A sales operations team assists the sales team by finding and preparing prospects/leads, engaging with them, and delivering once the sale has been completed.
When sales operations function smoothly and effectively, an exceptional sales team may become even more productive, and an organization can become more profitable. You can track the effect of each step in your sales funnel by learning about some key performance indicators (KPIs).
What Are the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Sales Operations?
Key performance indicators, or KPIs, for sales operations are measurements that can be used to track how well a sales team is operating. Sales operations teams find leads, make connections, deliver products and other processes required for the selling process, and present, address concerns and close the sale.
Individual or team goals can be tracked using sales operations KPIs, and performance can be measured against expectations to see how certain initiatives affect results.
Important Sales Operations KPIs to Measure
KPIs linked to a company’s overall sales numbers, lead acquisition, maintenance, and client relationships can assist in understanding how effective the sales operations team is on its own and in its support of the sales team. Here are a few instances of KPIs:
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Average Sales Cycle Length
The time it takes to close a sale or have a customer back out is known as the sales cycle time. This can assist you in determining the efficiency of your sales operations and sales teams, as well as the length of time customers, interact with your team.
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Win/Loss Ratio
The win/loss ratio is used to determine whether the sales team is successful in turning a high percentage of leads and opportunities into closed sales. While it is critical when evaluating individual sales representatives, it can also represent customer experience with sales operations because it is a simple binary way to assess the entire process.
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Cost Per Lead
You can compute the cost per lead by dividing the campaign budget by the number of leads generated. This can assist you in determining how your marketing and sales expenses compare to your profits and identifying possibilities to improve the efficiency of your sales process. It’s also a good idea to keep track of cost per lead across campaigns to discover which ones are the most effective.
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Percentage of Leads in Each Stage
The percentage of leads in each stage can reveal how evenly leads flow through marketing and sales departments, as well as where bottlenecks may exist and which transitions are working smoothly. By combining this information with the typical length of your sales cycle, you can predict when your current leads will generate revenue, which can aid in financial projections.
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Activities
The number of activities in sales operations refers to the total number of calls, emails, and meetings done by sales operations representatives in a given period of time. Individual or group improvement, as well as seasonal or annual patterns, can be seen by tracking this number over time. Individual success may not be proportional to the number of activities completed, as certain representatives may prioritize quality above quantity.
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Opportunities Created
A prospect who becomes qualified to be a potential customer is referred to as an opportunity in sales. Because sales operations are responsible for converting leads into opportunities, evaluating how many opportunities are created can provide insight into how well this team is functioning. If your company has a marketing department that generates leads, you can compare the number of opportunities generated to the number of original leads to see if sales are making the most of each lead generated by marketing.
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Average Response Time
The response time is the time it takes for a salesperson to become aware of a lead and make contact with it. A quick response can make customers feel valued and important. You may track average response time on a per-representative basis to see how well each representative manages their leads and their time.
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Percentage of Leads Followed Up
A metric that counts how many prospective leads your sales operations team contacts is known as the percentage of leads followed up with. Because it can demonstrate if each representative is able to contact all of their allotted leads, this indicator can help you quickly discover any problems with sales person workloads. If the number of leads followed up decreases, reevaluate how much work each sales representative has and consider hiring an additional sales representative to help with the workload.
Must read: Sales Commissions Make or Break the Company: Here’s Why
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Positive v/s Negative Response
Each salesperson tracks this for their leads, noting how the prospect reacted to their interaction. While it may be subjective in some cases, it can be a useful number to collect because it can assist in providing context between the opportunities produced metric and the win rate into context. If you’re getting a lot of negative answers from your leads, you might want to rethink how you create them so you can reach out to more people who are interested.
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Marketing-Originated Leads vs. Sales-Originated Leads
This figure compares the quantity of leads generated through marketing efforts to those generated by the sales department. The marketing-generated number may be larger if a company is focusing on new leads, while the sales-generated number is higher if a company has several long-term or repeat customers.
Conclusion
One of the most important steps in sales operations success is determining the proper KPIs. Without them, it’s difficult to tell if your sales operations team is on track to meet their objectives or if there are any aspects of their workflow that can be improved to increase their performance much more.
