Thorough and accurate sales performance analysis is vital to building a robust sales pipeline and growing your business. That’s why sales managers work tirelessly trying to pinpoint which parts of their sales process are working well and which need attention.
There’s never been more information and tools at our disposal to interrogate our sales metrics. But that also means it’s easy to become overwhelmed by a deluge of data. This means that subtle but valuable insights about trends and opportunities can easily fall through the cracks.
Sales Performance Management (SPM) solutions can go a long way to helping sales managers and their peers in marketing and finance analyze sales performance, using all the sales metrics available. They can help streamline the end-to-end sales process, using advanced analytics and augmented intelligence to sift “the signal from the noise.”
Ultimately, the goal is to get more insights faster while still having time to focus on your day job.
So, let’s explore how to analyze sales performance with SPM solutions and why they’re the smart choice for sales leaders seeking better ways to drive business outcomes.
Making Sales Data Work for You
Most organizations are pretty good at capturing their sales data. But alone, data holds little value. Only when you analyze and understand it and apply context can you make informed, swift, and timely decisions.
The data you gather will be diverse, but when aggregated, it will give sales management a sense of the pulse of their business. This information could be when someone first engaged with your company, when a salesperson first met a contact, how that meeting went, and whether it led to a demo or a meeting with the ultimate decision-maker. You can see if a proposal was successful, how long this all took, and the likely cost of sale.
In the right hands and with the right products, sales data is gold dust.
Key Sales Metrics to Monitor
Choosing the right sales metrics to monitor will depend on your business, the typical deal value, and the sales cycle length, among other factors. Here are some examples of the insights these metrics can deliver:
Sales Growth
Is the trend up, down, or stable? Is this a seasonal bump or something more unusual? How does this trend compare with your other products?
Performance Against Sales Targets
How are individuals and teams performing against their targets? Are there seasonal or operational issues involved? Is that hot new product line performing as expected?
New Opportunities
Are they increasing or decreasing? How do they vary by product or territory? Are you getting the minimum number needed to hit your target?
Product Performance
How well is each of your products selling? Are your established products running at their normal tempo? Are your new products racing ahead as planned? Is one cannibalizing the sales of the other?
Lead Conversion Rate
How well are your leads converting to opportunities? Are these rates changing over time? Could they be improved?
Quote to Close Rate
Are your proposals converting to deals at the planned 1-in-3 rate? Is the trend stable or deteriorating? Is this the same in all territories, or are some falling behind?
Average Sales Value
What’s the average deal size? Is this increasing to reflect mass adoption, or does it show you’re still in your launch phase?
What Are the Benefits of Analyzing Sales Performance?
Analyzing sales performance provides the spark to supercharge the whole business, not just sales. It delivers a centralized, near real-time view of the most essential sales dynamics to everyone. You can capitalize on the fresh perspectives it offers to build on the hard-won experience of your sales management. The ability to streamline the end-to-end sales process to help maximize the opportunity for success often emerges as another benefit.
How to Analyze Sales Performance Using SPM Software
With an advanced sales performance management (SPM) solution in your toolbox, you can say goodbye to many of the headaches associated with analyzing your sales performance. By harnessing the power of automation, these solutions automate away the challenge of collecting, formatting, reviewing, and presenting sales metrics. Their advanced analytics and AI capabilities identify the behaviors that drive the business forward and those that hold it back. Suddenly, unknown sales bottlenecks are plain to see. All this allows you to move quickly to implement the relevant training, recruitment, or reward initiatives.
Automating your sales performance analysis also gives you time to think, plan, and change direction mid-flight if you need to. Perhaps most importantly, it allows you to spend time with your customers and salespeople, building relationships while your SPM solution does the heavy lifting.
At Varicent, we put the power of integrated SPM solutions in sales leaders’ hands. Trust us to help you better manage territory and quota planning, incentive compensation management (ICM), revenue intelligence, and more. Leveraging AI capabilities and application integration, our solutions offer unrivaled SPM functionality that promises to take your sales process to the next level.
You can learn more about our approach to SPM here. If you’re ready to dive straight in, why not schedule a demo?
