM will give you data on the sales cycle, lead age, win percentages in each stage, by rep, etc. However, it will also be important to track other data such as dials to connects, connects to appointments, etc.

The most essential sales data to track.

From a management perspective, keep an eye on these metrics every day, but also set aside time to do meaningful deep dives into available data to consider trends, implications, strategies for improvement, etc. A monthly cadence to review metrics in more detail is a good place to start.

• Dials, connects, appointments set

  • This week, this month

  • Aggregate and by rep

• Wins

  • This week, this month, this quarter, this year

    • Goal to actual

    • Aggregate and by rep

• Total booked contract value

  • This week, this month, this quarter, this year

    • Goal to actual

    • Aggregate and by rep

  • Average contract value

    • Aggregate and by rep

• New opportunities opened

  • This week, this month, this quarter

    • Aggregate and by rep

• Sales cycle

  • Aggregate and by rep

  • Days in stages

    • Trends over time

• Win rate

  • Aggregate and by rep

• Closed lost reasons

  • In aggregate and by rep

• Year over year/quarter over quarter results for all of the above (depending upon new your company is this data may be limited)

From this data, you will also probably need to prepare sales reports to your board, CEO, and other executive leadership. Ideally, the information can be pushed to them automatically via dashboards, but many companies still prepare a monthly presentation that includes snapshot data, challenges, wins, key initiatives, context on results, etc.

Sales dashboards for transparency and accountability.

For transparency, and to create a culture of accountability, create a dashboard that is always visible to your team. This also helps foster friendly competition.

What’s displayed on your dashboard will be based on your culture and what’s important to you. If your team works in the same office, use a large whiteboard in the center of the sales floor to display these metrics (update them daily), or a large TV screen to show them in real-time. If your team is remote or distributed, consider sales tech that pushes this data to your entire team, or is available within one click on a sales platform. Here are some things to keep on the team dashboard:

• This week:

  • # of new appointments

    • Actual & goal

    • Aggregate and by rep

  • # of new opportunities

    • Actual & goal

    • Aggregate and by rep

  • Tracking spiffs you are running (by rep)

• This month:

  • # of new customer wins

    • Actual & goal

    • Aggregate and by rep

  • Total contract value

    • Actual & goal

    • Aggregate and by rep

  • Tracking spiffs you are running (by rep)

• This quarter:

  • # of new customer wins

    • Actual & goal

    • Aggregate and by rep

  • Total contract value

    • Actual & goal

    • Aggregate and by rep

  • Tracking spiffs you are running (by rep)

Carefully consider what is on your dashboard—you want it to be the most important data. Everything on the dashboard should be there for a reason.

There are great tools available to bring this data together for you in visual, real-time reports that can be summarized for executive reports and displayed in real-time for team transparency.

Emphasis on metrics helps shape your culture and is an important part of any sales team.