All Sales and Marketing metrics need to have two things to be successful. Metrics missing one of these two things will disservice and harm your Sales organization.

Sales Managers and Sales Executives need to set the right tone for the sales organization to keep them focus, motivated, and not overwhelmed.  Sales people are overwhelmed with complicated data that they don’t have direct control over – for example, conversion, revenue, RRA, etc.  To have the most impact on the sales staff, we need to measure metrics that are actionable, controllable, and drives motivational behavior. 

Sales Performance metrics must be 1) simple to understand and 2) consistency of dueling-components – meaning, quantity as well as quality of a single action. For example, if you are tracking how many outbound calls a sales rep does, it is just as important to evaluate the quality or results of those calls.  Quality / results can be evaluated by how many follow-up activities are scheduled, such as demos or meetings, from those outbound calls.   

This article will give you ample examples of metrics to monitor for different target groups.  Note that these are just example to provide ideas; each organization will differ greatly depending on the sales cycle length and product complexity.

Usually, the ‘Activity’ is measured daily.    ‘Quality’ or ‘Results’ are typically measured on a weekly or monthly basis given the longer time interval needed to achieve success.

Here is a good and common example for measuring CSR’s.  We will track the Activity with how many calls, emails, and LinkedIn messages are completed.  The Quality/Results of those metrics are measured with follow-up demos or actual closed deals as a result of those activities. 

Activity metrics — measured Daily

# of outbound calls
# of outbound Emails
# of LinkedIn messages to new prospects

Quality / Results metrics – measured Monthly

# of Scheduled Demos
# of Closed Deals

Also, it is important to identify and communicate which activities or results metrics are more important than the other.  Let’s assume that your Sales Manager had determined that emails yield the best ROI and thus should be done more than other activities. This is easily accomplished by setting the weight of the email activities to a higher weight.  In the example below, this means that someone would have to make almost two times as many LinkedIn messages to get the same amount of credit as they would for Outbound Emails.

Activity metrics	Weight
# of outbound calls	30%
# of outbound Emails	45%
# of LinkedIn messages to new prospects	25%

Let’s assume the sales manager determines that scheduling a demo with a larger client should be worth the same as closing a smaller client on the phone immediately. In this scenario, the “quality” indicator of how well the initial contact was (call, email, LinkedIn) would be set at 50% each. Alternatively, if the sales manager wanted to place more weight on one result metric, they could change the weight appropriately.

Quality / Results metrics	Weight
Scheduled Demos	50%
Closed Deals	50%

Below is how the setup of Goals looks in the Abaav Performance Management application.  Start by selecting the metrics you want to monitor against the Goals, give the weight of each metric, and the time frame they are measured in.  These can be changed any time as your sales organization learns, changes priority or adjusts what they want to measure.

Additional examples of metrics that can be used for different roles is shown below:

Account Executives

Activity metrics – measured Daily

Total Opportunity Pipeline Value
Completed Sales Pitches

Quality / Results metrics – measured Monthly

Total Sales ($)
Number of Deals closed

Marketing Managers

Activity metrics – measured Daily

Total Website Traffic from ads
Total LinkedIn engagements
Total Facebook/Instagram engagements

Quality / Results metrics – measured Monthly

Contact Form submissions
Total Trial Signups

Account Managers

Activity metrics – measured Daily

Number email/call touches to my accounts
Number of on-site visits to my accounts

Quality / Results metrics – measured Monthly

Recurring Revenue
# referred customers