Sales managers work hard to ensure that their sales teams are working hard. Thanks to new data, we can see exactly how effective they are at accomplishing this task.
Below we rank the Top 20 Marketing Metrics that can be used to track the performance of any sales team.
Average Order Value
One of the most important factors that contribute to a successful sales team is the average order value. The average order value measures the average revenue generated by a salesperson during a given period of time. It can be used to determine how much money a team is making per sale. The average order value is also important for marketing leaders who want to allocate salesperson’s performance to individual campaigns or offers.
As a general rule of thumb, the average order value should be above $100 for SMM marketers to consider the sale worthwhile. For performance marketing managers, this figure represents the minimum acceptable margin for a sale.
Average Revenue Per Transaction
Another critical benchmark for any sales team is the average revenue per transaction. This metric shows how effective the team is in generating revenue from each individual sale. The higher the average revenue per transaction, the more effective the team is at converting leads into paying customers. However, this figure is heavily influenced by the product or service being sold and the industry of the company.
For instance, companies in the tech industry typically have higher average sales per transaction than those in the insurance industry. What’s important is that regardless of industry or product, the average revenue per transaction should be above $20 for a sales team to be considered successful.
New Deals Vs. Follow-Up Orcs
Thanks to the power of social media and email marketing, we can now track the progress of a given deal from initial contact all the way to the close. So if you’re measuring the performance of your sales team, it’s important to look at both the number of New Deals and the number of Follow-Up Orcs.
The difference between a New Deal and a Follow-Up Orc is that a New Deal is a fresh contact made between a marketing or sales person, and a customer who has never dealt with the company before. A Follow-Up Orc is a contact made between marketing or salesperson, and a customer who has previously engaged with the company. New Deals typically represent the top of the funnel, while Follow-Up Orcs represent the bottom.
The number of New Deals and Follow-Up Orcs can be multiplied by 2 to 3 to obtain a rough estimate of the total number of sales that took place during a given period of time. What’s important is that the total number of sales represents the total amount of money the company has generated from existing and potential customers.
Average Age Of A Customer
The age of a customer is also important for marketers who want to track the lifetime value of an individual buyer. To determine the average age of a customer, simply take the Total Returns (i.e., refunds, cancellations, and exchanges) and divide it by the Total Orders (i.e., new customers and repeat customers).
For instance, if a company’s Total Orders are 100 and its Total Returns are 10, then the average age of a customer would be 10.
This metric will vary based on what stage a customer is in their lifecycle. Younger audiences tend to rely more on new products and services, while mature audiences are more interested in discounts and similar products/services. Knowing when your target audience is and how they interact with your company is critical for marketing team performance.
Average Time To Close A Deal
The time to close a deal is also important. Thanks to artificial intelligence and the ability to track information in real time, we can get an idea of how efficient a sales team is in converting leads into paying customers. For instance, if we compare the time it takes to close a deal between Amazon (a FAST Company) and Best Buy, we can see that Amazon closes deals more quickly than Best Buy, meaning that its salespeople are more effective in converting leads into paying customers. This metric can be a good indicator of how well a salesperson is doing or will do in the future based on the number of deals closed and the time it takes to close those deals.
This metric should be based on the strength of the product or service being sold and the industry of the company, as well as the performance of the individual or individuals within the sales department. For example, if a company’s product is unique and their salesperson is particularly good at closing deals, then this person will have an advantage over others in the same department within the same company.
Number Of Employees
The number of employees is also important for marketers who want to track the performance of a specific department/team. Simply take the total number of employees, and divide it by the number of orders to obtain the average employee per order value. This is similar to the average order value metric, but it takes into account the total number of employees within a given company. This makes it easier to ensure that team members are contributing to the overall success of the organization.
However, keep in mind that the average employee per order value can vary significantly from department to department. For instance, clinical research associates at medical device companies and pharmaceutical companies tend to be among the top-earning employees in the industry. Similarly, software engineers at cloud software companies and SaaS companies can easily make $200,000 per year.
Revenue Growth
Finally, we have revenue growth as a metric that can be used to measure the performance of a sales team. This metric indicates the absolute growth in sales compared to the previous year. When calculating this figure, take into account all sales activities (e.g., marketing, sales, and support) and then divide it by the number of days in the year. The ideal number is positive, but it’s not critical as long as the growth is significant enough to provide measurable results.
This metric is extremely useful for marketing leaders who want to track the performance of their individual marketing efforts. For example, if we look at the revenue growth of the Google Ads and Paid Search teams, we can see that Google Ads grew by 14% in 2019, compared to 4.5% for Paid Search. This means that the ads played a larger role in generating revenue for Google in the first half of the year compared to Paid Search. The key is to ensure that the revenue figures are accurate and that the data is reliable. A savvy marketer would not want to rely on inaccurate data when making critical decisions about their marketing strategy.
Thanks to the metrics listed above, we can easily track the performance of any sales team. If you’re interested in trying out some of the above metrics, check out the Excel dashboard Template that was designed to make calculating these figures easy. This is what marketing and sales leaders have been waiting for — a simple way to get all the data they need in one place.
Set Clear Goals And Expectations
When setting up a shop as a sales team, one of the most important things to consider is how you want the team to perform. Do you want them to be results-oriented and driven to close more sales or is more of a hands-off approach preferred?
This is important because how you answer this question will determine how you as a manager should go about structuring and motivating your team. A more hands-off approach may mean that you assign specific tasks to be performed by team members and then rely on their professional skill sets to carry them out.
You may prefer a more structured approach, where you lay out specific goals and metrics to be achieved by the team.
Decide Who’s Going To Be On The Team
One of the first things you need to do as a manager decides which members of your team are going to be responsible for which aspect of the sales process. This will depend on the structure of your company and the number of people you have in your sales department. When making this decision, take into account who is going to be most effective at what stage in the process and how much you need each person to contribute. You don’t want to overload any one person and have them carrying too many responsibilities. On the other hand, understaffing and underperforming teams can leave you open to errors and disasters that bring your entire operation to a screeching halt.
Set Up Your Sales Team
Once you have your team in place, it’s time to put the policies and procedures in place to make sure that they operate at the highest level of efficiency. To start, you can put in place some basic guidelines to keep things on track. For example, you may want to review how many hours the team spends on marketing-related activities with a view to creating more valuable content that will attract more leads.
You should also look into the types of personalities that will make up your team. Are you looking for an experienced sales person who can bring in the revenue or do you want to give a chance to someone who has never sold a product or service before but has an outgoing personality and can connect with potential customers?
Develop A Game Plan For Team Growth
Now that you have your team in place and working steadily, it’s time to develop a game plan for individual and collective growth. What do you intend to do to ensure that each team member performs at their peak and contributes as much value as possible to the organization?
First, you should look into the team’s engagement level. How much time do they spend working together? How much do they enjoy working with one another? Positive engagement levels indicate a high level of team cohesiveness, while low ones may mean that some unhealthy competition is taking place which could potentially harm the growth of the team as a whole. You can also ask members to identify areas in which they could improve and devise plans to address these issues. This way, you would be supporting each team member’s growth while also ensuring that the whole organization functions at its best.
Manage Your Team’s Performance
Once you have a good understanding of what your team is capable of, it’s time to monitor and analyze their performance. Simply put, you want to know how well each person on the team is doing and whether or not they are following through on what they’ve been assigned to do. You can also use tools such as click tracking to determine the effectiveness of different content and marketing campaigns. For example, did a blog post about the best time of the year to buy a vacation property draw enough clicks to drive the right audiences to your website?
Analyzing performance on a regular basis can help you identify areas for growth and development and also determine whether or not your team members are meeting the objectives you’ve set for them. If the metrics start to decline, it may be time for a morale boosting conversation or it could be a sign that some improvements need to be made.
Get The Right Equipment And Tech Tools
When working with a sales team, having the right equipment and tech tools is indispensable. Without them, you might as well be working in isolation. To start, make sure that each person in the team has a laptop, a desk, and a landline. Additionally, you can’t perform your job effectively if you don’t have decent headphones to listen to music while you work. Also, having a speaker system for presentations would be beneficial for all team members.
Benefits Of Using The Right Sales Team Management Tools
Flexible Working
One of the main reasons why so many people are embracing flexible working is the ability to control their working hours. Thanks to digital tools such as Skype for Business and Slack, it’s now possible to work remotely in collaboration with others. This collaboration creates a richer context for the work that is being done and allows for more flexibility when it comes to managing your working hours. Additionally, as technology becomes more integrated into our lives, the expectation for all professional occupations is becoming more flexible. According to a GAP® 2024 study, 89% of employers plan to increase or maintain the number of work-from-home or remote positions.
Improve Communication
Communication is essential to any successful team. Unfortunately, offices can be pretty isolating environments, and having a mix of remote workers and office-based employees creates more opportunities for miscommunication. Having a communication tool like Skype for Business which allows for real-time video messaging and file sharing is invaluable for any team. These tools not only allow for better communication between employees but also between employees and customers. To quote Cisco: “[A]ccess to high-quality communication tools is vital to allow for quick, efficient communication and collaboration.”
More Freedom
Working remotely allows for much more flexibility when it comes to your working day. It’s no secret that we live in a highly digital world, where most of our waking hours are spent online. This makes working remotely a very attractive option. You no longer need to set aside specific hours to work. Instead, you can take advantage of your idle time and work whenever you want. There are many potential benefits to this including better work-life balance, increased productivity, and more engagement.
Make Team Meetings More Effective
Meetings are an important part of any business. They help teams come up with innovative ideas, identify areas of improvement, and identify resources that are needed to get the job done. The main reason why meetings haven’t changed much in the last decade is that they have been largely carried out in person. Thanks to new technologies like Zoom, Skype for Business, and Slack, face-to-face meetings are no longer necessary and remote teams can enjoy the same benefits as in-person meetings.
Enables Effective Project Management
Project management is an important part of any business. It allows for the overall planning and organization of tasks so that they can be performed professionally and efficiently. Unfortunately, project management has mainly been carried out using spreadsheets and email. Thanks to modern project management tools like Trello and Microsoft® Project, it is now possible to plan tasks using a digital whiteboard approach. These tools make it much easier to manage and organize responsibilities, resources, and deliverables. Additionally, these tools allow for real-time collaboration between team members, customers, and stakeholders.
Higher Productivity
Productivity can be increased through a number of means including flexible working and remote working. Working remotely allows for higher productivity since there are fewer distractions, fewer physical boundaries, and more freedom when it comes to working hours. Additionally, remote workers can use more efficient communication tools to stay in touch with customers, collaborate with colleagues, and manage their tasks. There is also evidence that suggests that people who work remotely are more productive than those who work in an office environment.
Reduced Overhead
Overhead is the general cost of running a business. This includes everything from the cost of rent to the cost of power. Thanks to new technologies and the flexibility that they provide, it is now possible to reduce a business’ overhead, especially the cost of rent. Many businesses including Starbucks, Google, and Facebook, have adjusted their physical spaces to enable them to work more efficiently. This has enabled them to reduce the cost of rent and increase their productivity.
Improved Customer Experience
The front-line of any business is its customers. Thanks to new technologies like Skype for Business, teams who work remotely can provide higher quality customer experience. These technologies give customers the option of choosing where they want to engage with the business, what device they want to use, and allow for more convenience. Customers can choose to chat with a live person or send a message to one of the available assistants. This assistant can then engage with the customer, help them find what they’re looking for, and follow up on any issues.
As a business owner, it’s important to understand what benefits your employees experience in their daily lives. By adopting and enabling flexible working, you can increase their engagement, and productivity, and ultimately, bring about enhanced value for your business.
Top Sales Team Management Tools
Organizations that are focused on delivering quality products and exceptional customer experiences should work hard to identify the best tools that can help them achieve these goals. This article will list some of the top sales team management tools available today.
Insightly / Hubspot
Insightly is an enterprise-grade lead management platform that enables you to get a full 360-degree view of your sales and marketing activity, including performance, pipeline, and activities across social media platforms (such as LinkedIn and Twitter).
The tool can be used to track all the activities of your sales team, such as pipeline, leads, opportunities, and forecasts. You can review these numbers and metrics in a clear, easy-to-understand format, which helps you identify areas for improvement. You can set up individual dashboards to track the performance of your team members, and set goals and KPIs to ensure the whole team is aligned around the same metrics.
Insightly is integrated with a number of the world’s most popular platforms, including Google Apps, Slack, Trello, Mailchimp, and many more. You can set up automated email notifications when a new lead, opportunity, or case is opened or updated on one of your accounts.
Salesforce
Salesforce is the #1 CRM (customer relationship management) software platform used worldwide, with over 17 million licenses sold. It is built on a powerful, open source technology that can be accessed via a web browser or a mobile app. With Salesforce, you can create custom dashboards to easily monitor key performance indicators (such as pipeline, deals, and wins), and identify bottlenecks, time wasters, and inefficient processes.
The platform can be accessed from any device, as long as you have an internet connection. All the data is stored in the cloud, so there is no need to maintain a local database. This aspect makes it ideal for mobile users who need to access the information anywhere and anytime. Additionally, the speed with which you can retrieve data from Salesforce is extremely quick.
It is widely accepted that using a CRM (customer relationship management) software can greatly enhance your sales performance. According to HubSpot Blogs research, 68% of respondents said that using a CRM tool helped them close more deals and grow their business. In an industry that is highly competitive, the ability to retain valuable customer data, and access it from any device at any time, is a game-changer.
Mad Hippie / Jeeva
Mad Hippie is the CRM solution for music professionals. It is designed to help them get organized and keep track of their upcoming gigs, manage their albums, and follow-up with fans through social media. The platform also provides tools to keep their clients happy by resolving problems and handling requests.
Mad Hippie was created by music professionals for music professionals, and was designed to make their lives easier. The product is extremely user-friendly, with clean, simple interfaces that are easy to navigate. Clients can log in and view deals, activities, and much more, all from one place.
Jeeva is an enterprise-level CRM solution designed for medium-to-large businesses. The product enables organizations to gain 360-degree visibility into their customer relationships, and gain actionable insights into customer behavior, driving the direction of their business.
Accessing Jeeva can be done through a simple, easy-to-use dashboard. With this tool, businesses can keep track of key performance indicators, such as pipeline, deals, conversions, and cancellations. They can also use the platform to follow up with customers via phone calls and emails, and monitor the status of these communications.
Jeeva is also integrated with various tools that can be used for marketing, such as Google Analytics and Mailchimp, so you can track the effectiveness of campaigns and communicate with your audience via various platforms.
Xpand / Pipedrive
Xpand is a collaboration tool that makes it easy for businesses to work and thrive. It was co-founded by two brothers, Eric and Jared Yastrak, who wanted to build a product that could make the process of working more fun and less stressful. The product is designed to be accessible to all users, regardless of their technical knowledge, and makes complex tasks easy to accomplish. It was built so that even non-techy business owners can understand and use it easily.
Pipedrive is an online productivity platform that enables users to organize and manage their tasks, projects, and deliveries, as well as those of their collaborators. It was co-founded by brothers Eric and Jared Yastrak (from Xpand) and Duncan Mathieson, who previously co-founded Avada, an enterprise-level Web design and development platform. Like Xpand, Pipedrive is also accessible to non-techy users and makes creating and sharing tasks simple and intuitive.
The Yastrak brothers both worked for Box, before launching their own products. They started their businesses with the aim to simplify complex processes and make work more enjoyable. By creating separate products designed for different purposes, they provide a one-stop shop for users to find the right tool for their needs.
Zoho Sales
Zoho Sales is a CRM solution that provides businesses with the tools they need to effectively manage and grow their sales. This product is ideal for sales teams seeking an all-in-one tool that is simple to use and has all the necessary features. Zoho Sales can be used to track all the activities of your sales team, including leads, opportunities, pipeline, and deals. You can review these numbers and metrics in a clear, easy-to-understand format, which helps you identify areas for improvement.
It can be used to efficiently follow up with customers via email, and gain insight into customer behavior, driving the direction of your business.”
The product is designed to be simple for non-technical users to understand and use, and makes creating and communicating with customers fun and easy. The application also enables users to setup automated email responses to common questions, as well as schedule emails to be sent at certain times.
Zoho Sales integrates with various platforms and tools, such as Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and Freshbooks, so you can track the effectiveness of campaigns and communicate with your audience via multiple channels.
HubSpot
HubSpot is an enterprise-grade lead management platform that enables you to get a full 360-degree view of your sales and marketing activity, including performance, pipeline, and activities across social media platforms (such as LinkedIn and Twitter).
The HubSpot platform can be used to track all the activities of your sales team, such as pipeline, leads, opportunities, and forecasts. You can review these numbers and metrics in a clear, easy-to-understand format, which helps you identify areas for improvement. You can set up individual dashboards to track the performance of your team members, and set goals and KPIs to ensure the whole team is aligned around the same metrics.
HubSpot is built on a powerful, open source technology that can be accessed via a web browser or a mobile app. With HubSpot, you can create custom dashboards to easily monitor key performance indicators (such as pipeline, deals, and wins), and identify bottlenecks, time wasters, and inefficient processes.
It is widely accepted that using a CRM (customer relationship management) software can greatly enhance your sales performance. According to HubSpot Blogs research, 68% of respondents said that using a CRM tool helped them close more deals and grow their business. In an industry that is highly competitive, the ability to retain valuable customer data, and access it from any device at any time, is a game-changer.
Insightly is ideal for small businesses seeking a simple yet powerful tool to track leads, opportunities, and customers. Mad Hippie and Jeeva are also good choices for creative professionals, sales professionals, and business owners who need a tool to efficiently follow up with customers.
Organizations that are focused on delivering quality products and exceptional customer experiences should work hard to identify the best tools that can help them achieve these goals. This article will list some of the top sales team management tools available today.
