20 Must-track B2B sales KPIs for Sales Leaders
Dmytro Chervonyi
CMO at Forecastio
10 Min
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Measuring the right sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be the difference between standing still and thriving in the B2B world. In today’s data-driven business, sales leaders who use the right metrics have a big advantage: to make informed decisions, optimize team performance, and drive growth.
This guide goes into the different types of sales metrics and KPIs any forward-thinking sales leader should be tracking. By understanding and using these KPIs you’ll be better equipped to optimize your team, align with overall business goals, and stay ahead of the curve.
Table of contents:
1. What are KPIs in sales
2. B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams
3. Choosing the right sales KPIs for your sales team
4. Best practices for choosing and implementing B2B sales KPIs
5. 20 B2B sales metrics for sales leaders
6. Core sales metrics
7. Pipeline and deals metrics
8. People metrics
9. Sales overall metrics
10. B2B sales KPIs benchmarks
11. Sales dashboards for KPIs and sales metrics
12. Sales KPIs FAQs
13. B2B Sales KPIs in a nutshell
What are KPIs in sales
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in sales are measurable numbers that help you measure the effectiveness and efficiency of your sales team. These important metrics give sales leaders data to make decisions, optimize the team, and grow revenue.
Sales KPIs do many things:
Performance tracking: They allow you to track individual and team progress to specific goals and targets.
Strategic alignment: KPIs ensure sales activities are in line with overall business objectives and strategy.
Identifying areas for improvement: KPIs show you strengths and weaknesses so you can focus on what needs attention or optimization.
Forecasting: Many KPIs feed into more accurate sales forecasts so you can better plan and resource.
Motivation: Clear measurable KPIs can motivate sales reps and create healthy competition in the team.
Remember, while KPIs are great for driving sales performance, don’t forget to not focus solely on numbers at the expense of other important parts of sales like building relationships and delivering value. A balanced approach that combines quantitative metrics with qualitative assessment usually works best in B2B sales.
B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams
1. Strategic KPIs
Strategic KPIs, or key performance indicators, are high-level sales metrics that align directly with the company’s overall goals and strategic plans, such as Annual Revenue Growth, Market Share, and Customer Value.
Meaning: These KPIs are north stars for the sales teams to drive activities that align with long-term business goals such as revenue targets, market expansion goals, and customer acquisition costs. These KPIs are crucial for measuring sales effectiveness and ensuring that the sales team is aligned with the company's strategic objectives.
2. Tactical KPIs
Tactical KPIs measure the performance of specific sales strategies and are mid-level indicators such as Win Rate, Sales Cycle Length, Average Deal Size, etc.
Meaning: These are key to measuring sales operations and are used to tweak sales processes and methodologies to achieve strategic outcomes. By focusing on these KPIs, sales managers can enhance sales productivity and ensure that their strategies are effective.
3. Operational KPIs
Operational KPIs focus on the sales team’s day-to-day activities, measuring sales efficiency.
Meaning: They are key to streamlining operations, reducing costs, and improving overall b2b sales cycle efficiency from lead response times to conversion rates. These sales efficiency metrics are essential for identifying areas where the sales process can be streamlined and improved.
4. Behavioural/Activity-based KPIs
These KPIs track individual sales rep activities such as call frequency, appointment setting, and follow-up rates. These sales activity metrics provide valuable insights into the daily activities of sales reps and help in managing their performance.
Meaning: Activity-based KPIs are key to managing sales at an individual level, providing granular insights to coach and develop sales reps. These KPIs enable personalized performance improvement plans and reward activities that drive sales.
5. Customer-centric KPIs
These sales metrics measure customer engagement, satisfaction, and customer retention — key to long-term growth such as Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer lifetime value (CLV), and customer acquisition cost (CAC). Customer engagement metrics are crucial for understanding how existing customers interact with your brand and for identifying opportunities to improve customer satisfaction.
Customer retention is key to having stable revenue streams and long-term business success.
Meaning: Understanding customer relationships and satisfaction helps to maintain a loyal customer base and identify upsell and cross-sell opportunities with existing customers. They provide insights into the customer journey and help tailor sales strategies to customer experiences and outcomes.
Choosing the right sales KPIs for your sales team
Choosing the right KPIs is key to managing and scaling B2B sales. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential sales metrics for tracking progress toward goals, informing strategic decisions, and identifying areas for improvement, particularly in B2B sales environments. Selecting the right sales performance indicators is essential for accurately tracking progress and making informed decisions. KPIs should:
Align to business goals: They must align with the company’s strategic vision and operational objectives.
Provide a balanced view: Combining different types of KPIs gives a complete view of the business, balancing long-term strategic goals with short-term operational and tactical outcomes.
Enable decision-making: With the right KPIs, sales leaders can back up their decisions with data, so strategies are proactive and reactive to market conditions.
Best practices for choosing and implementing B2B sales KPIs
Involve key stakeholders: Collaboration across departments ensures KPIs reflect business needs and get broad support. Sales managers play a key role in this process by using data to ensure KPIs reflect business needs and get broad support. By involving key stakeholders, you can ensure that your sales metrics accurately reflect business needs and have broad support.
Define clear and measurable KPIs: Precision in KPI definitions prevents ambiguity and ensures everyone knows what success looks like.
Set KPI targets and thresholds: Targets should be stretched but achievable, and aligned to the company’s strategic objectives.
Review and adjust KPIs regularly: Dynamically changing KPIs in response to changing business strategies and market conditions keep the company agile and competitive.
Ensure data accuracy and accessibility: Robust data systems and transparent processes are required to provide insights for timely decision-making.
Use sales performance management tools: Sales performance management platforms like Forecastio can recommend the right sales KPIs for your business gather CRM data and calculate them.
20 B2B sales metrics for sales leaders
This guide covers the 20 most important B2B sales metrics and KPIs VP of Sales should be monitoring.
With these sales metrics, you will be in control of your sales operations and have strategic foresight for team and revenue growth. These performance indicators will help you stay in control of your sales operations and drive strategic business growth.
Core sales metrics
1. Win rate
Meaning: Deals won divided by total closed deals.
Importance: How good the sales team is and how attractive is your product to the market. A high win rate is a strong indicator of sales effectiveness and the attractiveness of your product to the market.
Formula: Win rate = (Number of deals won / Total number of closed deals) × 100%
2. Sales cycle length
Meaning: Time to close a deal.
Importance: To understand sales process efficiency and forecast sales. A shorter b2b sales cycle length can significantly enhance sales productivity and improve forecasting accuracy.
Formula: Average number of days from opportunity creation to close across all deals in the b2b sales pipeline.
3. Average deal size
Meaning: Average revenue per closed deal.
Importance: To predict revenue and set realistic sales targets. Average deal value is one of the key performance metrics that helps in predicting revenue and setting realistic sales targets.
Formula: Average deal size = Total revenue / Number of deals closed
4. Total sales
Meaning: Sales department revenue.
Importance: Direct measure of sales team and company performance. Total sales is one of the most critical sales performance indicators, directly reflecting the effectiveness of your sales team and company performance.
Formula: Sum of all sales revenue for a specific period.
5. Sales growth rate
Meaning: Rate of change in company sales revenue over time.
Importance: Key to understanding business growth.
Formula: Growth rate = (Current period sales - previous period sales) / Previous period sales × 100%
Pipeline and deals metrics
6. Pipeline growth rate
Meaning: Growth of the sales pipeline in terms of the number of opportunities or total potential revenue.
Importance: To understand the health and future success of sales efforts.
Formula: Pipeline growth = (Current pipeline value - previous pipeline value) / Previous pipeline value × 100%
7. New pipeline added
Meaning: Total value of new opportunities added to the pipeline for a specific period.
Importance: Measures lead generation and marketing activity effectiveness.
Formula: Sum of the value of all new deals added to the pipeline.
8. Close rate
Meaning: Close rate is the number of closed won deals vs the total number of sales opportunities or deals reps handled in a specific period.
Importance: Measures the sales funnel and closing techniques. A high close rate is a strong indicator of sales effectiveness and the efficiency of your sales funnel.
Formula: Close rate = (Number of deals closed / Number of deals in a pipeline) × 100%
9. Deal slippage
Meaning: Deals postponed or moved out of the expected close date.
Importance: To understand sales execution and forecast accuracy. Minimizing deal slippage is crucial for maintaining high sales productivity and accurate forecasting.
Formula: Slippage rate = (Number of slipped deals / Total deals planned to close) × 100%
10. Conversion at pipeline stage
Meaning: Conversion rate of opportunities from one stage to the next.
Importance: To identify bottlenecks in the sales process.
Formula: Conversion rates for each stage transition in the pipeline.
11. Average time by pipeline stage
Meaning: Average time opportunities spend in each stage of the pipeline.
Importance: To understand where deals are stuck and which stages impact the sales cycle length.
Formula: Average time per stage across all deals.
12. Pipeline coverage
Meaning: Pipeline value vs sales quota; to check if there is enough pipeline to hit sales targets.
Importance: Sales targets are realistic and achievable based on the current pipeline.
Formula: Pipeline coverage = Total pipeline value / Sales quota
People metrics
13. Average sales per Rep
Meaning: The average revenue generated per sales representative.
Importance: To measure individual sales performance and resource allocation. Average sales per rep is a key metric for measuring individual sales productivity and resource allocation.
Formula: Average sales per rep = Total sales / Number of sales reps
14. Ramp-up period
Meaning: Time it takes for a new rep to reach full productivity.
Importance: Impacts hiring and training. A shorter ramp-up period is a strong indicator of sales effectiveness and the efficiency of your training programs.
Formula: Average time from hire date to full sales quota.
15. Turnover
Meaning: Percentage of reps leaving the company in a specific period.
Importance: High turnover can mean dissatisfaction and disrupts sales operations.
Formula: Turnover rate = (Number of departures / Total number of sales reps at start of period) × 100%
Sales overall metrics
16. Sales velocity
Meaning: How fast the business generates revenue from the pipeline.
Importance: Measures speed and efficiency of turning prospects into revenue. Sales velocity is a key metric for measuring sales productivity and the efficiency of turning prospects into revenue.
Formula: Sales velocity = (Pipeline value × Win rate × Average deal size) / Sales cycle length
17. Sales efficiency
Meaning: Revenue earned vs sales expenses.
Importance: How well resources are used to generate sales. Sales efficiency is a crucial metric for measuring sales effectiveness and how well resources are used to generate sales.
Formula: Sales efficiency = Total sales / Sales expenses
18. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
Meaning: Total cost to acquire a new customer.
Importance: To evaluate the profitability of customer acquisition strategies.
Formula: CAC = Total sales and marketing expenses / Number of new customers acquired
19. Average quota attainment
Meaning: Average quota achievement across the sales team.
Importance: Overall effectiveness and motivation of the sales force.
Formula: Average quota attainment = (Total sales / Total quota) × 100%
20. Forecast accuracy
Meaning: The percentage of how close actual sales are to forecasted sales.
Importance: Key metric to measure sales forecast accuracy.
Formula: Forecast accuracy = (Actual sales / Forecasted sales) × 100%
B2B sales KPIs benchmarks
Industry standards
Knowing industry standards for KPIs helps sales leaders compare their teams to competitors and find areas to improve. Benchmarking against industry averages for Win Rate, Sales Cycle Length, and Average Deal Size gives you a baseline and a competitive edge.
Historical data
Historical data is key to setting realistic KPI targets. By looking at trends over time sales managers can forecast better and set achievable goals that motivate the team and drive productivity.
Align to company goals
KPIs must align with the company goals to be effective. Whether it’s scaling, market share, or customer satisfaction, each KPI should support the overall company goals.
Sales dashboards for KPIs and sales metrics
Sales process revenue operations dashboards
Revenue and sales operations dashboards are the tools to visualize complex data simply. They give you at-a-glance insights that track performance vs KPIs, show trends, and highlight issues in real-time.
Good data
Data integrity and clarity are key to actionable insights. Make sure data is accurate, accessible, and defined so sales leaders can make decisions fast and with confidence.
Forecastio: Track what matters and get real-time insights
Forecastio lets you focus on what matters. By integrating with your HubSpot CRM Forecastio automates data collection and monitors dozens of sales KPIs and sales metrics, notifying sales managers when to take action. This frees up time for the VP and head of Sales to focus on strategy and execution.
Forecastio aligns sales planning with execution in real-time, sales efficiency.
Sales KPIs FAQs
Are more sales KPIs for sales reps better?
Not necessarily. While you need to cover different parts of your sales, having too many KPIs can overwhelm you and distract you from your core goals. Choose KPIs that measure your success and align to your strategic objectives.
How often should we review our sales KPIs?
B2B Sales KPIs should be reviewed regularly but the frequency can vary depending on the KPI and your sales cycle. Monthly reviews are common but some sales KPIs may need to be reviewed weekly or even daily to be effective.
Can KPIs change?
Yes. As your business changes, so should your KPIs. Review your KPIs regularly to make sure they still align with your current business objectives and market conditions.
B2B Sales KPIs in a nutshell
B2B Sales KPIs are a journey of discovery, strategy, and refinement. By choosing and tracking the right KPIs sales teams get actionable insights and optimize at every turn. These sales metrics when chosen well and monitored closely will guide you to achieve and beat your business goals.
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Dmytro is a seasoned marketing professional with over 10 years in the B2B and startup ecosystem. He is passionate about helping companies better plan their revenue goals, improve forecast accuracy, and proactively address performance bottlenecks or seize growth opportunities.