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the beginners’ guide
technology corner The Beginner’s Guide to Automating Your Sales Process Part 2
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By Kevin Snow
In Part 1 of The Beginner’s Guide to
Automating Your Sales Process, we walked through the steps to take your sales process digital, automating repetitive tasks and adding in tools to keep you organized.
Now that you have your process documented and have some tools in place to help manage that process you need to start looking at how effective it is and how you can improve it. But you can’t measure improvement if you don’t know where you are starting. Fortunately, the tools you used to automate your sales process provide a wealth of data about your sales process. But how do you know which metrics to focus on? In Part 2 I break down the key metrics you should be tracking. These metrics will reveal valuable information about your prospect’s activity as well as your (or your team’s) performance. By monitoring this data regularly, you will gain the insight to consistently exceed your sales goals.
PART 2: Measuring Your Effectiveness
Ok so there are easily 100 or more different metrics about your sales program you could be tracking, but unless you have a well-defined process, and multiple teams selling in multiple verticals, that amount of data will only set you down a path of constant analysis. For a program just getting started with automation of a sales process, here are the 4 metrics you should be tracking.
Top Lead Sources
The first step in making sales is filling your pipeline with qualified leads. To make the most of your business development activities, you need to regularly assess which sources you are getting your best paying clients from. Tracking where leads come from tends to be one area where salespeople and business owners are less than stellar, but with automation it can be made easier and/or a mandatory part of adding a new lead to your CRM or marketing automation platform. If your numbers show that certain channels consistently bring in the best high value clients, you can re-allocate your business development efforts to focus on those lead sources. Understanding where your leads are coming from also allows you to diversify your business development strategy if you notice that one lead source is driving the bulk of the new prospects entering your pipeline.
Win Rate
Your win rate is the percentage of sales opportunities that become paying customers and it is an important sales metrics you should be tracking. Your CRM will have built in reporting tools to help you review what your win rate is and how it changes as you adjust different parts of your process. A low win rate can signal that you have an issue with your approach, or that you are filling your pipeline with unqualified leads or possibly the wrong leads all together. It is important to understand your win rate is impacted by several other factors, including complexity of your product and how many people are involved in the decision, so to identify where you need to make changes and focus your efforts,
you will need to look at some of the following stats as well.
Key Funnel Conversion Rates
Just like you want to track your overall win rate, you also want to track your conversion rates from stage to stage. This will show you specific stages where you are losing prospects. If your conversion rate is low in the early stages of your sales process that could mean you have an issue with qualifying your leads before they enter into a sales conversation with you. Low conversion rates later in your sales process could mean you have an issue with your tactics or your approach. But it is easy to fall prey to paralysis by analysis if you are trying to analyze and tweak every stage in your process. Instead, identify one or two make-or-break stages in your process that have the biggest impact on whether or not a prospect becomes a paying customer, and keep track of how well prospects are moving through them. Those make-or-break stages could be a prospect moving from an initial meeting to a full-on product demo, or a prospect that signs up for a free trial and then completes specific activities during that trial.
Sales Cycle Length
That last important metric to track is your sales cycle length, which represents the average length of your sales process, or the average length of time it takes for a prospect to become a buyer. The shorter the duration, the more effective your sales process is and the more you can close in a given period of time. It’s also worthwhile to look at the time a prospect stays at each stage of your sales process. This is a good way to identify choke points where prospects are getting stuck and not moving to the next stage. Understanding the length of your sales cycle and what plays a role in extending your sales cycle can help you figure out how you can win more deals faster. You can identify which nurturing campaigns help move along the sales process, which types of content help influence buying decisions, and which sales tactics result in shorter and more successful
sales cycles. A few key metrics can provide you with a lot of information about how your sales process is performing. As you are looking at your numbers, remember that metrics need to be customized to match your specific business needs and what the numbers mean to you won’t necessarily be the same to another business. But by regularly tracking the four metrics above you’ll gain the insights needed to engage with your prospects more effectively and close sales more efficiently.
Kevin Snow is the founder of Time On Target, a digital marketing agency that helps businesses effectively use technology to grow their business. Kevin has helped companies all across the United States shorten their sales cycle and increase their closing rates by utilizing sales automation to increase the time sales teams are in front of prospects selling. You can reach Kevin at kevin.snow@ time-on-target.com.
