More than any other department, sales relies on tracking and measuring. And with all the new insights available from sales enablement technology, we can easily overload ourselves with data and reports. That’s why when looking at SaaS sales metrics, I try to keep reporting simple so we can focus on what matters most. I also consider leadership and management metrics as two separate types of data. There’s leadership data you need to run the business, and management metrics you need to run the department.

SaaS sales leadership metrics

Sales leaders need to keep their eye on their SaaS Magic Number (sales efficiency). That’s my go-to number to understand if the right investments are being made in sales and if those investments are efficient.

It’s also important to monitor customer acquisition costs (CAC), customer lifetime value (LTV), customer churn and revenue churn. As SaaS executives, we know these are the numbers we should live and breathe, but unfortunately, those metrics don’t always trickle down to sales leadership, and they should.

When sales leaders understand the calculations behind these numbers and the potential business impact to revenue and company valuation, it helps them lead more effectively.

SaaS sales management metrics

In terms of sales management, here is some data that should always be front and center. I review these weekly, and I also set aside monthly and quarterly deep dives into the data to consider trends, implications, and to develop strategies & tactics for improvement, etc. For most of these, I recommend looking at the aggregate data, and by individual rep.

• Dials, connects, appointments set (this week, this month)
• Wins/Goal to actual (this week, this month, this quarter)
• Total contract value/Goal to actual (this week, this month, this quarter, this year)
• New opportunities opened (this week, this month)
• Sales cycle
• Win rate
• Closed lost reasons
• Year over year/quarter over quarter results for all of the above

From this data, sales managers should prepare sales reports for the CEO, board and leadership peers. Ideally, the information can be pushed to them automatically via dashboards, but many companies still prepare a monthly presentation that includes a recap of challenges, key wins, major initiatives, priorities, etc.

Dashboards

For transparency, and to create a culture of accountability and competition, I recommend creating a dashboard that is always visible to your team. If your team works in the same office, use a large whiteboard in the center of the sales floor to display these metrics (update them daily), or a large screen display to show them in real time. If your team is remote or distributed, consider sales tech that pushes this data to your entire team, or is available within one click in a sales platform. Here are some things to keep on the team dashboard:

This week:

• # of new appointments/Actual & goal
• # of new opportunities/Actual & goal
• Tracking for spiffs you are running

This month:

• # of new customer wins/Actual & goal
• Total contract value/Actual & goal
• Tracking for spiffs you are running

This quarter:

• # of new customer wins/Actual & goal
• Total contract value/Actual & goal
• Tracking for spiffs you are running

Metrics are the heartbeat of a high performing sales team.  Carefully consider what is on your dashboard—you want it to be the most important data. Everything on the dashboard should be there for a reason. It’s hard to grow and scale a team without monitoring, and being transparent about both the leadership and management metrics.