11 best Sales analytics metrics your organization should be tracking!

Few teams within an organization are as data-driven as your sales team. Each and every activity is measurable, and your challenge is often knowing what to track. With the proliferation of sales software tools like Salesforce, Pipedrive, and Hubspot, you now have more data at your disposal than ever before.

The question is, do you have more control over your sales performance than before?

In this post, we’ll help you unlock the power of your sales metrics using sales analytics. Read on to empower you team.

What is sales analytics?

Sales analytics is the practice of generating insights from sales data, trends, and metrics to set targets and forecast future sales performance. The best practice for sales analytics is to closely tie all activities to determine revenue outcomes and set objectives for your sales team.

Analysis should focus on improvement and developing a strategy for improving your sales performance in both the short- and long-term. A common example of a sales analytics activity is setting role-specific objectives for your team in the form of KPIs or metrics. For instance, setting a revenue target for your sales director while setting a sales productivity goal for your account management team.

Why monitor sales analytics?

If your business was a rock band, sales would be the lead singer. All eyes are on sales and revenue performance, and a strong (or weak) performance can become a potent rallying force for your entire team.

Monitoring sales analytics in the form of sales metrics helps increase your performance, optimize sales activities, and improve accountability. Your sales team has a wide range of activities to focus on and operate in a fast-paced environment. A well-defined sales analytics strategy provides your team with focus and clarity so they can concentrate on doing what they do best.

Sales leaderboards

Another positive way to increase transparency and accountability for your sales analytics process is to display a sales leaderboard. A leaderboard can be displayed on a TV and used to track revenue performance against a time-bound target. For example, tracking your team’s performance towards a monthly revenue objective.

12 examples of sales analytics metrics to monitor

When implementing sales analytics at your organization, you will want to start by taking stock of your sales metrics. Think about which metrics will inspire action and provide your team with focus.

If you’re just learning about sales analytics, then you may find it helpful to review a few examples. Here are 12 sales analytics metrics you may consider tracking.

1. Sales Growth

Sales analysis revolves around your ability to grow revenue. A small blip in your trend line will do more than furrow brows, it’ll have your team digging through the data for definitive answers.

2. Sales Target

This KPI tracks current performance against a business objective. Sales may be represented as revenue, number of accounts, units sold, or any other measure that is relevant for your team.

3. Opportunities

In a perfect world, you’d be able to prioritize your sales efforts based on the likelihood to close. Barring the sudden appearance of a crystal ball, your current opportunities is the best way to track and measure that.

4. Sales to Date

Perform rapid analysis by comparing your current sales against the previous period, the same period the previous year, and get a sense of historical trends.

5. Product Performance

For teams selling multiple products and with targets for each product, it’s important to track sales for each line.

6. Lead conversion Rate

Insights like lead conversion rates help keep sales and marketing teams aligned throughout the customer journey. Conversion analytics allows for teams to continuously optimize performance to steadily improve customer experience.

7. Sell-through rate

If you’re selling physical goods, tracking your sales versus the total inventory is an important analytics undertaking. It will inform your supply-chain and help in sales forecasting.

8. Cannibalization rate

A new product to sell may be exciting, as innovation often is, but sometimes it can adversely impact sales for an existing product. By tracking product cannibalization in your sales analytics, you can better manage customer experience.

9. Quote-to-Close

Quote-to-close is an excellent sales productivity metric because it demonstrates how effective your team is at closing a deal. This metric gives analysis into the quality of leads and the quality of your sales process.

10. Sales per Rep

The composition of your sales team is an important factor when developing sales analytics. Experienced reps and account managers are more likely to outperform junior reps, and forecasting this into future analysis is one example of how this metric can be used.

11. Average Purchase Value

One of the most effective ways to increase sales revenue is to increase the average purchase value of each sale. Incorporating this metric into your analysis and to track historical trends is a smart strategy.