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Eleanor Preston

AMA: Twilio Regional Vice President, Retail Sales, Eleanor Preston on Sales KPIs

December 4 @ 10:00AM PT

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  1. What's your process for figuring out what metrics to hold sales accountable for?

    Eleanor Preston
    Eleanor Preston

    Twilio Regional Vice President, Retail Sales • 1y

    I alluded to this in an earlier question, there will also be those KPIs that come as "standard" to the sales job. How many calls did you have in a week, how many discovery calls vs demo calls, etc. However, what I pay most attention to is what KPIs do top sellers consistently hit? Do they do more in-person meetings? Do they leverage Executives more? How often do they expand into another business unit in an org? I map out KPIs based on top performers and hold reps accountable to that activity.

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  2. What are some sales kpis that are hard to track or less commonly tracked but that you think move the needle?

    Eleanor Preston
    Eleanor Preston

    Twilio Regional Vice President, Retail Sales • 1y

    So much of the sales KPI tracking has been automated (# meetings, Pipeline generated, funnel progression) so I find the manual ones more difficult to track, but move the needle the most. ie: how many on-sites did a rep conduct this quarter? It's a manual process for reps to log into a CRM and update a meeting field as "in person" and often gets over looked in an organization. There is no substitute for in person meetings. Another example that's difficult to track things like how many new busines ...Read More

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  3. Setting KPIs can often feel arbitrary, especially when entering new markets. How do you get past this uncertainty to set realistic goals?

    Eleanor Preston
    Eleanor Preston

    Twilio Regional Vice President, Retail Sales • 1y

    I really like this question because it's so true! Leadership can break a lot of trust by implementing incorrect KPIs for a segment. Experienced sellers will get angry they are treated like SDRs, etc. The best thing leaders can do is watch, listen, observe, and then replicate. What have the most successful reps done in this position? Are they having 10 calls a week, 2 on-sites a month, and 1 "high value activity" a quarter (like exec intro, hackathon, etc)? Standardize from the top and make excel ...Read More

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  4. I've seen plenty of sellers regularly miss on their KPIs, but still reach or exceed quota, so why have more than 1 KPI (quota attainment)?

    Eleanor Preston
    Eleanor Preston

    Twilio Regional Vice President, Retail Sales • 1y

    Love this question, too. It's true. There are a few reasons:

    1. You will always have outliers in a sales org. Sometimes a rep has a windfall and reaches quota without hitting KPIs, I've seen it. But the point of KPIs is the make success repeatable.

    2. It gives your managers a tool kit to help coach and manage performance.

    3. How do you eat an entire elephant? One bite at a time. Each KPI is a "bite" and we do best when faced with a big task (annual quota) to break it down to as small of pieces as we can.

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  5. What role do Sales KPIs play in improving forecast accuracy, especially in unpredictable markets, and what approaches help teams make the most of these metrics?

    Eleanor Preston
    Eleanor Preston

    Twilio Regional Vice President, Retail Sales • 1y

    There is a give and take with standardizing KPIs but also having enough variance to account for things segment, (Strat, Ent, MM, Growth) number of accounts, and so on. The easiest way to have consistency and also provide a lens to inspect forecast is by implementing standardization when possible. No matter what segment you're in or how many accounts you have, if a deal is 345 days old... that's going to tell me something about the forecast accuracy of the stage it's in. I am a big fan of ensurin ...Read More

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