Sales Tips: Only Focus on The Sales Metrics You Can Control

Any business should have one metric to consider as the most critical measure.

In the sales industry, if you want to put more effort into reaching more customers, understanding their needs, and find the right solution, you turn to your data to find the needed information. That’s why a metric is essential.

Sales metrics are considered as a method to gather insights from sales data, trends, and metrics to set goals and predict future sales performance. It is an excellent tool for management as through metrics; you can increase performance, optimize sales activities, and improve accountability.

Metrics outline the goals to reach. It provides you with a clear picture of what you want to achieve while you find the proper steps to take to reach your goals. You will also see which issues to pinpoint on and handle the situation before it’s too late.

Whether you hit your mark or not is also identified with metrics. Data is the best way to see the results of not only your hard work but also the hard work of your team, department, and company as a whole. Metrics show you that your hard work is paying off, allowing you to celebrate your success and improve your team’s morale.

While metrics allow you to celebrate your wins, it also shows you which areas you need to work on. With metrics, you’ll know where to focus your energy for better results.

In this day and age, technology has provided us with the latest tools to measure everything. Data gathering has never been easy yet challenging at the same time. Since finding more ways to gather data, there has been nearly endless lists of data points, reports, and metrics that it has become overwhelming.

In fact, a study revealed over 306 metrics are being considered by the sales leadership to be the key to effective sales management.

With this many metrics to consider, you might be wondering if you have to analyse your performance with all of those sales metrics. Although all gathered data are considered to be important, there are only some you need to keep track of.  You don’t have to focus on them all since not every single one should be needed.

The sales metrics can be broken down into three levels of categories with different levels of manageability: Business Results, Sales Activities, and Sales Objectives.

Business results are the lagging indicators such as revenue, profit margin, and customer satisfaction. It shows the results of your sales force’s past actions. Sales Objectives are the specific targets set for your team. Meanwhile, sales activities are the everyday tasks done by the sales team.

In fact, a study showed that 83% of the sales metrics that leaders use are not manageable. Meaning that these metrics do not have direct control over those numbers despite the actions of the sales team without third-party interference.

So which sales metric you should focus on to make the proper steps for your business goals?

This infographic from KONA give you in detail some tips on determining which sales metrics to focus on.