As a sales manager, one of the most important things you can do to ensure success is to track and measure the effectiveness of your sales engagement strategy. By understanding your sales engagement software’s return on investment (ROI), you can make data-driven decisions that optimize your sales performance and drive better results.
This blog post will walk you through the key metrics to track, how to set clear goals and benchmarks, and best practices for analyzing and utilizing the data to improve your sales engagement ROI. Whether you’re new to sales management or simply looking to improve your current strategy, this guide will provide valuable insights and actionable steps to help you succeed.
Understanding the Metrics that Matter
Sales engagement software can provide valuable insights into how your sales team is performing, but it’s important to know which metrics to track to accurately measure ROI.
Common metrics to track include:
- Sales pipeline velocity: This looks at the speed with which sales opportunities progress through the sales funnel toward a closed deal. Measuring sales pipeline velocity gives sales reps insight into where deals might be getting stuck or progressing quickly, so they can make adjustments accordingly to hit their sales targets.
- Connection rate: A sales connection rate is a measure of how successful sales agents are at making contact with prospective clients. It is determined by taking the total number of answered calls (that lasted a certain amount of time) made by sales agents to potential customers and dividing it by the total number of conversation attempts made for those sales targets.
- Win rate: The sales win rate is a measurement of sales effectiveness, which is calculated by dividing the number of sales that are successfully closed by the total number of sales opportunities that an organization identifies.
- Sales cycle length: Sales cycle length is the amount of time that passes between a sales opportunity being identified and a sales transaction being completed. It can vary widely depending on factors such as customer size and sophistication, sales competition, customer adoption timeline, and sales strategy.
Tracking the success of a tool using metrics like these can inform important business decisions, such as whether or not to continue using the tool, or to invest in similar tools in the future. Plus, it helps in benchmarking and setting up a standard for future sales tools.
Setting Clear Goals and Benchmarks
Setting clear goals and benchmarks is an essential step in measuring the ROI of your sales engagement software. Before you can track the success of the tool, you need to establish clear goals and identify key performance indicators (KPIs) that align with your company’s overall sales and revenue goals.
This will help you to set targets for each metric and track progress over time. It’s important to consider both short-term and long-term goals, and track progress over time to see if your sales engagement software is helping you meet those goals.
This will give you a clear picture of how the tool is impacting your sales performance and if the investment is worth it. Additionally, it will also help in identifying the areas where your sales team is performing well and areas where there is room for improvement.
Analyzing the Data
Once you have established clear goals and begun tracking key metrics, it’s time to analyze the data. Look for patterns and trends in the data, and identify areas where your sales team is performing well and areas where there is room for improvement.
When analyzing sales data, there are several clear, actionable steps that you can take to gain valuable insights and improve your sales engagement ROI:
- Identify patterns and trends in the data: Look for patterns and trends in the data that can help you understand how your sales team is performing and where there is room for improvement.
- Compare to benchmarks: Compare your data to the benchmarks you have set to see how your sales team is performing relative to your goals.
- Track progress over time: Track progress over time to see how your sales team is improving or declining.
- Identify bottlenecks: Identify bottlenecks in the sales process and look for opportunities to streamline and optimize.
- Utilize visualization tools: Utilize visualization tools, such as charts, interactive dashboards, and graphs, to help you easily understand and communicate the data.
- Segment data: Segment the data and analyze it in different ways to gain a more comprehensive understanding of your sales performance.
- Make data-driven decisions: Use the insights gained from analyzing the data to make data-driven decisions that can optimize your sales engagement strategy and improve ROI (ie, when’s the best time to cold call, which email template performs the best, what’s the best opening line on a phone call, etc.).
Continuously Monitoring and Improving
Measuring the ROI of your sales engagement software is an ongoing process, not a one-time event. Continuously monitor your metrics and adjust your strategy as needed to ensure that you are getting the most out of your sales engagement software. Look for opportunities to improve processes, and invest in additional sales engagement tools and resources as needed to drive better results.
Is your sales engagement software meeting (or exceeding) the ROI you have set out to reach? If not, it may be worth trying out a different sales engagement platform. Check out our recommendations for the best sales engagement software tools based on your CRM, or start a free trial of Kixie to see how a top-rated sales engagement platform can help transform your sales team’s performance.
