Say you are a baseball coach. Your ultimate goal during every game is to win by scoring more runs than your opponent. However, those runs don’t simply appear on the scoreboard. They are your team's number of hits, walks, stolen bases, extra-base hits, and home runs. They are the culmination of all the granular steps of the process. As the coach, you can collect data on each of these metrics to determine where players need improvement and where they remain consistently optimized.
Over time, you are likely to see where the changes occur. Metrics that need improvement could increase, but optimized metrics could decrease. The point is, you can monitor these metrics and pivot based on the data.
When it comes to a sales team, selecting the right metrics—and the quantity and quality of the metrics—allows you to see in real time where a rep needs to improve performance. When sales leadership focuses on optimizing these metrics, runs are the guaranteed result.
So metrics are your granular steps, but where do those steps lead? The right selection of metrics can:
- Improve rep performance.
- Establish clear goals for individual reps.
- Provide leading indicators to achieve sales KPIs.
- Create data-driven, one-on-one coaching sessions.
Although every team is different and requires a different set of metrics, here is a tip: Keep it simple. Data can be overwhelming, and your team will need to learn how to read the dashboards, interpret metrics, and utilize the data to adjust their tactics.
So, keep the metrics simple to avoid data fatigue. To start, choose no more than five sales KPIs and one or two leading indicator metrics that demonstrate how your team will achieve those sales KPIs.