Everyone HATES Monday morning. The transition from the leisurely weekend to the demanding week ahead can be a tough one. Yet, Monday morning is also one of the most critical times in any company’s week. It is important to get off on the right foot and set the tone for a productive week.
Therefore, sales managers will appreciate having a regular cadence of consistent sales metrics and sales reports on their desk each Monday morning. These reports should provide an overview of what happened last week and what needs to be focused on in the week to come.
Here are the three critical sales metrics and sales reports that all sales managers need on their desk first thing every Monday morning.
(For even more detailed information about sales metrics, check out our FREE eBook: The Right Metrics for Your Inside Sales Team.)
Sales Trending Report
Sales teams – sales managers and their reps – are measured against their monthly quota. This number should be derived from past results, while ambitiously raising the bar for anticipated sales and company growth during this month. Sales managers are expected to guide their team and ensure that, collectively, the reps hit their number.
Part of reaching a monthly quota includes reaching a weekly quota, which entails daily quotas. Take your monthly bookings quota and divide that by 4 or 5 (depending on the number of weeks) and 28, 29, 30 or 31 (depending on what month it is) to get your average bookings value that you need to close each day. Then, look at your sales trending report each Monday to determine if your team is on track to hit this goal.
Look at the report above. The solid green line represents the month-to-date goal, with the solid blue line indicating where your team is for the month thus far. If your blue line is consistently above – or at least near – the green line, that should tell you that your sales team is on track to hit its collective goal for the month.
Pipeline and Forecast Review
Many sales organizations hold regular pipeline review and sales forecasting meetings – although most tend to hold them jointly, which is a poor practice – but even before the meetings, it is essential that sales managers have a clear idea of how their team is doing in each area.
The pipeline review is a no-brainer – reps can’t close deals unless there are opportunities in the pipeline for them to work on in the first place. There are several key sales metrics that are integral to a pipeline review report – such as how the pipeline is changing over time and what sources are contributing most to the pipeline – but for the purposes of your weekly Monday morning report, there is only one metric that is essential: how much each rep has in his or her pipeline. Use this report to ensure that not only are opportunities more or less evenly distributed among reps, but that no rep is left wanting for opportunities while another is swamped with too many opportunities to work efficiently.
Meanwhile, the sales forecasting report should be used to accurately assess the present reporting period, identify which reps need coaching help to close forecasted deals and to purge stagnant or bloated opportunities in your pipeline.
Using historical sales stage conversion rates and the current opportunity pipeline, sales managers can create a more accurate metrics-driven sales forecast that is based on pipeline stages rather than traditional forecasting stages. Managers should also keep forecast killers in mind when looking at this report – for instance, deals that are significantly greater in size should be forecasted differently, as they will have a longer sales cycle and a lower probability to close.
Rep activities over the past 7 days
Finally, it’s important to make sure that your reps are all performing the activities expected of them. Whether this means making 60 dials a day, sending out 35 prospecting emails a week or any number of other attainable output targets, it is critical that all of your reps are hitting these goals. Looking at the activities report will let you know which of your reps hit their targets last week and which ones fell short. You can then find out why those reps who fell short did so, and apply sales coaching and sales management as necessary.
Raw activities are easy sales metrics to track – sales reps should be expected to log all of their activities within their CRM. However, where managers can really gain meaningful insight is by looking at the conversion ratios of these activities, i.e. how efficient reps are being with their activities. Ninety dials a day is an impressive-looking number, but what if none of those dials lead to connects and eventually deals? Isn’t the rep who only made 50 dials, but was able to connect with 15 of them, that much more valuable?
Having each of these three sales metrics and sales reports on your desk every Monday morning will help you set the tone for your team to have a productive week. Are there any other essential sales metrics you need every Monday? Share them below!
