Manage Metrics to Grow Your Business

Sales can sometimes be seen as a game of intuition and instinct. And there’s certainly room for those qualities in a successful sales team. But if you’re relying only on qualifications and you do not manage metrics to grow your business, you could be missing out on some exciting opportunities.

Today, we’ll talk about providing a framework to effectively use metrics to grow your business and spend your time more productively.

Focus on Metrics You Can Manage

Can you manage your revenue numbers? The answer, unfortunately, is no.

No matter how thoughtful your goals are, or how well you’ve trained and motivated your sales team, you can’t actually manage this number. There are too many external factors that influence revenue.

Instead, you need to think of managing metrics you can control – like the activities that help you succeed.

Let’s look at the three main areas of your overall sales framework.

Results

For your business results, metrics have value in reporting. Just think of numbers like revenue, margin, market share, and quota achievement. These are outcomes of multiple objectives, and you really can’t manage them.

Objectives

For your sales objectives, metrics have value in diagnostics and planning. You can look at your current numbers and project future goals. These can help predict for goals the number of new customers, deal size, up-selling or cross-selling, your pipeline size, and your territory coverage. However, the management of preceding activities is what influences these objectives.

Activities

For your sales activities, metrics have value in managing things like:

• calls
• meetings
• discoveries
• demos
• proposals
• networking events

These are the jackpot – they are salesperson and manager activities that we can proactively manage and direct. Doing these things right leads to achievement of your sales objectives, which in turn leads to achievement of your business results.

And this means these activities need to occur from the bottom up. As such, you would start with the areas you have the most control over, which are your sales activities.

Managing Metrics for Sales Success

The most critical thing to focus on when accelerating your sales through this process is making sure your salespeople are clear on the tasks ahead of them. According to the Harvard Business Review, clarity of task has the greatest impact on salesperson motivation. It’s because people want to know what is expected of them and how they’re performing against those expectations.

That means you should focus on the sales activities that reps can actually control. And then teach them how to use metrics to get more immediate feedback about their progress. Hence, it’s important to clearly explain the outcomes and results desired, and why they’re vital for the success of the business.

With regular feedback and sales coaching, reps will understand exactly what to expect and will have the motivation to perform at their best.