Featured Sales Thought Leadership: Sales Metric of the Year

As part of our effort to feature thought leadership from various online sources, we are looking to showcase other blogs and introduce our readers to best ideas in the sales industry. If you’d like to be featured, email us at info@insightsquared.com.

This week’s feature blog post is from Sales Benchmark Index by Greg Alexander titled Sales Metric of the Year for 2012 which he posted a couple of weeks ago.

In general, we are fans of the Sales Benchmark Index (SBI) which is a professional services firm focused on sales force effectiveness. We enjoy reading their blog and like Greg Alexander who is the CEO there. He is also the author of 3 books: The CEO’s Guide to Getting More Out of the Sales Force, Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance, and Topgrading for Sales: World-Class Methods to Interview, Hire, and Coach Top Sales Representatives.

This post discusses the top sales metrics for 2012 and it has teeth because the Sales Benchmark Index surveyed over 200 CEOs which led to identifying 36 sales metrics that were ranked on a usefulness scale and chose those that “reveal the truth”. Of these an expert panel chose the Top 5 for the year and these are made available for you to see in a PDF one-pager (you can get it in the blog post). Additionally this blog post writes about a great sales metric, the “Look-to-Book Ratio,” which is a measurement of how many big deals were won or lost after the Chief Sales Officer visited with the prospect. The surveyed CEOs liked this metric because it helps overcome the fear of bringing in an expensive Vice President of Sales and also confidently answers the question of whether they have the right sales leader.

We’re a fan of this ratio because it is analogous to the Activity Ratios that our analytics suite tracks for Inside Sales reps. Looking at the historical ratios between Call to Demo, Demo to Trial, or Opportunity to Deal can inform you of what activities drive deals, and what might be wasted effort. Check out Alexander’s blog post and let us know your thoughts.

Sources:

http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/bid/93111/Sales-Metric-of-the-Year

http://www.salesbenchmarkindex.com/top-sales-metrics-of-the-year