Pay Attention to the Numbers: Using Metrics to Improve Sales Results

In any economic environment, the companies most likely to thrive are those that take time to scrutinize their strategic sales management plans.

These success-oriented organizations review everything from their forecasts to their pipelines, looking hard at important numbers such as cost of sales, percentage of market share, salesperson effectiveness ratios, and customer lifetime value. However, they’re not just examining the numbers; they’re also looking for ways to improve results based upon their chosen metrics.

We often see companies struggling because they lack such blueprints. Effective plans require combining an organization's goals and individual salespeople's business plans with a set of metrics designed to gauge everyone's progress in meeting those objectives.

The following are what we believe are the fundamental metrics that companies should include in "dashboards" for measuring their sales teams' effectiveness: