Top 13 Sales Metrics that Every B2B Enterprise Should Track

A great product, wonderful office space, big vision, and a battery of talented geeks are great things to have. But without sales, all these things are futile. Your sales figure is the ultimate pointer that reflects the true strength of your organization. But how exactly would you check whether your sales operations are running effectively and as per your business goals or not?

Well, checking and analyzing important B2B sales metrics is the solution for this. Successful enterprises around the world always keep a close eye on vital sales metrics to gauge the performance of their sales efforts. It helps enterprises not just to optimize their strategy but boost revenue as well.

Every business operation is executed to meet particular objectives. How your efforts are contributing to meet such objectives is important. Metrics or Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are used to measure the effectiveness of any business work. Similarly, Sales Metrics tell the overall health and efficiency of everything related to the sales operations.

Where are you leading? Which accounts are performing well? How are your sales representatives performing? What are the bottlenecks that are stopping you to achieve your business goals? You can get the answers of all these vital questions by keeping a close watch on key Sales Metrics. It is a great way to analyze and optimize the performance of sales operations.

Annual Recurring Revenue is one of the most crucial B2B sales metrics that shows the overall growth of any enterprise. It reveals the total amount of revenue that an organization gets in a fiscal year. This vital B2B marketing KPI assists marketers to analyze past data and evaluate long-term forecasting.

It shows the amount of revenue a company gets per customer or subscriber in a particular period of time. This important metric helps B2B sales teams to understand which types of customers are adding real value to their business and which are not. It helps in crafting better marketing strategies for the future. It is an important metric to strengthen the existing customer base and to analyze weak performing areas.

In any B2B organization, the most important growth indicator is the evaluation of deals that are closed-won in a specific period of time. It assists enterprises to analyze the performance of their sales executives and their overall productivity. Segmenting win rates by product, geography, seniority, team, marketing campaign, or other factors can offer you deep insights to gauge performance.

In any lead generation process, the final outcome that every marketer wants to check is the conversion rate. It indicates the number of qualified leads actually converted into customers. It helps analyze the complete health of your lead generation mechanism. As it assists you to check how many initial leads moved to marketing qualified leads (MQLs), and then to sales qualified leads (SQLs) in the entire sales cycle. A deep analysis can help you segment the performance of each stage and enable you to focus on weak areas.

Time is money. This proverb holds great significance in the business world. But how would you check whether your sales pipeline is working perfectly keeping the time factor as a key focus? Well, you have a sales cycle length indicator for this. It helps you understand how much time your process is taking to close each lead. This B2B sales metric helps marketers to check bottlenecks that might be affecting the delays.

This B2B sales metric helps you understand how many deals that were expected to close in a fixed quarter, failed to convert in that period and were pushed into the subsequent next quarter. Marketers need to understand that not all slippages are bad. In fact, almost every company, from unicorns to well-established multinationals, experiences deal slippages. It happens due to budget freeze, project stalling, and dynamic changing needs of the business world. The important thing here is to understand your average slip rate so that you can better prepare for your fiscal year without disturbing your revenue targets.

If you lose customers at the same rate as you gain new clients then the net growth rate comes to zero. No company wants this. Everyone wants to grow and retain their existing customers. Churn Rate helps you understand how many customers did not renew their subscription in a particular period of time. By identifying such accounts you can put special focus on high-risk accounts in the future. It helps B2B sales teams to allure high-risk accounts with some discounts and other offers to continue their services.

How much money does it require to convert a lead into a customer? This B2B sales metric tells us. Analyzing CAC is important as it enables you to check whether your sales efforts are really giving any effective business gains. It helps you to track return on your investments as compared to your sales team efforts. Regularly checking this metric and optimizing sales strategy can help you gain impressive gains in the long run.

This metric reflects the synergy between the sales and marketing teams. It is often said that to get the best revenue results, sales and marketing teams should work in tandem. But how will you check whether they are working together with one unified goal in mind or not?

You can check this by analyzing this metric. It tells how many leads that were qualified in the marketing stage actually became sales qualified. For example, if 200 people chose to download a free e-book from your website, and 40 of them become sales qualified leads, then your MQL to SQL conversion rate is 20%.

In sales, every minute counts. Your leads might not have the same patience as you. Therefore, check what is your average lead response time and rectify the situation if your agents are taking too long to respond. Harvard Business Review Study shows that any B2B enterprise should respond to an inquiry within 42 hours. Better response time drives better sales results.

CRM Score is the combined value of individual accounts calculated on various key performance parameters. It helps B2B sales teams to identify the likelihood of closing a deal based on historical data and predictive analysis. This vital B2B sales metric also alerts marketers about the accounts at risk and enables them to focus on such customers with a better approach. An account with a high CRM Score requires less attention than an account with a low score.

This tells the pulse of your business. How well it is performing. Ultimately, it is the profit for which every company runs its business. You can measure profit/account and average profit margin comprising all accounts to check the efficiency of overall sales operations. It can be measured by segmenting product, region, sales representatives to gain deeper insights at a granular level.

The core purpose of running an email marketing campaign is to boost revenue by increasing sales. But how would you check, how many people are actually receiving the message through your promotion? Email Open Rate is the answer. It helps marketers to check how many people actually opened your email. This parameter tells the success of your email marketing campaign. A good, short, and catchy tagline is a must to encourage more people to open your email. So, try this tip whenever you send your next emailer.

Sales is the core business process in every organization. It plays an important role in the overall success of any business. Therefore, every B2B marketer must focus on strengthening it by carefully analyzing these vital sales KPIs from time to time. A close vigil on these metrics can help you run your sales operations more efficiently, smoothly, and successfully.