Big data is becoming more important for business in their digital marketing efforts, sales processes, and other key parts of business. While we all know big data is important and that we should be using it to help us win in business, how do we know that we are winning?
Understanding sales analytics and what metrics to pay attention to is vital to continue increasing the efficiency of your sales team. A team left to their own devices without any checks and balances is unlikely to improve.
Continue reading this article to learn how to track sales analytics and get the most out of your sales process.
Metrics to Watch in Your Sales Analytics
With so much data at our fingertips, it is difficult to know what to pay attention to. While some numbers may look interesting, they aren’t necessarily important to the decision making process. The following metrics will allow you to start paying attention to the most important metrics.
1. Sales Target
Your sales target metric allows you to measure your current sales numbers with previous numbers or your target numbers. Before you begin to use this KPI, you should ensure your sales targets are set properly.
Set your team up for success and then work relentlessly to hit your target to keep morale high. Give your team a visual that will allow them to constantly see their target and you’ll notice an almost immediate improvement.
2. Sales Growth
When you want to test your team’s ability to increase sales over a fixed period of time, sales growth is the metric for you. Stagnation is a very real business killer and you want to make sure your company’s sales are growing.
Sales growth plays into the decision-making process for business strategy since it ties directly into profitability and revenue. While customer retention is highly important, that doesn’t mean you can’t focus on growing sales. This may mean creating other products that will serve your current client base.
3. Sales to Date
Sales to date allows you to check sales over a certain period. Popular period checks are quarterly and annually, but in some cases, you may even want to break it down even further.
4. Opportunities
Wouldn’t it be great if we could pinpoint the potential of a given opportunity? We can and it is through the opportunities metric.
The opportunities metric allows your sales team to easily see which opportunities have the greatest potential of closing the sale. Stages may be included in this metric so your sales rep will know how likely it is they will get a win. Another part of opportunities may be the value of a win.
5. Product Performance
If your sales team sells more than one product, you need to track product performance. When you track product performance, your sales team will be able to see which products are resonating most when they talk to potential clients.
As you’re looking at your product performance numbers, you should always keep your business model in mind. While product performance might not look great to the outside world, if your business model is non-traditional, a product may be performing well.
6. Average Purchase Value
Can you sell more to your customers? Increasing the average purchase value is a great way to generate more revenue without bringing on additional customers. Retaining customers makes it easier to make a profit since keeping a customer is less expensive than getting more customers.
Depending on your products, you may be able to get people to purchase bigger packages, longer subscriptions periods, etc.
7. Sales by Region
Where are your customers? Knowing where your customers live will allow you to see where you are winning and where you need to work to become more competitive.
If you look at each of the regions you’re performing well in, you’re likely to learn a thing or two that you can implement in the lower performing regions.
8. Sell-through Rate
Do you have physical inventory? If you do, sales forecasting will allow you to make sure you have enough product to serve your clients. You don’t want to have too much product on hand, but you also don’t want to have too little product on hand.
Being able to see your sales vs. your total inventory will help you hit the sweet spot.
9. Sales Per Rep
Who is making the sales? Knowing who is making the most sales and getting the best conversion rates helps with many things. Some of the things tracking sales per rep will do is allow you to give rewards, allow you to hire more people like your top rep and more.
10. Cannibalization Rate
You’ve got a hot new product, but how is it affecting the sales of your already selling products? Have you noticed a dip in sales and are worried about cannibalization?
Your sales and marketing team that is focused on your older products may experience serious challenges if your new product is interfering.
If the products you are releasing are going to compete with your current products, you don’t want to alienate your current clients. Many companies deal with this challenge by offering a deep discount on the new product to their current clients.
Before launching your new product, you may want to do a small test to see how the product might affect your previous products. While you won’t know exactly how the chips will fall, you will have a good idea.
Understand and Implement Based on Data
If your sales analytics have your head spinning, we understand. Because of the complex and often difficult to understand data you see, you may shy away from using some of the best information you have.
We have built a solution for you. Some of our key features include custom charts and graphs and the ability to easily read your data from any device. Look through all of our features here today and see how we can help you easily understand your data to help your sales process.