AMA: HubSpot Director Sales DACH, Yusuf Bulan on Sales KPIs

The sales equation is quite simple: Pipeline x Average Sales Price x Close Rate = Revenue If not all KPIs are measured leading to this equation we are missing out. Focus should be on the area with the biggest gap! Also if you have strategic objectives like Net New Growth or shift in a product mix or geographic expansion those KPIs become more relevant. So the importance of KPIs are dependent upon priorities. The basic function is the above mentioned sales equation.

The fundamental sales OKRs are Revenue, Pipeline and Activities leading to pipeline generation. Pipeline generated x Average Sales Price x Close Rate = Revenue Modern sales tools will provide you with plenty of KPIs, however, the context and the priorities of the business will determine the importance of individual KPI. If the business wants to grow by productivity increase rather than headcount growth, the Productivity Per Rep (PPR) is a key driver. Sales Cycle, Close Rate and Average Sales Price become increasingly important. If headcount growth is a key driver then Average Tenure, Attrition, Time to hire/ramp etc. become more relevant

It all starts with the business and strategic objectives of the company: Growth Rate, Geographical Expansion, Product Mix etc. etc. are the determining factors of the KPIs. Once established it comes down to Revenue, Pipeline and Activities within those objectives. There will be a number of subsets within those categories but ultimately they will all lead to those fundamental KPIs

Everyone should own the KPIs which are relevant to achieving the goals. If you can't influence the KPI they become less relevant and impactful. The context of the KPIs are also important if the intent is to drive behaviour. If there is no attention from management to KPIs this is probably also a good indication that they are no longer a priority.

KPIs which are not tied to objectives, initiatives or strategic goals are irrelevant. E.g. why should someone focus on ratio between emails sent to meetings booked if meetings will only be scheduled via phone. Why looking at seasonality or amount of revenue booked in the final 2 days if the pattern stays the same month over month or quarter over quarter?

There are plenty of KPIs which are not relevant if not used in the right context. Ultimately, revenue is the most important KPIs in sales. You can look at plenty of activity KPIs which are less important when revenue and pipeline are in good health. If not, then activities become more important. So it depends on the context.

Quarterly and annual OKR's on an individual level need to be broken down from the Company/Segment/Team Level. Once the overall priorities are defined you can identify the contribution on the individual level. I would say to define projects based on the gaps you are seeing and cascade them down to the individual level. Ultimately, the sales goal will be defined by the revenue goal broken down by segment and product. The expected growth rate will determine the priorities. Will the growth come from productivity increase per rep or by headcount growth? Do you have a Total addressable market (TAM) constraint? If yes, how can you increase that? Once those types of questions are answered the goal will be to monitor progress based on KPIs. Most importantly, Revenue, Pipeline and Activities (the order matters!) If Revenue and pipeline is in good order activities become less of an issue. If not, activities need to be looked at to build enough pipeline to reach revenue targets!

I would recommend to share KPIs very early on. Transparency helps to set expectations and progress. It allows to celebrate success and also to identify areas for improvement. It also creates a competitive mindset which we want to see amongst sales teams. (In a healthy manner!) If the question is referring to the planning phase, then I would say to socialize KPIs with the management team (cross functional leaders) and only share once they are confirmed

If targets are reached you want to ensure that it will stay that way. So pipeline is very important as well. If pipeline is in good health, you are in a good spot. If not you need to ensure that the activity levels are up. Also, you want to be aware of an upcoming gap in the future. Therefore you need indicators alerting you ahead of time.

KPIs around deal progression can help to identify trends in sales duration, close rate and similar. So changes in the typical pipeline coverage needed can be observed early on. This will be a leading indicator for pipeline gaps and can trigger required actions. Effective sales strategies can include multi-threading and broader stakeholder management. If there is a shift in buying personas this should also be identified and addressed.

KPIs can certainly help to improve forecast accuracy. You can even build models to predict an outcome with a high accuracy. Deal velocity, pipeline coverage in different sales stages and forecast categories will help to predict the outcome. The more accurate data is available the better the models will become. This of course is on a pipeline level rather than on the deal level. No model can improve sales execution :-) This will become more difficult in unpredictable markets of course, however, still possible. Maybe with a higher range of accuracy.

Absolutely yes! We celebrate high performers in team meetings (also broader teams) and share their attainment and other KPIs (not all of course). We also share averages amongst all team members so that everyone can compare themselves with others. We do have a culture of transparency established very early on.