You’re always keeping an eye on your sales pipeline, ensuring that your team of sales reps are always working new opportunities and closing deals. But the one thing you really care about is the bottom line: deals won and dollars earned. So when you look at your reports for the month, what are the most important sales pipeline metrics to consider?
(For even more detailed information about sales metrics, check out our FREE eBook: The Right Metrics for Your Inside Sales Team.)
1. Pipeline Growth Over Time
If your overall sales pipeline value is shrinking, you could run out of new opportunities to chase in the upcoming quarter, leading to a missed sales goal. It’s vital to keep your sales pipeline full and growing ever-larger, in order to give your team the chance to close new deals.
In this report, ideally, you want to see the green line head up and to the right, as it does here. This shows that your team is adding a higher number of new opportunities to the sales pipeline at a quicker rate than old opportunities exit the pipeline, as your team either closes or loses deals. By keeping this net growth rate healthy, you can maintain a sufficient number of new opportunities for your team to work.
2. Opportunities Likely to Close in Current Pipeline
You already know the overall value of the opportunities in your sales pipeline, but which of those opportunities is your team most likely to close in this time period? You can find this out by analyzing the size of each opportunity, the momentum in the pipeline, and the number of days it’s already been in the pipeline. By looking at historical pipeline data, you can extrapolate the likelihood of each deal closing.
In this report, you can see that an $80K opportunity that has been in the pipeline for 18 days has about a 10% chance of closing, while a $100K opportunity that just entered your pipeline has less than 1% chance of closing. By looking at the numbers, you can tell your team to prioritize and target specific opportunities from $5K to $10K that have been in the pipeline for less than 20 days, for the highest rate of likely success. This is your sweet spot of pipeline opportunities.
3. Pipeline Value by Stage
Want to know the total value of the deals that you can expect to close in the upcoming quarter? You can look at the sales pipeline value by stage and consider just the late-stage opportunities to get a good idea of what to expect in revenue next month.
In this report, you have more than $5 million dollars worth of deals in your pipeline today, however you know you can’t expect all of those opportunities to close soon. By looking just at the deals in the Technical Fit and especially the Closing Stages, you can get a better idea of the deals that will likely close in the upcoming months. This helps you forecast more accurately, so there’s no surprises in the upcoming quarter.
Keep an eye on the prize with these three vital sales pipeline metrics that delve deep into your sales pipeline. Learn how your pipeline is growing, what stage your opportunities are in, and which are likely to close. By practicing effective sales pipeline management and focusing on these three reports, you can ensure your sales team hits their goals next quarter.
