Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Last week there seemed to be a common theme when working with our clients: What metrics should we use to measure the success of this project and how are we going to organize and display the information? Whether you are the manager of an inside team selling one product or service, or if you are an inside sales manager at a company with many different clients, the metrics you need to measure your success generally remain the same across the board in my opinion. The question is how to display this information visually. With all of the great CRM systems out there, why not take advantage of the dashboard capabilities they have to offer?

It’s important to create a dashboard within your CRM that is visually appealing and easy to understand. From reports you have developed within the system, you can show your metrics in graphical form. First, it’s important to determine what metrics you want to display and create a dashboard to include the following:

Opportunity Information:

• Total Number of Actual Opportunities Compared to the Monthly or Quarterly Goal in a graph displayed as a meter. This is easy to visualize and see immediately if you are on target to hit your goals and definitely keeps you in check to see if your team is struggling.
• Total Opportunities to Date in table form. List the company name and opportunity owner so you can discuss specifics with your team and drill into the opportunity immediately if need be.
• Appointments Scheduled to Occur and Appointments that have Already Occurred in table form. This will allow you to alert your outside reps that their appointments are coming up and to make sure they happen. It will also allow for easy follow up with outside reps after they had a scheduled appointment – this will ensure you are closing the feedback loop.

Database Information:

• Database Snapshot of all prospects by Lead Status in a pie chart. This allows you to see how your reps are moving through their lists. It will allow you to see trends like what percentage of prospects fall into the Not Interested or Nurture bucket. It will also alert you to the amount of prospects that haven’t been contacted yet – this will help you plan for when you will be needing a new list for your reps to call on.
• Interested Pipeline by Company Name in table form. Outside reps may have input on these companies to share with the inside rep so they can work together to target that company to nail down the appointment.

Activity Information:

• Total Number of Conversations by Lead Status in table form. This will ultimately allow you to calculate your lead rate just by looking at the dashboard – you can simply take the total number of leads passed to date/the number of total conversations to date and multiply by 100.

That’s my take on the sales metrics to include on your company’s dashboard. What are some of the metrics that you would add to the make-up of the perfect dashboard?