Choosing and tracking the right KPIs for each member of your team is important — focus on the wrong ones and you could be leaving money in potential sales on the table, but align your team with the right ones and you can unlock their maximum productivity. The key is to pick KPIs that are relevant to both your industry and your business goals.
To save you from banging your head against the desk (please don’t do this), here are 14 KPIs you can use to not only to keep your people on track, but to help them get better at selling every day:
1. Individual Sales Numbers by Store
An obvious choice, this list wouldn’t be complete without it. Knowing how much each team member is selling by store is important to know how they compare to the others. This is also an easy metric to create some healthy competition between reps.
2. Rate of New Contacts
If you want to make sure your people are contributing to your business growth in their territory, this metric is key. The contact rate will tell you which individuals are meeting their quota, and what percentage of your team are meeting their quota. If the contact rate for most of your reps is low, there might be a problem with your goals or some reps may be spending more time than necessary chatting with existing customers.
3. Number of New Opportunities Opened
When you see an increase in new opportunities, this is a telltale sign that individuals are contributing to a healthy team. Landing new opportunities puts your product in front of more people and boosts market saturation.
4. Opportunity to Win Ratio
Your reps are visiting prospects, but how many reps are turning prospect visits into new clients? If this number looks a little sad, you might have some reps that are great at getting a foot in the door but could need a hand with closing deals. By looking at these details by individual, you’ll be able to quickly tell who’s killing it and smashing their goals and who might be falling behind.
5. Average Deal Size
When it comes to the deal, size matters when you compare the average of closed won deals by rep. You want to make sure your people are skilled at managing their time efficiently, and this could highlight reps that are closing deals that aren’t really worth pursuing. You may also learn that some folks are deliberately going after small accounts because they find them quick to close instead of pursuing a larger, more complicated opportunity.
6. Event Rates
This metric will detail how many calls, appointments or tastings your rep scheduled. From here, you can track which events are the most successful by rep and shift your focus based on what’s working.
7. Rejection and Churn Codes
Track the reasons your reps’ accounts are walking away so you can keep an eye out for any trends and focus on areas where you see the same codes pop up repeatedly.
8. Engagement With Current Customers
Relationships are king, and growing them with existing clients is important for building trust and for your long-term success. When your people are regularly in touch with their clients, they’ll be more likely to share their concerns, always knowing they have someone in their corner supporting their company needs.
To track this, ask your reps to track the number of interactions they have with each customer, then you can compare each interaction with the average length of a customer relationship to check their effectiveness.
9. Number of Additional Placements and SKUs Secured
Reps are likely doing a great job upselling current accounts if they’re landing additional sales with current customers.
10. Which Marketing Materials Your Reps Use
How much of your company marketing materials go untouched? Track which materials your people reference during site visits to find out which ones are resonating with reps and clients. This could clue you in on some opportunities for educating your sales reps, and focusing on materials that have the highest effect on close rate.
Advanced KPIs For Improved Individual Performance
Now you can feel confident about the individual KPIs you're tracking. Here’s a peek at some uncommon ones that might be able to help you meet your bigger goals.
(If you want to go even deeper with creating / modifying your own KPIs, check out this post for the seven most important characteristics of effective KPIs).
11. Follow-Up Contact Rate
Persistence pays. How many of your people follow-up with leads once, twice, or 18 times? Since getting a “yes” on the spot isn’t all that common, most sales close in a follow-up conversation. Dig into how often each rep is contacting a lead over time. You’ll want to see lots of interactions after the initial contact.
12. Activity Goals vs. Activity Results
This metric identifies how individuals are performing over a period of time compared to their activity goals. This could give you insight into how attainable or aggressive your monthly or yearly goals were. You can also use this data to clue you into when some reps might need additional training or coaching to help them reach more of their goals.
13. Employee Satisfaction
Sales jobs can be taxing, so you want to check in and see how your people are feeling. One of your biggest challenges with a remote team is keeping reps motivated. This can be tricky if they feel disconnected from the team and from you. Gather their feedback regularly and address any concerns immediately. Happy people mean healthy businesses.
14. Social Media Activity
While difficult to measure, when reps are active on professional social media sites like LinkedIn, they can easily stay top of mind with their current clients. Having a polished social media presence can help reps attract new business in the form of introductions through their network and sharing and engaging in conversations online that their connections would find interesting.
How to Put These KPIs Into Action
While you might be tempted to change your KPIs as your business goals change, try to resist it. The real value is in the data you get from tracking a core set of KPIs over time. Sometimes it makes more sense to add a KPI or join two together, than to scrap it and start over with a new one. And, while keeping an eye on each team member's individual performance is important, make sure you don't lose sight of how your team is performing overall. For a list of 16 team-focused KPIs, check out our blog post here.
If you have a sales rep that isn’t hitting their KPIs, you need to address it head-on. Approaching these conversations can be hard, and let’s face it — awkward. To make it a little easier for you, here are 14 scripts you can use right away. Cut and paste them into your email or pick up the phone with these to guide you. Get your hands on them here.
