Delivering new sales revenue is a common theme that comes up with the clients I work with. In fact, I can’t think of a client that has more sales activity than they know what to do with, and most are always looking for ways to build or grow their sales pipeline.
There a lot of variables that go into building a great sales pipeline, and marketing plays a big part in developing qualified leads, but another big variable is measuring the right behaviour that drives the right results. To do this, we must put the ‘lead’ indicators in place.
I often get the question, “What lead indicators should I be measuring?” As a coach, I give the typical coach answer, “It depends.” I know what you’re thinking, that’s no answer at all, but it really does depend. There is no cookie-cutter solution that works for every company. It depends on what the steps are in your sales process/funnel. First, we need to create a flowchart of every step that takes place from inception to close. Once we have this, we can determine what activities we want to measure that drive the right behaviour and build the pipeline to drive the results we need.
Here are some common lead sales indicators I have personally used and have seen used by successful companies.
- Prospects Identified
- Sales Qualified Leads
- Attempts
Outgoing Calls
Emails - Conversations
Discovery
Pain Identified - Appointments Set
1st Appointment
2nd Appointment - Face to Face Meetings
- Proposals Presented
- Proposals Pending
- No’s Received
- Closed/Won
At the end of the day, as with most other challenges, there is no silver bullet. You have to do the hard work, and driving the right behaviour is the most effective thing we can do to get predictable .
