What to Measure When Working Your Leads
By Rao Wu
The most successful sales people are meticulous about tracking key metrics when they work their leads. Here are the numbers we recommend that vendors track during their sales process.
1. Number of Leads Received
Be organized about how many leads you’re getting in a given period, i.e. daily, weekly, and monthly. This will give you a sense of how many leads you can devote the proper attention to and enable you to track your overall close rates. Also, keep track of the leads from each source. Lead quality varies among providers, and knowing who is giving you the best leads and the best value for your money is the way to get the most from your program.
2. Attempts to Connect
Track how many times you are attempting to call a prospect, as well as how many personal emails you send to them. These constitute your “attempts to connect” with your prospect. You’ll soon get a sense of how many attempts you need to make to get your prospect to respond. Obviously, the more attempts you make to connect with your prospects, the higher the odds are that you actually will. (While email blasts, or “drip marketing” emails, sent by your marketing team can also represent attempts to connect, tracking those metrics should land in the marketing team’s court. However, a good sales rep should also be aware of the amount of marketing “air cover” they’re receiving.)
3. Connects to Proposals
Every sales rep loves to get to the proposal stage. However, not all proposals will become sales. There will be times that once you connect with a prospect, they are not quite ready to buy, or your services are not the best fit for their needs. So, it’s important to get a clear understanding of the percentage of people you connect with that move to the proposal stage. If you’re connecting with a lot of people, but getting very few requests for proposals, there could be issues with your presentation or offering.
When you do get the opportunity to present a proposal to a prospect, be assumptive and include a contract along with our proposal, just in case your prospect likes the offer and they’re ready to get started right away.
4. Proposals to Closes
Of course, all this activity needs to result in sales. When you close a deal, be cognizant of how many proposals you had to send in order to close one deal. This will give you insight into how impactful your proposal is, if your pricing and terms are right, etc.
5. Overall Lead Close Rate
You also want to have a solid understanding of the percent of your overall leads that are converting to sales – known as your lead close rate. This helps in your forecasting, in knowing which lead providers are delivering the best value, and how many leads it’s going to take to hit your sales goals.
6. Cost per Sale, Revenue, and Gross Profit
Finally, it all comes down to money. Knowing the overall cost for your leads, the sales resulting from those leads, and your lead cost per sale gives you clear insight into the ROI from your program. Understanding your revenue per deal and your overall gross profit is also essential. In addition, just as you want to understand how your different lead providers measure up when it comes to close rates, you should also have an understanding of how they stack up when it comes to delivering ROI, which source delivers your best cost per sale, and your best profit margin
By keeping a close eye on these performance measurements, you can get a sense of how strong or weak you are in different steps of the sales process. Consider these numbers as examples only, as metrics vary widely by sales rep, vendor, product category, lead provider, and industry.