Top 8 KPIs for sales representatives

Success in sales requires discipline and consistency in managing many tasks over time. Revenue leaders need to set realistic sales targets and choose the correct KPIs to optimize their team’s performance.. 

In this blog, we go over sales team indicators and top sales KPI examples. 

What are sales KPIs for BDRs, SDRs, and Inside Sales?

Sales key performance indicators (KPIs) are measurements used to gauge the effectiveness of sales efforts by representatives. 

Sales Development Reps (SDRs) or Inside Sales focus their efforts on inbound leads such as web form submissions, downloads of marketing content such as e-books and white papers, chat bot requests, plus those from webinars and trade shows. Business Development Reps (BDRs) are mainly dedicated to discovering new business and exploring new markets through outbound channels. Both of these roles require a lot of hustle and measurable activities. 

Tracking and measuring KPIs can motivate sales development teams by understanding their own performance, how they are tracking to quota, and how they stack rank against their peers. Having set KPI goals and metrics with the actionability of coaching in one platform results in more meetings and bigger pipelines..

Sales KPI examples to empower your team

With numerous sales development and account manager KPIs available for different organizational departments, measuring growth may be taxing if you don’t have the right indicators. 

Here are the top 8 sale development KPIs you should consider to help you effectively measure your team’s effort and optimize performance:

1. Emails

The top of funnel frequently starts with email outreach, and many reps have a required number of contacts to reach out to daily or weekly.  It’s also important to look at open, click-through rates, and responses. This KPI enables sales leaders to gauge the activities of agents and provides the team insights on what messaging is working with different ideal customer profiles (ICPs).  

2. Phone calls

Phone calls are not dead. Like the email KPI, tracking the number of phone calls agents make provides teams with relevant data that improves team effectiveness. Sales teams can measure the number of calls prospects pick up, return or decline, conversions over the phone, and the number of conversations before a lead becomes a customer. 

3. LinkedIn outreaches

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool for building contacts, qualifying leads, or building authority, depending on the industry. A study by HubSpot reveals that LinkedIn has the highest visitor-to-lead conversion rate, almost three times higher than social media channels such as Twitter and Facebook. 

For organizations that use LinkedIn, tracking the number of outreaches agents make in a given period helps sales leaders determine the relevancy of the platform as a customer acquisition channel, conversion rates, and track representatives’ progress towards sales targets. 

4. Meetings booked

After recording outreaches on email, LinkedIn, phone, text, and other relevant channels, tracking the number of meetings resulting from these interactions enables sales representatives to determine the effectiveness of their strategies. This KPI helps to boost agent productivity by streamlining processes and focusing on effective channels. 

5. Salesforce hygiene

Big data is a gold mine that can be difficult for sales teams to leverage if it is poorly organized. Many teams adopt Salesforce as their customer relationship management (CRM) tool to improve customer interactions, internal communication, and productivity. Salesforce hygiene is an important auditing process organizations design to manage big data. 

Per a study by Salesforce, 90% of contacts in the average customers’ contact database is incomplete, with 20% of existing records having no value due to factors such as duplication and obsolescence. 

Your revenue ops team can help set the team up for success this these recommendations::

• Limiting data to inputs essential to your sales funnel 
• Periodic data scans to prevent duplication and errors in merging 
• Eliminating silos to improve data flow across various departments
• Setting up integrations to track activities related to contacts and accounts
• Standardizing data 

Sales reps need to make sure deals are in the right stage, with the right opportunity value, estimated closed date, and the right contacts and account notes. The Salesforce hygiene KPI aims to monitor these processes that allow teams to accurately forecast deal flow and estimated revenue. 

6. Amount of deals in different stages

Many CRM tools provide an overview of a team’s sales pipeline, categorizing deals into different stages. Companies that leverage the data from their sales pipeline understand workflows and can effectively forecast the performance of their sales team. An average deal passes through these stages: prospecting, lead qualification, demo or meeting, proposal, negotiation and commitment, closed won or lost, and post-purchase stage. 

Tracking the number of deals in various stages provides sales and management teams with insight such as: 

• Quality of leads from marketing (MQLs) and other sources
• Expected revenue for the company 
• Length of the sales cycle
• Resource overallocation or skills shortage
• The need to streamline processes 
• Performance of each agent 

7. Closed won / closed loss

As an offshoot of the previous sales KPI, tracking the number of sales — deals won — and conversions lost helps sales teams understand their deal close ratio, close rate, and the reasons for losing a sale. This KPI for sales representatives helps develop processes to improve conversions, such as qualifying leads accurately, identifying effective sales channels, and adjusting product features.  

8. Average size deal (ASD)

This sales KPI tracks the value — dollar amount— of an average deal that a sales representative closes. To calculate the average deal size, divide the total amount received from contracts signed in a given period by the number of deals closed. In addition to understanding the financial health of a company, its sales pipeline, and the number of new accounts, tracking this sales growth KPI enables leadership teams to make accurate projections for sales revenue. 

Set up sales growth KPIs with Pathlight 

Identifying sales KPIs is one step on the path to business success. Mapping out a plan to improve existing processes to reach overall business objectives is also important. 

Pathlight gives everyone on the team real time metrics to see performance by different levels of the org chart. Managers and leadership teams can instantly view sales KPIs to know who is performing well, and who might need some coaching help to get on track. With coaching messages, mini-goals, and 1:1s, sales organizations improving employee attrition, shortening ramp times, and increasing revenue. 

Want to see how Pathlight’s solution can up level your team’s performance? Sign up for a live demo today!

Frequently asked questions 

What does KPI stand for in sales?

Key performance indicators (KPIs) measure sales activities that lead to success and help teams achieve quota. These vary by organization, but typically include outreach efforts, meetings booked, opportunities by accounts and dollars. 

How to set up a KPI for a sales team?

Sales team KPIs are typically set based on organizational revenue goals. Sales teams look at both bottoms-up and top-down approaches to ensure KPIs that are achievable and lead to organizational success.  

How to measure business development representative performance (BDR Performance)?

Organizations measure business development representative (BDR) performance by how well they fill the top of the sales funnel with high-quality demo or discovery calls. BDRs are measured by the effort they put into contacting and attracting target prospects and their ability to set up meetings for sales reps.