Too Many Sales Metrics? How to Choose One KPI That Drives Revenue

Too Many Metrics, Not Enough Direction: Why Your CRM Feels Like a Noisy Dashboard

I was driving down the road and in the space of about 30 seconds, I heard:
“Police reported ahead.”
“In 2 miles exit right to I-95 South.”
“Car reported on shoulder ahead.”
“Construction reported ahead.”

Geez! If you use Waze, this has probably happened to you.

If you were hoping for a drive of solace, it’s an awful interruption. But if you want to be prepared for whatever you might “hit” along the way, it’s critical information.

What if that same real-time intelligence was shouted from your CRM? Would it be helpful—or just more noise?

And there lies the problem.

Waze knows what is and isn’t critical. But do you?

When I glanced at my displays, a boatload of metrics were screaming for attention between the Waze screen and my car dash:

• Speed in MPH
• Tachometer in RPM
• Mileage in MPG
• Distance driven in Miles
• Miles to empty
• Outside temperature
• Time
• Time until arrival
• Estimated arrival time (ETA)
• Destination in miles
• Tire pressure in PSI
• Fuel level
• Engine temperature
• Distance to next turn

That’s 14 different metrics. Most were irrelevant to the immediate trip. The only ones that actually mattered were speed, miles to empty, and arrival time. Just 3 of 14. And if I had to pick one single metric to watch, it was arrival time. Everything else was nice-to-know background noise. The car beeps three times if I’m driving more than 10 MPH over the speed limit, and pops up a dashboard alert when fuel is low—so arrival time is the single KPI that keeps me on track.

Your CRM is exactly like my dashboard with lots of gauges screaming at once, and only a few showing whether you’ll actually arrive at quota, and on time.

There should be at least 14 (and often many more) metrics you can review in your CRM. But if you had to narrow it down to one—the single forward-looking metric that drives revenue—which would it be?

Here are 23 sales metrics (I’ve combined “Average X” and “X by Salesperson” for simplicity) to choose from:

(All 23 matter at some point, but only the 7 on the right are true forward-looking indicators. A real KPI is almost always one of these.)

Which is your one KPI? Perhaps this 2-minute video rant will help.

The One Thing You Must Understand About Future Revenue

You can’t control what closes.

Whether you’re a salesperson, manager, or leader, your influence on any given opportunity diminishes sharply as you approach closing time. That influence depends heavily on sales cycle length. In a six-month cycle, you have real power in months one and two—not month six.

Here’s where three lagging indicators become extremely useful:

1. Monthly Goal
2. Average Sale
3. Win Rate

With just those three numbers for each salesperson, you can calculate exactly how many opportunities (and of what value) must enter the pipeline each month to crush goals.

Take Bob, our chronic under-performer, with a six-month sales cycle:

• Win Rate: 20%
• Monthly Goal: $100,000
• Average Sale: $25,000

To close $100K in November, Bob must add 20 new opportunities worth a combined $500,000 to his pipeline in May—and every month thereafter. That’s 5 per week. 1 per day.

That is Bob’s one and only KPI: one new qualified opportunity per day. Period.

Bob and his manager should be laser-focused on that single number. Everything else flows from it.

Mary, a much better performer, has a win rate of 50%, a monthly goal of $150,000 and an average sale of $50,000. Mary needs only 6 opportunities worth $300,000 entering her pipeline each month. 1.5 new opportunities per week. Round it up to 2 and Mary crushes her monthly goal!

The contrast between Bob and Mary is huge. Bob sucks, and so he has to work so much harder to net less in revenue. That is why Bob needs to be trained and coached up. He’ll get better, the win rate and average sale will improve, and the monthly requirements will subside. And Mary, with the same coaching, will become even better!

One problem worth noting is that sales managers score an average of only 57% on the Pipeline Management competency. It’s one of those scores where the gap between the most and least effective sales managers is very small. 57 is 57. Lots of room for improvement!!

KPIs are tricky. Different organizations (and even different salespeople) may need to emphasize different ones at different times. But as leaders pay closer attention to the right KPIs and the cascading metrics captured during each opportunity and sales cycle, the bottlenecks become obvious—the “combustion points” where conversion rates fall apart.

Most companies need help aligning goals, pipelines, and CRMs with the right training and coaching to move past those bottlenecks.

Don’t drive blind. Let’s get your team’s KPIs, pipelines, and dashboards pointing in the right direction so you arrive at quota on time. Reach out here and we’ll help.