Struggling to reach your sales targets? You’re not alone.
Exceeding sales targets was the top goal for sales managers in 2023. In a HubSpot survey, 34% of respondents answered that exceeding quotas or targets was their main priority.
This was followed by making the sales process more efficient (29%) and targeting new markets (28%).
Sales managers—especially those in the field—often feel like they’re not hitting their goals.
C-Suite executives, ownership groups and shareholders always expect more.
Whether or not you hit last year’s targets, the bar typically gets set higher each year.
What are you supposed to do for a sales manager like yourself to reach their level?
Set sales KPI goals and track them regularly.
Without your hands in the numbers, you’ll have no idea whether or not you’re on the right track to reach or exceed your sales targets.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll break down the most crucial sales KPIs you need to know (and how to track them).
Feel free to skip to a section that suits you and take notes. By tracking these key KPIs, you can optimize your sales strategy and equip your team with the right action plan to stay on top of your quotas (and beyond).
Table of contents
- What are KPIs in sales?
- What is the difference between sales metrics and sales KPIs?
- Why are sales KPIs important to track?
- Sales KPIs for sales managers
- Sales KPIs for account managers
- Business development representative KPIs
- Sales development KPIs
- How to choose the right sales KPIs to track
- Break through your sales targets with Clari
What are KPIs in sales?
Sales key performance indicators (KPIs) are metrics that help sales managers and sales reps measure their performance against predetermined goals so they can gauge their success, improve their strategy, and increase their sales.
PRO TIP
Don't just track your team's total sales. Track revenue every single month. Revenue is the ultimate determinant of business growth.
What is the difference between sales metrics and sales KPIs?
More sales = more revenue.
But, if you don’t know how many sales your team landed last month, how can you ensure you reach your goals and improve?
By simply looking at the numbers, you can have a benchmark to understand whether you’re doing well (or underperforming) so you can adjust your strategy.
So, what’s the difference between a sales metric and sales KPI?
Sales metrics
Sales metrics give you general insights into your sales performance.
They’re usually analyzed against the competition or the industry standard to give you an overview of how you’re doing.
Sales KPI
Sales KPIs are specific to individual businesses. They’re used to track your performance over time to see how you’re progressing toward yearly, quarterly, or monthly goals.
KPIs, unlike metrics, and attached to overarching business objectives like checkpoints towards your goals.
KPIs are metrics used to track the performance of a business, a department or individuals against goals. Choosing KPIs most relevant to your industry and business goals is key—focusing on the wrong ones can be costly to your company.
Why are sales KPIs important to track?
If you don’t track your progress, how do you know whether you’re improving or getting worse?
You need to know where your team is at when it comes to sales KPIs.
Just look again at the term KPI. Key performance indicator.
It’s all about performance. To improve performance, you need to analyze your KPIs regularly. Here are a few reasons why sales KPI tracking is crucial for sales managers:
- Increased visibility to boost productivity: When you can see where your team is at, you can understand what areas you need to improve on.
- Ensuring teams hit revenue targets: If you see that you’re 20% short of your goal with only 10% of the month left, then you know it’s time to double down to hit your goal.
- Tracking numbers helps you forecast performance: When you start tracking KPIs regularly, you can better predict future performance (to improve your strategy).
- Get more done in less time: Tracking sales KPIs means knowing what’s working and what’s not. This can help you focus on the 20% of actions that yield 80% of your results, helping you get better daily results.
- Improve win rates: When you know how many deals are getting closed, you can plan to reach higher. By setting a new goal, you’ll be able to improve win rates and close more sales.
Sales KPIs for sales managers
If you’re a sales manager, a few key metrics are non-negotiables.
To get your team on track and crush your sales targets, make sure you track these sales KPIs:
1. Sales revenue
There’s no greater KPI for sales teams to track than sales revenue.
Why it’s important: Even the most number-fearing sales managers should know their sales revenue.It’s every sales team’s north star and is a top three metric C-suite executives will need to know at all times.
Who can use this KPI: Sales professionals, sales managers, C-suite executives and owners.
How to track it: The calculation is simple: the total money generated from your sales or products in a given period. Track it yearly, monthly and weekly.
2. New leads
You can’t have sales without leads.
The easiest way is by leveraging lead tracking software like Clari.
Tracking new leads is simply making note of every single lead that comes your way. Using software can prevent leads from slipping through the cracks so you maximize revenue.
Why it’s important: Lead tracking is crucial to ensuring your team capitalizes on every opportunity.
Who can use this KPI: Sales development reps, business development reps and sales managers.
How to track it: Simply track the number of people entering your sales funnel each month.
3. Competitor pricing
Let’s face it. Your business is competing against dozens, hundreds or thousands of other businesses. While you should spend too much time focusing on your competition, you should at least have a general idea of what you’re up against.
Why it’s important: Knowing competitor pricing can be a valuable tool to ensure you know how to position your sales team’s strategy. Plus, it can help you respond quickly to objections like:
“Well, your competitor X across the street offers the same product for Y dollars. Why should I go with you?”
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers, executives.
How to track it: Browse your competitors' websites and check their pricing pages quarterly.
4. Upsell and cross-sell rates
The best sales teams do not know how to close new customers. Instead, they know how to close their current customers repeatedly.
Track your upsells and cross-sells to know how to earn more from your current customers.
Why it’s important: Upsells and cross-sells are crucial sales KPIs to track. You could increase revenue by 10-50% without closing new customers by offering upsells and cross-sell opportunities.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers.
How to track it: Use your sales software to track your upsells and cross-sells by month.
5. Sales cycle length
How quickly are your sales reps closing deals?
Is it taking two weeks? Or two months?
Why it’s important: You need to track how long it’s taking to close deals. The quicker you can close, the quicker you can sell to new clients.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers.
How to track it: Track the duration of all successful sales cycles / # of deals closed during that period.
Easily track your sales cycles using a revenue operations platform like Clari.
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Stephanie Hemdon-Rasse, VP, Revenue Operations at Skai
6. Close ratio
You want your sales team to pitch more.
But how many pitched prospects are getting closed?
You need to know your sales team’s close ratio.
Why it’s important: Your close ratio will show you how good your team is at taking a lead and turning them into a customer.
Who can use this KPI: Sales professionals and sales managers.
How to track it: (# of closed deals / number of leads contacted) x 100
This is simply the number of deals closed divided by the total number of leads contacted.
For example, if sales rep A contacted 30 leads in the month and closed 5, the close ratio would be 5/30 = 16.67%.
7. Client engagement
This is an overlooked sales KPI. It’s important to generate recurring sales from your current clients.
Why it’s important: Client engagement is about maintaining good rapport after a sale. Client engagement KPIs can include calling, emailing and meeting with clients, to name a few. The better you engage with your clients, the better you’ll be at bringing in business long-term.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers, customer service managers, and marketing managers.
How to track it: You can use a CRM to track different customer touchpoints.
8. Employee satisfaction
If you want your sales team to succeed, you must pour everything into them.
This means keeping your sales reps happy, motivated, and satisfied as a team member.
For instance, 45% of employees believe impactful work is the most valued factor for job satisfaction, followed by career advancement opportunities (43%) and performance-based compensation (38%).
You should know what factors keep your employees satisfied (or drive them away).
Why it’s important: Remember to regularly touch base with your team. Ask them for feedback. Check in on them. Ask how you can help them. The better you set up their environment in your team, the better they’ll perform out in the field.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers, marketing managers, customer service managers, and executives.
How to track it: Ask your employees to rate their satisfaction on a scale of 1 to 5. Then, divide the number of satisfied employees (4 or 5 rating) by your total responses. Then, multiply this by 100.
9. Product demos
Product demos are critical, especially if you’re selling software.
Why it’s important: To ensure you have a good eye on how leads interact with your products, track how much they use the product demo. Don’t forget to track feedback from product demos, as this can help you spot pain points and objections to handle when speaking with leads.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers.
How to track it: Simply calculate the number of new product demos completed each month.
10. Sales volume by location
Your customers aren’t everywhere.
But they are somewhere.
You need to know where your customers are buying if you want to double down on sales growth. This means looking at your physical store locations. But it also means looking at online sales.
Why it’s important: This can help you and your team pour more time and resources into the right regions to close more deals.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers, executives.
How to track it: Look in your sales software and break down sales by location each month.
11. Monthly sales growth rate
At number one, we reviewed how important it is to track sales revenue. What’s just as important is your growth rate.
Why it’s important: Sales revenue helps you see what’s happening now. A monthly sales growth rate helps you see how you’re progressing month by month. Knowing whether you’re on the right track to hit your annual goals or fall behind is vital.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers.
How to track it: Monthly Sales Growth Rate = ((current monthly sales revenue - previous monthly sales revenue) / previous monthly sales revenue) x 100
Here’s an example:
Monthly sales growth rate = (($125,000 - $115,000) / $115,000) x 100
Monthly sales growth rate = $10,000 / $115,000 x 100
Monthly sales growth rate = $10,000 / $115,000 x 100
Monthly sales growth rate = 8.6%
This means your monthly revenue increased by 8.6% month over month.
12. Annual sales growth rate
The annual sales growth rate follows the same formula as the monthly sales growth rate. But, instead of plugging in months, plug in years.
Why it’s important: It is crucial to track when crafting long-term goals.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers, executives.
How to track it: Annual sales growth rate = ((current annual sales revenue - previous annual sales revenue) / previous annual sales revenue) x 100
Here’s an example:
Annual sales growth rate = (($4,500,000 - $3,750,000) / $3,750,000) x 100
Annual sales growth rate = 20%
This means your monthly revenue increased by 20% year over year.
13. New and expansion monthly recurring revenue (MRR)
Here’s another way you can track your monthly revenue growth, but with a focus on recurring revenue.
Why it’s important: Predictable revenue you expect to generate monthly tells you all about loyalty–or if your customers aren’t satisfied with you. New monthly revenue is more revenue added from new customers. Expansion revenue is looking at extra revenue from existing customers.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers, executives.
How to track it: Total monthly recurring revenue (MRR) = (Average monthly revenue from total new accounts + expanded accounts / total number of accounts) x total number of accounts (in the month).
14. Average profit margin
Your job as a sales manager is to generate sales.
But your actual job is to grow the business (and increase profits).
Why it’s important: Revenue is secondary to profit. It always will be. You need to know profit margins if you want to truly succeed in your role as a sales manager.
Who can use this KPI: Sales managers, executives, and owners.
How to track it: The average profit margin takes overall sales and subtracts expenses. Remember to track different profit margins based on factors like sales territories, products and salespeople.
Sales KPIs for account managers
Account managers play a critical role in any sales team.
While sales managers run the entire sales department, account managers are on the front lines with each client account.
Their job is to develop and nurture relationships with clients to maintain business relationships for the long run––and generate recurring revenue for years.
Here are a few important sales KPIs for account managers:
15. Customer churn rate
Your customers are everything.
You’ll work tirelessly to maintain sales targets if you can't keep them.
Why it’s important: High churn rates could mean poor customer experience, wrong product fit, pricing objections, etc.
Who can use this KPI: Account managers, sales managers.
How to track it: Churn rate is the percentage of customers who cancel (or stop buying) during a specific period.
16. Organic growth
Organic growth gets technical but can be extremely valuable for account managers.
These are specific, company-based metrics you track to track different accounts.
Why it’s important: This is a way to judge and measure your accounts and how they stack up against one another (so you can understand what kind of accounts to target).
Who can use this KPI: Account managers, sales managers, and marketing managers.
How to track it: There are a few options. You can track new customer sales with returning customers. Or you can track specific products by account.
PRO TIP
Don't just use a spreadsheet to track your sales KPIs. Leverage visual analytics to get a quick breakdown of how your sales are trending.
17. Referral-based clients
One of the best forms of marketing is word of mouth.
This isn’t just because it’s a proven way to land new clients but because the quality of referred clients is typically better overall.
Why it’s important: 66% of sales professionals believe the best leads come from existing customers. You should segment customers who came into your business as referrals. Track their data compared to non-referred clients. And make sure to spend more time nurturing them.
Who can use this KPI: Account managers, sales managers.
How to track it: Use referral software or conduct post purchase surveys to determine how a customer found you. Then, segment those referred customers and track their lifetime orders.
18. Customer satisfaction score
Remember how we spoke about keeping your sales team happy?
Why it’s important: Account managers need to do everything they can to maintain client satisfaction, or customers will start leaving—and recurring revenue (and referrals) will drop.
Who can use this KPI: Account managers, sales managers, and marketing managers.
How to track it: A customer satisfaction score is a simple measure of how happy your customers are with your company (on a scale of one to five). Feel free to break it down further by scoring your products, customer service, delivery, etc.
19. Customer outcomes
Customer outcomes is a broad term that covers a variety of KPIs.
It’s all about how well your sales team delivers on customer expectations.
Why it’s important: By tracking how well you’re doing in each category, you can better understand whether you’re underpromising and over-delivering or overpromising and under-delivering.
Who can use this KPI: Account managers, sales managers, and marketing managers.
How to track it: Some examples include:
- Revenue
- Number of support comments
- Number of subscriptions
- Customer emails
- Client testimonials
- Employee comments
How you combine these metrics is up to your team and your goals.
Business development representative KPIs
Business development representatives (BDRs) are those who are actively prospecting.
They’re the front-end sales team responsible for capturing leads before bringing them into your sales funnel for your sales team to close.
Here are some powerful sales KPIs for business development representatives:
20. Opportunities created
The most important metric for BDRs to track is the opportunities created.
These are simply qualified leads brought in by BDRs.
Why it’s important: The more opportunities created, the higher the chance of closing new customers. How you qualify the leads is up to you and your goals.
Who can use this KPI: Business development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: # of qualified leads per month.
21. Proposals sent
BDRs have a role to play in bringing in leads.
Why it’s important: While they’re not responsible for sending proposals, the number of proposals sent greatly indicates how well they bring in the right leads.
Who can use this KPI: Business development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: Enter all new proposals into your CRM and count the total at the end of each month.
22. Deals won
Deals won isn’t a BDR task, but it’s still important.
Why it’s important: Deals won is another prime indicator of how well each BDR is doing in starting the relationship with leads off on the right foot.
Who can use this KPI: Sales development representatives, business development representatives, and sales managers.
How to track it: Enter all new won deals into your CRM and count the total at the end of each month.
23. Activities
While these are important to track, it looks at quantity more than anything. Quality is just as important for BDRs.
Why it’s important: Activities aren’t the most crucial metric to track, but they indicate overall efforts each month.
Who can use this KPI: Business development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: Activities include various sales activities BDRs do in a given period. These can include:
- Number of emails sent
- Number of calls made
- Number of DMs sent
- Number of meetings scheduled
24. Acquisition rates
Client acquisition is everything.
Why it’s important: BDRs need to know how many contacted prospects became paying customers. If there’s a low conversion rate from a particular BDR, then it may be time to assess their process to optimize who they’re bringing into your sales funnel (and how they’re doing it).
Who can use this KPI: Business development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: Total # of clients acquired / total # of proposals sent.
Sales development KPIs
While business development reps (BDRs) focus on reaching cold prospects, sales development representatives (SDRs) focus on converting inbound prospects.
Here are crucial sales KPIs for SDRs:
25. Percentage of leads followed up with
SDRs aren’t doing cold outreach. They’re waiting for prospects to come into the funnel via inbound methods.
Why it’s important: The reality is that many leads fall through the cracks due to poor pipeline management. It’s not enough to reach out to a lead once. You need to track the number of leads being followed up with to ensure more deals are closed.
Who can use this KPI: Sales development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: Track the number of leads followed up with / total number of leads still in the sales funnel in a given month.
PRO TIP
Tracking leads is critical to empowering your sales team to hit and exceed targets. The simplest and fastest way to do this is to leverage a revenue operations platform like Clari.
26. Positive vs. negative reply rates
SDRs aren’t just after more replies.
They’re after the right replies.
Why it’s important: You need to track how many positive replies you’re receiving from leads versus negative replies. This will show you how effective the SDRs are at opening conversations.
Who can use this KPI: Sales development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: Manually track every cold outreach and whether or not the reply was positive. Take the positive replies and divide them by the total number of replies for the month.
27. Average response time
Since SDRs are waiting on prospects to reach out, a critical part of the job is to act quickly.
Why it’s important: The reality is that there’s a short window of opportunity to jump onto a potential sale and if leads aren’t being taken care of fast, you’ll lose them. Track your average response time to ensure your SDRs strike while the iron’s hot.
Who can use this KPI: Sales development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: Find average response times (date of first touch - assigned date).
28. System touches
System touches are any touchpoint an SDR makes with a lead.
This could be an email, call or even social media DM.
Why it’s important: Tracking system touches helps you see two things: How often your reps are reaching out and how well your reps are reaching out.
Who can use this KPI: Sales development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: Use your CRM to track total system touches. Divide total deals closed by total system touch to see how effective your system touches are.
29. SQL-to-customer conversions
Your sales development reps may not have total control over how leads are coming in.
But they are responsible for how they turn the leads given to them into paying customers.
Sales qualified leads (SQLs) turned into conversions are where SDRs shine.
Why it’s important: This is one of the most accurate ways to measure the effectiveness of your SDRs’ sales skills. If your reps can’t get a high conversion rate from SQLs, it may be time to improve their performance (or adjust your lead scoring strategy).
Who can use this KPI: Sales development representatives and sales managers.
How to track it: Take # of conversions divided by total SQLs in a given time period.
30. Win-loss ratio
This is a simple formula that SDRs need to track.
Why it’s important:
SDRs aren’t always directly involved in closing a deal, but the win-loss ratio can still indicate how well they warmed inbound leads up.
Who can use this KPI: Sales development representatives, business development representatives, sales managers.
How to track it: Take # of deals won divided by # of deals lost.
31. Meeting acceptance rates
Prospects often push meetings off.
SDRs need to ensure they’re getting leads to take appointments.
Why it’s important: By tracking meeting acceptance rates, you can see how good your SDRs are at getting your leads into meetings (which ensures more conversion to customers).
Who can use this KPI: Sales development representatives, sales managers.
How to track it: # of meetings accepted / total requested meetings.
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How to choose the right sales KPIs to track
There are plenty of sales KPIs you can track.
But, it doesn’t mean you have to track them all.
First off, you need to look at your overall growth and revenue goals.
Here are a few examples you can start with:
- Increase profit by X%.
- Increase yearly revenue to X dollars
- Acquire X new customers this year
Most companies have one to three primary objectives.
The overall goal is supported by two objectives to support them.
For example, if your overall goal is to increase profits by 200%, then you’ll need to set a revenue goal. And, you’ll need to set a goal to acquire a certain number of customers.
From here, you can break down quarterly and monthly goals that support these three objectives.
For example, to reach your yearly revenue target, you could set KPIs like:
- Increase MQL to SQL conversions by X%
- Decrease churn rate by X%.
- Increase cross-sells by X dollars.
Start with your primary annual objectives, then break down the goal into quarterly and monthly goals.
Break through your sales targets with Clari
Every sales manager is like the captain of a ship.
Their sales targets are the land they’re journeying to.
But, if you’re not tracking sales KPIs, you’re missing your navigation system.
It’s like trying to get to a new territory without a compass.
If you want to claim new territory and exceed your sales targets, you need to track these sales KPIs.
Without the right software, it’s nearly impossible to have the time (or clarity) to track these KPIs and improve team performance.
Clari is one of the best revenue platforms to track sales KPIs.
According to Forrester’s research, Clari makes your revenue team 80% more effective and delivers a 448% ROI.
Here’s how the platform can help you:
Sales Forecasting: Predict and forecast sales opportunities accurately with insights on historical data, current pipeline information and other key factors.
Activity Tracking: Track sales team activities like calls, emails and meetings for a comprehensive look at your team’s performance.
Predictive Analytics: Leverage AI with Clari for predictive analytics that helps you identify trends, risks, and hidden sales opportunities.
Pipeline Management: Clari helps you manage and optimize sales pipelines by giving you insights into the progress of your deals in your sales process.