As we set up Salesforce CRM systems for our clients here in Dubai, it’s common to see our customers struggle with moving from their old position of having little information on sales and sales activity, to have so much data that they don’t understand how to make use of it. 

Here are ten key metrics that should be the starting point for most organisations. If you can get to grips with these reports, you can then add more metrics that are specific to your company or sales challenges. These reports can easily be created in your Salesforce CRM. 

Lead Generation

• Lead Volumes: How many inbound leads are being created per month? Your sales team needs to have a steady stream of new leads each month to enable them to create new sales opportunities. 

• Lead Conversion: Of the leads created, how many of them are converting to genuine sales opportunities? There is little point in creating high volumes of low-quality leads, this is expensive in terms of cost and time. 

• Lead Source: What marketing activities are creating the new leads? If you are using PPC campaigns or using events to create new business, you should be capturing where each lead originates from and then tracking this through to see if these convert into a sale. 

• Lead Time to Follow Up: How long does it take from the moment a new lead is created to the salesperson following up? If this is more than one day, then there’s a good chance that you’ve already lost the deal, your competitor will have already set up a call or meeting and you’re now at the back of the queue. 

Pipeline Management

• New Opportunities per Month: Track how many new Opportunities are created per month per salesperson. This metric isn’t concerned by the value of the opportunity, it’s focused on the volumes of net-new Opportunities that are entering the top of your sales funnel each month. 

• Quarterly leaderboard to see in real-time who is top of the table. Consider also having league tables for other sales metrics that you may focus on each month such as the number of sales meetings, the number of referrals achieved or successful cross-sell. Using the leaderboard in conjunction with incentives is a great way to get the sales team to focus on particular outcomes that you want to achieve

Sales Activity

• The number of sales meetings per month. Track the number of meetings each salesperson completes per month. 

  • Many of our clients customise Salesforce to categorise meetings into specific values such as Intro Meeting, Pitch Meeting, Negotiation Meeting, Technical Presentation, etc. This additional layer of detail enables you as a sales manager to focus on a particular outcome that you want to achieve. For example, you may want to get your sales team to significantly increase the number of new clients (rather than driving sales from your existing client base), and this can be measured by tracking the number of ‘Intro’ or ‘Technical Presentation’ Meetings. 

• The number of new Accounts and Contacts added to the CRM per month. Track how many new companies are being engaged by each salesperson per month. Many companies rely too heavily on existing customers for revenue, neglecting the need for bringing in new clients on a regular basis

• Time to close. Track how long it takes each Opportunity close, and specifically how long each deal stays in a particular sales stage. When deals are ‘stuck’ in a particular stage, develop actions in the sales/marketing playbook to proactively move the deal forward.

• Key Account contact communication cadence. Key target accounts should be managed on a hands-on basis by the salesperson or account manager. Use the Salesforce dashboard to track how regularly these target accounts are being contacted and engaged.