AMA: HubSpot Director of Sales, Katie Walsh on Sales KPIs

Deal Concentration Risk and it's one of the most dangerous blind spots in pipeline management. The Problem: Teams hit their 3x or 4x pipeline coverage target, but 40% of that coverage comes from 2-3 massive deals. When one of those whales dies, you don't just lose the deal - you lose your entire quarter. The KPI Most Teams Miss: "Top 3 Deal Dependency Ratio" - What percentage of your forecast comes from your three largest deals? If it's over 30%, you're in danger. Why It's Deadly: Large deals ca ...Read More

The Framework That Works: Focus on leading indicators that reps can control, not just lagging outcomes they can't. Revenue Growth: Objective: Accelerate revenue growth in target segments KR1: Achieve $X ARR from X employee companies KR2: Increase average deal size by x% on enterprise deals KR3: Hit 105% of quarterly quota with 85%+ of reps at goal Pipeline Health: Objective: Build predictable, high-quality pipeline KR1: Maintain 4x pipeline coverage with 90%+ qualification accuracy KR2: Achieve ...Read More

Champion Engagement Score Track how often your internal champion initiates contact vs. you chasing them. Champions who go quiet = deals that die. Most CRMs can't measure this automatically, but it's pure gold. Discovery Question Quality Not just "did they do discovery," but did they ask about budget, timeline, decision process, and consequences of status quo? You'd be shocked how many reps skip the hard questions. Proposal-to-Signature Velocity Everyone tracks overall cycle time, but the proposa ...Read More

Typical KPIs like stage conversion rates, deal velocity, and pipeline coverage are useful signals, but they don’t always reveal why deals are slowing down and tend to be a lagging indicator. For example, a high volume of deals stuck in discovery might look like a stage conversion issue, but the real bottleneck could be reps not uncovering impact or not multithreading with the right personas. KPIs show where friction is, but not always the root cause.In SMB: Simplify the buying experience, remove ...Read More

KPIs alone don't improve forecast accuracy - disciplined pipeline management does. Most teams are drowning in metrics but can't predict what's actually going to close next month. The KPIs That Actually Matter for Forecasting: Stage progression velocity (how fast deals move, not just where they sit) Close date changes per deal (serial date pushers are red flags) Activity quality in late stages (are we still "checking in" or driving decisions?) DM direct involvement For Unpredictable Markets (like ...Read More