AMA: Zendesk Director, Commercial Sales - West, Rob Vitulano on Sales KPIs

KPIs drive the behavior you expect to see from your Sales team. Quota attainment is typically the primary focus for Sales teams, how you achieve those results can alter the direction of your business. Quota from New Logos vs Expansion customers, will impact your future revenue streams differently. Selling a core product vs cross-selling additional products can drive customer retention and ultimately impact churn down the road. Landing a monthly contract vs multi-year commitment allows you to invest more confidently for the future. Identify what's most important for your business and hold your sellers accountable to them. Revenue alone should not be the only KPI for your Sellers.

Re-evaluating KPIs on a regular basis is a healthy practice for your company. Just because it worked this year, doesn't mean those same motions will work next. For instance, in year's past, you may have been okay working with a Business Head to justify budget. Nowadays, CFO's are scrutinizing expenses more than ever, expecting to see the R in ROI. If you are not involving them early, your success rate is likely suffering. You'll want to evaluate the attributes making up your wins vs the deals you lose, before determining what to use moving forward. It could be access to power, Executive alignment, departments involved, breadth of solution to differentiate from competition, on-sites delivered, problems you're solving, or length of sales cycle. Identify your trends and set those as your targets. Then make sure you have a simply process to track the data and hold your sellers accountable.

KPIs are best socialized in the largest setting, where they are relevant for all stakeholders. This establishes transparency and consistency for those who it applies to. For smaller companies this might be a Sales All Hands, while larger organizations might be done in a Team Meeting. Of course, you'll want to allow for questions and clarity to be proven. This can be done in either a group setting, but I also suggest you give space in a 1:1 for nuanced questions to be addressed. Every seller should be crystal clear on what their goals are and how they are being measured. Once your measurement period is up, whether that be monthly, quarterly, semi-annually, or annually, it is important to reflect with your seller on their specific performance and how it compared to expectations. Speak about what they did to exceed expectations (have them share best practices with their colleagues) as well as what got in their ways from achieving expectations (coaching opportunity on removing obstacles). KPIs should not be a secret and how sellers are performing against them should be very transparent. Do your sellers a favor and don't sugar coat the performance. Clear is Kind.

Many businesses focus on the effectiveness of a seller, where most of the attention should be. However, it can be very important to look at the effectiveness of those supporting your sellers, by measuring AE ramp time. If you can turn a 6 months period into say 4 months, you not only improve your revenue, but you can also improve the AE experience, leading to better employee satisfaction, higher referral rates, and lower attrition.

Good OKRs define the output you are looking to achieve. Be clear in your outcome and give your sellers the space to define their process. Your managers can lean in on process suggestions, if they need help there. It can be easy to focus on effort metrics like volume of calls or emails, however if the true goal is simply the weekly PipeGen that was achieved or amount of revenue that was booked, use them as your North Star. For roles where they also act as Post-Sales/Success, instead of monitoring meetings, you may want to hold the team accountable to product activation, usage milestones, or active users.