Startups Stack Exchange Archive

As CEO, what should I watch in sales?

• posted by: David Thielen on 2014-12-13
• tagged: sales, management
• score: 5

Obviously sales closed each month, but that is not sufficient to insure everyone is working effectively. On the flip side, tracking each reps daily activities is definitely getting too far down in the details.

So what should I be watching, following, etc.? We have and use SFDC so I can get reports from that. But the question for reports is, which ones? And how best to use them.

And suggestions outside of SFDC too as I assume it isn’t just looking at a set of reports.

Answer 1658

• posted by: Denis de Bernardy on 2014-12-15
• score: 4

In practical terms, you usually want to track sales using three groups of metrics:

• Closure rate, costs, and time to close to get a first meeting when approaching new prospects.
• Closure rate, revenue, costs, and time to close related to selling things to new clients
• Closure rate, revenue, costs, and time to close related to up-selling things to existing clients

You’ll want growth rates for each one in addition.

This applies to both offline and online sales, direct and indirect.

That said, don’t waste too much time on any of these particular metrics – unless of course, you lack a marketing and sales director in charge of doing this kind of stuff for you.

As the CEO, what you really should be worrying about is tracking the sales channels:

• Which channels currently bring the most bang for the buck?
• Can you get a greater bang by pouring more resources into those that do?
• Which channels yield quick to close sales vs slow to close sales?
• Which channels yield small sales vs large sales?
• Which channels can be optimized further? What are the costs involved to do so?
• Which new channels are low hanging fruits that can be easily tapped and turned into revenue?
• Which new channels have high growth potential, and how much would it cost to tap them?

… and so forth.

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