5 KPIs to destroy the competition

In this webinar, Upsales CEO Daniel Wikberg talks about the value of setting realistic and competitive KPIs, why some CEOs still don't do this, and the five KPIs that Upsales are currently working towards.

As Daniel says in the podcast, when you get your KPIs right, it can have a major impact on your sales results.

Top Three Takeaways

• Most companies have results-orientated KPIs, but many do not have leading KPIs in place.
• While results-orientated KPIs are important, they are also lagging, which means by the time you have the data, there is no action that can be taken to make changes.
• Actionable KPIs should focus on things that you can change in the short-term future to achieve the KPI rather than KPIs that can only be influenced by major changes each financial quarter.

The Average Pipeline Age vs The Average Win Cycle

In the webinar, Daniel explains that early on, he was worried about Upsales' selling cycle. 

"I thought we had a problem with our selling cycle, so I started buying all this sales literature about compressing the sales cycle," he explains. 

But he quickly realised they had a different issue, where their team were spending too much time on deals that were never going to materialise.

Therefore, he created the average pipeline age vs average win cycle metric to identify where most deals took place and when to give up on a deal as it moves out of that area, maximising the team's time and effort.

Pushed Deals & Appointment Completion Ratio

Daniel admits that sales are not an exact science. You can measure a lot of aspects, but ultimately whether you win or lose a deal comes down to the quality of the sales effort.

Upsales use this KPI to identify which sales reps might have quality issues and may require additional coaching to get to the top of their game.

If a lot of sales calls are getting cancelled, or deals are getting pushed down the pipeline, that information shows you that sales rep needs some additional coaching to improve their skills.

Share of Wallet

Share of wallet is a simple exercise, listing customers in a customer portfolio, taking their annual turnover and comparing it next to your trailing 12 months of sales. Then, divide them by each other, and you will have your share of wallet KPI figure.

From here, you can identify how much your best customers are investing in your company in comparison to their profits, and you can use that data to set a benchmark that you try and achieve with your other customers and leads.

It's an excellent KPI for account managers to identify upsell opportunities.

First-Year Growth

Daniel and the team began to notice there was a clear separation between the companies they worked with that went on to become very successful over the course of 5 or so years compared to others that churned within the first year.

Rather than sitting around scratching their heads, they went out trying to identify why that might be. 

This led to interesting insights into how sales team members were working based on the configuration of their commission. While some sales members were very successful in closing deals on paper, and their commission was high, they were then spending much less time on building customer value, which led to much more churn.

In comparison, some team members were not converting as high percentages at first, but the clients they were converting went on to long-term, high-quality Upsales customers.

In response to this insight, Daniel created a first-year growth per sales rep KPI to ensure this type of issue didn't fall through the net in the future.

Number of New CEOs Per Week

As Daniel explains, "Not all leads are created equal." So while the team do track the volume of leads and calls setup, they also rank these leads based on their position within the business, focusing heavily on calls with CEOs or other employees at a similar management level.

In 90% of the deals Upsales close, the CEO is involved, and therefore getting their buy-in is absolutely crucial for success.

Rather than sticking to industry norms and forcing the sales team to stick to a rigid checklist, Upsales put their faith in their sales team's skills, allowing them to make the judgment on who they need to talk to in order to close a sale.