The most important KPIs to improve sales

Keeping track of the actions that are being executed to increase a company’s sales is practically a Must. While it is true that all companies (or the vast majority of them) have this control, many others forget to relate these activities to the business objectives that are marked. So that this doesn’t happen to you, today we want to talk to you about the Sales KPI more important things to consider in your sales strategy.

What are Sales KPIs?

As we have said on many occasions, analyse and self-criticize the actions that are being taken it’s what will really help us grow our business. But how do we know if we’re on the right track or not? The answer to this question is answered with a single word: Objectives. Marking goals is what will help us define whether we are going in the line to go or, on the contrary, we have strayed from the marked path.

Each area of the company has its own objectives set, objectives that must follow the line set by the objectives at the general level. You may be getting this goals uphill so, to help you, let’s start with one of the most important metrics: sales KPIs.

Kpiare the acronym for English words Key Performance Indicator, and refers to those key indicators that help you measure performance of your business. They are usually expressed in a percentage of achievement of the goals you have previously set.

The Kpisshould be fixed at the beginning of the strategy and reviewed on a regular basis. The reason for this review is simple, if your company adapts its strategies based on what the market demands, how can your KPIs not do the same?

These well-defined KPIs are the ones that will help you assess how the business situation is going to sales level (which is the topic we’re addressing in this post). Ideally, they should be reviewed assiduously, because thanks to this data you will be able to check the state of the strategy on a regular basis and thus make quick and based decisions based on the actual numbers.

What should sales KPI formulas look like?

Formulate goals, as we said, is no easy task. You have to find the middle ground between realism and want to give a little more of you. It’s important to keep this in mind, as poorly formulated KPIs can make you draw wrong conclusions when you’re still on the right track. In order for this to not happen to you, you have to follow the SMART rule.

• Specific (S): It is essential that your KPI is as specific as possible and does not lead to misinterpretations.
• Measurable (M): Make sure the value is measurable. It’s no use saying I want to increase sales a lot. It marks a goal such as a 10% sales increase over the previous year.
• Achievable (A): The target set must be met with the current available resources.
• Relevant (R): Don’t set KPIs for having them. Choose to work those that are really relevant to your business.
• Defined in time (T):It narrows the time at which the KPI will be performed, because if you don’t, you won’t be able to get a concise result.

By following the SMART method you will be able to set KPIs more according to your real situation. But, in addition to following this method, when setting the KPI, you will have to take into account three key aspects:

• What’s going to be measured.
• Identify this objective with the long-term strategic objective.
• And identifying how it’s going to relate to short-term goals.

The most used online and offline sales KPIs

Once we’ve cleared everything about how a KPI should be formulated correctly, we’re going to go on to list some of the most important ones so you can take them as a reference the moment you set yourown.

Before we start talking about sales KPI types, it should be clear that the choice of one or the other will depend, to a large extent, on the type of business that is held, as well as the sector of activity and the objectives that the company pursues. However, there are some key indicators that may be common to all types of business, which are the first ones we will pass to name.

Generic sales KPIs

There are a number of KPIs that, whatever business you have, you can use:

• Sales levels. Perhaps it is the most classic, but in which more mistakes are made. Sales level growth is set much higher than can actually be expected. So, look at the prospecting of the last few years.
• Increased customer portfolio. The growth and gaining more customers is the second most employed KPI. To define it, you should be clear about your target audience, so the KPI will collect truly relevant data.
• Increased customer satisfaction. This KPI is not used as much, although it should not be. Measuring customer satisfaction is important to know if your treatment, your business strength and your customer service is satisfactory. You may sell a lot, but the degree of retention and loyalty is very low for low customer satisfaction.
• Increased revenue. Very related to the first objective, however, it is also taken into account if the level of expenses of the company has gone up.

More specific sales KPIs

After these generic sales KPIs, we can start talking about some more specific ones. It depends on whether you have a commercial department, website, you sell on multichannel… your goals will vary.

• Number of budgets submitted.
• Number of closed budgets.
• Number of calls obtained asking for price or information.
• Number of visits made by commercials.
• Number of visits to the website.
• Forms received on the website requesting information for the purchase of a product or service.
• Number of abandoned carts.
• Time from the first contact with the user to the sale.
• Average time that the customer remains a customer until they go to another brand.
• Average return on each sale.
• Number of returns.
• Number of changes.
• Complaints and complaints.
• Number of lost customers vs customers won.
• Number of sales of a particular salesperson.
• Non-payment rate.

As you can see, there are a lot of KPIs; but not only that, then you can compare with each other to get more relevant information and thus enrich your decision making.

Either way, ideally you should establish what’s important to know about your business so you can establish and keep track of sales KPIs that are really relevant to you.