Revenue Intelligence

Revenue Intelligence

Revenue Intelligence

Revenue Intelligence

20 Essential B2B sales KPIs for Sales Leaders

Nov 19, 2024

Nov 19, 2024

Dmytro Chervonyi

Dmytro Chervonyi

CMO at Forecastio

Last updated

Nov 19, 2024

Reading time

10 min

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Sales KPIs
Sales KPIs
Sales KPIs
Sales KPIs

In today's competitive B2B sales environment, the right sales metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be the difference between sales teams that struggle to meet quota and those that exceed expectations. With so much data at their fingertips, sales leaders who have the right metrics at their disposal are better equipped to make data-driven decisions, coach their teams, and drive growth.

In this guide, we'll explore the various sales metrics and KPIs that every progressive sales leader should be tracking. By understanding and implementing these KPIs, you'll be able to refine your sales process, better align your team with business objectives, and stay ahead of the competition.

What are KPIs in sales

Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), also referred to as sales performance metrics, are statistical measurements that help evaluate the success and efficiency of your sales team. These critical metrics give sales leaders the data they need to make informed decisions, coach their teams, and drive revenue growth.

Sales KPIs help you:

  • Track performance: Measure individual and team progress toward goals and targets.

  • Align sales with strategy: Ensure sales activities support broader business objectives and initiatives.

  • Identify areas for improvement: KPIs reveal strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to focus on specific areas for optimization or development.

  • Improve forecasting: Many KPIs feed into more accurate sales forecasts, enabling better planning and resource allocation.

  • Motivate your team: Clear, measurable KPIs can inspire sales reps and encourage friendly competition within your team.

While KPIs are valuable for improving sales performance, don't forget the importance of relationships and providing value. A balanced approach that combines quantitative metrics with qualitative evaluations usually produces the best results in B2B sales.

B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams

B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams

1. Strategic sales 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 sales 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. Sales operations 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. Sales reps 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 success 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.

Choosing the right sales KPIs for your sales team

Best practices for choosing and implementing B2B sales KPIs

  1. Involve key stakeholders: Collaboration across departments ensures B2B sales 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.

  2. Define clear and measurable KPIs: Precision in KPI definitions prevents ambiguity and ensures everyone knows what success looks like.

  3. Set KPI targets and thresholds: Targets should be stretched but achievable, and aligned to the company’s strategic objectives.

  4. Review and adjust KPIs regularly: Dynamically changing B2B KPIs in response to changing business strategies and market conditions keep the company agile and competitive.

  5. Ensure data accuracy and accessibility: Robust data systems and transparent processes are required to provide insights for timely decision-making.

  6. 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 managers

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

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

Pipeline and deals sales 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

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

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 sales metrics dashboard with 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 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.

In today's competitive B2B sales environment, the right sales metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be the difference between sales teams that struggle to meet quota and those that exceed expectations. With so much data at their fingertips, sales leaders who have the right metrics at their disposal are better equipped to make data-driven decisions, coach their teams, and drive growth.

In this guide, we'll explore the various sales metrics and KPIs that every progressive sales leader should be tracking. By understanding and implementing these KPIs, you'll be able to refine your sales process, better align your team with business objectives, and stay ahead of the competition.

What are KPIs in sales

Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), also referred to as sales performance metrics, are statistical measurements that help evaluate the success and efficiency of your sales team. These critical metrics give sales leaders the data they need to make informed decisions, coach their teams, and drive revenue growth.

Sales KPIs help you:

  • Track performance: Measure individual and team progress toward goals and targets.

  • Align sales with strategy: Ensure sales activities support broader business objectives and initiatives.

  • Identify areas for improvement: KPIs reveal strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to focus on specific areas for optimization or development.

  • Improve forecasting: Many KPIs feed into more accurate sales forecasts, enabling better planning and resource allocation.

  • Motivate your team: Clear, measurable KPIs can inspire sales reps and encourage friendly competition within your team.

While KPIs are valuable for improving sales performance, don't forget the importance of relationships and providing value. A balanced approach that combines quantitative metrics with qualitative evaluations usually produces the best results in B2B sales.

B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams

B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams

1. Strategic sales 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 sales 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. Sales operations 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. Sales reps 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 success 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.

Choosing the right sales KPIs for your sales team

Best practices for choosing and implementing B2B sales KPIs

  1. Involve key stakeholders: Collaboration across departments ensures B2B sales 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.

  2. Define clear and measurable KPIs: Precision in KPI definitions prevents ambiguity and ensures everyone knows what success looks like.

  3. Set KPI targets and thresholds: Targets should be stretched but achievable, and aligned to the company’s strategic objectives.

  4. Review and adjust KPIs regularly: Dynamically changing B2B KPIs in response to changing business strategies and market conditions keep the company agile and competitive.

  5. Ensure data accuracy and accessibility: Robust data systems and transparent processes are required to provide insights for timely decision-making.

  6. 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 managers

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

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

Pipeline and deals sales 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

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

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 sales metrics dashboard with 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 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.

In today's competitive B2B sales environment, the right sales metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be the difference between sales teams that struggle to meet quota and those that exceed expectations. With so much data at their fingertips, sales leaders who have the right metrics at their disposal are better equipped to make data-driven decisions, coach their teams, and drive growth.

In this guide, we'll explore the various sales metrics and KPIs that every progressive sales leader should be tracking. By understanding and implementing these KPIs, you'll be able to refine your sales process, better align your team with business objectives, and stay ahead of the competition.

What are KPIs in sales

Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), also referred to as sales performance metrics, are statistical measurements that help evaluate the success and efficiency of your sales team. These critical metrics give sales leaders the data they need to make informed decisions, coach their teams, and drive revenue growth.

Sales KPIs help you:

  • Track performance: Measure individual and team progress toward goals and targets.

  • Align sales with strategy: Ensure sales activities support broader business objectives and initiatives.

  • Identify areas for improvement: KPIs reveal strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to focus on specific areas for optimization or development.

  • Improve forecasting: Many KPIs feed into more accurate sales forecasts, enabling better planning and resource allocation.

  • Motivate your team: Clear, measurable KPIs can inspire sales reps and encourage friendly competition within your team.

While KPIs are valuable for improving sales performance, don't forget the importance of relationships and providing value. A balanced approach that combines quantitative metrics with qualitative evaluations usually produces the best results in B2B sales.

B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams

B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams

1. Strategic sales 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 sales 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. Sales operations 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. Sales reps 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 success 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.

Choosing the right sales KPIs for your sales team

Best practices for choosing and implementing B2B sales KPIs

  1. Involve key stakeholders: Collaboration across departments ensures B2B sales 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.

  2. Define clear and measurable KPIs: Precision in KPI definitions prevents ambiguity and ensures everyone knows what success looks like.

  3. Set KPI targets and thresholds: Targets should be stretched but achievable, and aligned to the company’s strategic objectives.

  4. Review and adjust KPIs regularly: Dynamically changing B2B KPIs in response to changing business strategies and market conditions keep the company agile and competitive.

  5. Ensure data accuracy and accessibility: Robust data systems and transparent processes are required to provide insights for timely decision-making.

  6. 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 managers

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

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

Pipeline and deals sales 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

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

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 sales metrics dashboard with 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 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.

In today's competitive B2B sales environment, the right sales metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can be the difference between sales teams that struggle to meet quota and those that exceed expectations. With so much data at their fingertips, sales leaders who have the right metrics at their disposal are better equipped to make data-driven decisions, coach their teams, and drive growth.

In this guide, we'll explore the various sales metrics and KPIs that every progressive sales leader should be tracking. By understanding and implementing these KPIs, you'll be able to refine your sales process, better align your team with business objectives, and stay ahead of the competition.

What are KPIs in sales

Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), also referred to as sales performance metrics, are statistical measurements that help evaluate the success and efficiency of your sales team. These critical metrics give sales leaders the data they need to make informed decisions, coach their teams, and drive revenue growth.

Sales KPIs help you:

  • Track performance: Measure individual and team progress toward goals and targets.

  • Align sales with strategy: Ensure sales activities support broader business objectives and initiatives.

  • Identify areas for improvement: KPIs reveal strengths and weaknesses, allowing you to focus on specific areas for optimization or development.

  • Improve forecasting: Many KPIs feed into more accurate sales forecasts, enabling better planning and resource allocation.

  • Motivate your team: Clear, measurable KPIs can inspire sales reps and encourage friendly competition within your team.

While KPIs are valuable for improving sales performance, don't forget the importance of relationships and providing value. A balanced approach that combines quantitative metrics with qualitative evaluations usually produces the best results in B2B sales.

B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams

B2B sales KPIs and metrics for sales teams

1. Strategic sales 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 sales 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. Sales operations 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. Sales reps 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 success 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.

Choosing the right sales KPIs for your sales team

Best practices for choosing and implementing B2B sales KPIs

  1. Involve key stakeholders: Collaboration across departments ensures B2B sales 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.

  2. Define clear and measurable KPIs: Precision in KPI definitions prevents ambiguity and ensures everyone knows what success looks like.

  3. Set KPI targets and thresholds: Targets should be stretched but achievable, and aligned to the company’s strategic objectives.

  4. Review and adjust KPIs regularly: Dynamically changing B2B KPIs in response to changing business strategies and market conditions keep the company agile and competitive.

  5. Ensure data accuracy and accessibility: Robust data systems and transparent processes are required to provide insights for timely decision-making.

  6. 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 managers

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

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

Pipeline and deals sales 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

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

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 sales metrics dashboard with 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 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 Chervonyi

Dmytro Chervonyi

CMO at Forecastio

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.

Dmytro Chervonyi

CMO at Forecastio

Dmytro Chervonyi
Dmytro Chervonyi

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.

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