Leading and Lagging Indicators

Lagging indicators shine a light on the past but leading indicators predict the future!
Metrics in sales management - Leading and Lagging Indicators

Every sales team uses KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) to measure a sales team’s performance such as…

Gross sales

Net RevenueRevenue Revenue is the amount of money a business generates during a specific period such as a year or a quarter; also called sales.

Products Sold

As important as they are these particular KPIs are actually lagging indicators and while they provide good information, it is too late to impact them. Even more important are the frequently overlooked leading indicators of success and we will focus on both here. For an in-depth look at sales metricsMetrics Metrics  are quantities that are measured and used to:, download the eBook “Metrics In Sales Management – Leading & Lagging Indicators” and/or review the information provided on this page.

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Lagging Indicators

Lagging Indicators are important because they provide a clear analysis of what has happened thus far. They can help you compare dataData Data is a set of quantitative and qualitative facts that can be used as reference or inputs for computations, analyses, descriptions, predictions, reasoning and planning. points like the volume of sales vs gross marginGross Margin Gross Margin refers to total sales minus the cost of goods sold (COGS). Median for true SaaS cos is 71%, but what are considered to be “good margins” varies in SaaS. If you are running a marketplace/transaction revenue business, be very clear about gross margin. – you may be selling a lot but reps are discounting heavily and eroding margin. Or through analysis, you can see the win ratios for certain salespeople lag behind others which provides good information for targeted coaching.

Sales metrics in sales management in Sales CRM

Examples of Lagging Indicators include:

  • Revenue

  • # of units sold

  • Gross margin

  • # of different products sold

  • Market share

  • Gross revenue

  • # of deals won

  • # of deals lost

You should quickly define which lagging indicators are important to your business and set up a schedule of autogenerated reports to review on a weekly or monthly basis as necessary.

Leading Indicators › LEADS

InboundInbound Inbound refers to interest (could be sales or marketing driven) that comes in – e.g. cold emails to you, submitted forms on your website, press inquiries, etc. Leads

These are generally people who are actively reaching out to you, prompted by activities such as…

Outbound Leads

These are contacts generated by active outreach by salespeople and others in the organizationOrganization Organization is a cohesive group of people working together and formally bound by a shared identity (e.g., one team, company, club, etc.) and a common purpose (e.g., business growth, athletic victory, etc.). and can include…

  • MarketingMarketing Marketing is the field, set of actions, or practice of making a product or service desirable to a target consumer segment, with the ultimate aim of effecting a purchase. campaigns

  • PR activity

  • News releases

  • Word of mouth

  • Events

  • Content marketing

  • Cold prospecting (phone, text, email, LinkedInLinkedIn LinkedIn is a social network for the business community. networking, etc.)

  • Personal contact

  • Networking events

  • Referrals

Leading Indicators › LEADS (continued)

Lead ScoringLead Scoring Lead Scoring is the process of assigning a relative value to each lead based on different criteria, with the aim of ranking leads in terms of engagement priority.: Assigning a score to a leadLead Lead refers to a prospect or potential customer (who can be an individual or organization) that exhibits interest in your service or product; or any additional information about such entity. in your CRM makes it very easy for salespeople to prioritize which leads to immediately focus on. Identify what the most important characteristics of any opportunity are needed in order to make it the right fit for your business.

Industry

The industries or verticals you focus on.

Size of company

What company segments you sell into such as small, medium, or enterpriseEnterprise Enterprise (in the context of sales) is a relatively large organization typically composed of multiple levels, locations, and departments which need multi-layer software systems that support collaboration across a large corporate environment..

Key pain points that your solutionSolution Solution is a combination of ideas, strategies, processes, technologies and services that effectively helps an organization achieve its goals or hurdle its challenges. solves

Based on the issues your productProduct Product refers to anything (an idea, item, service, process or information) that meets a need or a desire and is offered to a market, usually but not always at a price. or service would solve.

Source

For example: paid lead versus word of mouth, which would be far more valuable.

Intended purchase date

A more accelerated timeframe might score higher.
Leading Indicators › LEADS

This company is selling Air Conditioner units to commercial real estate builders. Each different criteria is awarded a score of 1-10 depending on how close it is to the ideal profile.

As you can see when you click the example – Lead A scored 36 out of 50, which makes it a very good lead whereas Lead B scored 20 out of 50, which makes it a poor fit.

Key Lead & Opportunity Formulas

Lead Qualification Rate

You’ll need to know the overall qualification rate of leads to opportunities. Here is a good formula for figuring that out:

Lead Qualification Rate

You’ll need to know the size of your average opportunity. A good formula for figuring that out is:

Average Opportunity Size

You also have the issue of the number of leads your sales team can handle. Here is the first formula for figuring this out for the team:

Sales Team Lead Capacity

The formula for figuring out what lead volume an individual sales rep can handle is:

Sales Rep Lead Capacity

Once leads convert to opportunities, then it is a matter of figuring out how many winning deals it takes to profitably sustain the company’s pipelinePipeline Sales pipelineis a visual representation of the stage prospects are in the sales process., and monitoring that. You’ll now need to know your Win Rate for opportunities— basically the opportunity-to-close conversation rate, the number of deals that actually turn to wins.

Here is a great formula for that:

Lead Conversion Rate

Tracking Leading & Lagging Indicators

in Pipeliner CRM

Pipeline View

In the main Pipeline view, you can see how many leads are available, how many opportunities are in each stage of the pipeline, and how many are overdue (per the average length of time for each stage).

Your primary leading indicators are right here:

Your primary leading indicators can be seen in Pipeliner CRM

On the right-hand side, the target is always visible, showing your primary lagging indicators, and how they are affected by all the leading indicators as they now stand.

primary lagging indicators are targets seen in Pipeliner CRM

In Pipeliner, the most important lagging indicator is something not available in any other CRM: the Archive. The Pipeliner CRM Archive is arranged exactly the same as the active pipeline view. Leads and opportunities contain all information present when they were archived—including Documents, Emails, Notes, Social Media interactions, Tasks, and Activities.

key performance indicator in lagging is archive deals which can be seen in Pipeliner CRM

As you can see, it’s not just the indicators, but how they are displayed and used. And with Pipeliner, that view has now gained another major improvement with its all-new feature called Sales Performance Insights. With Sales Performance Insights a sales leader or sales representative can see, at a glance, how various leading and lagging indicators have been combined so far for a sales unit, for reps as compared with other reps, and for territories as compared with others.

Not only can reps be compared, but so can various indicators for those reps.

Key performance indicator are Sales Performance Insights

Additional Resources

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