What are good sales OKRs?

Here is my favorite hit list of OKRs for Sales:

*ASP

*Average Sales Cycle

*# of net new logos

*Total discos scheduled

*Percentage to quota

I've been at different organizations that also liked to measure the following:

• Total Appointments//Discos
• Total Pitches Completed
• Total Number of Net New Logos
• Total Transactions from Cross Sells
• Total Selling Days in Month//Quarter
• Total Calls//Emails (Calls2Set +Emails2Set Ratio)
• Total Talk Time
• % to Quota
• Selling Days
• Show Ratio
• Average Deal Size

I live by "RGA" = Revenue Generating Activities 

OKRs can vary depending on how your specific business and team are measured. It is crucial to first understand what the business OKRs are before you can be prescriptive in delineating key objectives to your respective team.

Team metrics:

• Data trends - SCL, ACV, WR + pipeline (3x)
• Days within stage
• ACV (average contract value)
• ASC (average sales cycle)
• Delineated by stage
• WR (win rate)
• Delineated by stage
• New logos
• New logo vs. expansion revenue
• SQO to SAO production (sales qualified to sales accepted opportunity)
• Your team should have ~3-4x pipeline coverage in order to feel confident in attaining the number
• Activity to SQO production (how many activities until a meeting is booked)
• % to quota attainment
• There is a fine balance. ~125%+ attainment across the team to me means the number is too attainable. I like to see performance average ~90-95% attainment across a team by region.

Business Metrics

Great metrics to ask in an interview

• Run rate vs. growth rate
• Path to profitability
• At scale, do these unit economics work?
• Revenue now vs. targets for the year vs. projections
• Revenue streams
• Market share
• CAC (Customer acquisition costs)
• NDR (Net dollar retention)
• What is the current valuation vs. projection for next year

Here are a few good OKRs that I focus on within my region:

• Objective: Increase Revenue Growth

  • Result: Increase sales stage conversation rate by x %

  • Result: Increase average deal size by x %

• Objective: Enhance Customer Retention & Satisfaction

  • Result: Increase net dollar retention rate for existing enterprise clients

  • Result: Generate a certain percentage of revenue from upselling and expanding customers.

• Objective: Optimize Sales Process & Efficiency

  • Result: Decrease sales cycle duration by x %

  • Result: Improve win rate of inbound qualified leads

  • Result: Implement a new tool such as CI to improve productivity

Since nearly everything is quantified in sales, OKR's can sometimes come across as redundant and inconvenient to manage to the uninitiated.

But OKR's are an amazing vehicle to drive focus on the core strategic initiatives that will generate greater success, and gain cross-functional alignment, visibility and support in achieving these goals. There are two major benefits IMO opinion in defining Sales OKR's:

1. Clarity - the process of defining Objectives and Key Results, if applied with rigor and assistance from someone truly knowledgeable in the process, can provide immense clarity into what you're looking to achieve and how to achieve it. The question was about the output, but let's not overlook how valuable the process can be to get really crystal clear on the Objectives that will have an outsized impact on team results.

2. Cross-functional alignment - OKR's are a company initiative, not a Sales initiative. This means it's a common language across departments, that can be used to unite teams in a shared mission, and increase visibility in what other departments can do to help each other out in achieving their objectives. There are few other tools that are as impactful as a supporting team attached to one of your KR's having to read out progress each week to their leadership. Every sales person wants more support from the company to sell. If it's possible to define exactly what that support is, who it's from , and tie it to a KR... drumroll please... you just got the support you needed via OKR's!

So what defines good Sales OKR's? First step is in accurately defining the highest priority Objectives, that if achieved, would have a greater impact on Sales than anything else this quarter. A couple nuances to address:

1. Typically there are top line company objectives that are rolled out first, and then all departments (including Sales) localize their objectives to support some or all of the overall company objective. This is important to call out, as this exercise of connecting Sales goals to Company goals helps define the focus of OKR's.

2. The localizing of company objectives should generally just change the wording of the Objectives to ensure they align, but the big rocks that sales should focus on are typically in the following categories

   • Building a High Performance Sales Culture (hiring, ramping, setting a high bar for execution, focus on improvement of the culture)

   • Building Pipeline

   • Deal Execution - win rate, competitive win rate, utilizing resources more effectively to improve results, closing bigger deals/more deals

   • Executing new strategies to increase deal size, improve velocity, or open up new markets to increase TAM.

Under those big rocks, you'll need to define the KR's that get you there. They need to be measurable, a stretch but achievable, and simple to track. This is harder than it sounds - but the process of refining these helps you gain that clarity.

This is where you can really lean into intentionally setting up cross-functional goals, and align the support of the company to help Sales achieve their Objectives. A few examples:

• If the goal is getting more customers in an industry - one KR could be to sign up 3 current referenceable customers for case studies. This aligns sales and marketing to build assets so you have more stories and social proof to help you sell into this industry. You could then have an additional KR on how many net new customers you are closing that quarter in that industry.

• If you're looking to increase ACV as part of a Deal Execution objective, often there is a KR related to selling add-on products. You could align with the Product & Solutions Engineering teams to produce more assets, custom demo environments, or a new Guru card to improve sales' ability to sell this feature. Paired with an attach rate goal, this can be a powerful combo.

• If there is a Culture objective, and you have a Culture survey in your org, addressing one of the key items that has been flagged by the team is a great way to show commitment towards improving the environment. For example there could be a new tool that addresses a major gap or point of friction for AE's. Setting roll out dates with RevOps that map to improved productivity is motivating to the team.

While every company is different, sales Objectives are going to generally fall into one of 4 major categories outlined above. These need to be mapped to the company Objectives, and then it's important to lean into the benefits that the OKR process provides when defining KR's. Clarity in how to hit your Objectives. Visibility across the org of the key strategies you're leaning into the hit your Objectives. Cross-Functional alignment to get all teams rowing in the same direction to achieve shared Objectives.

Sales OKRs should be designed to align with the overall business objectives and drive measurable outcomes that contribute to revenue growth and customer success. Here are some examples of good sales OKRs:

1. Objective: Increase Revenue

• Key Result 1: Achieve a 20% increase in monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by the end of the quarter.

• Key Result 2: Close 50 new deals with high-value clients within the target market.

• Key Result 3: Increase average deal size by 15% through upselling and cross-selling additional products or services.

2. Objective: Expand Market Reach

• Key Result 1: Enter three new geographic markets and generate $100,000 in revenue from each market within six months.

• Key Result 2: Increase brand awareness and market visibility by doubling the number of qualified leads generated from inbound marketing efforts.

• Key Result 3: Secure partnerships with five strategic channel partners to extend the company's reach and access new customer segments.

3. Objective: Improve Sales Efficiency

• Key Result 1: Reduce the sales cycle length by 20% through process optimization and improved lead qualification.

• Key Result 2: Increase the conversion rate from qualified leads to closed deals by 15% through targeted sales enablement and training initiatives.

• Key Result 3: Implement a new CRM system and achieve 100% adoption among the sales team within three months to improve data accuracy and visibility.

4. Objective: Enhance Customer Satisfaction

• Key Result 1: Achieve a Net Promoter Score (NPS) of 9 or above by the end of the year through proactive customer engagement and support.

• Key Result 2: Reduce customer churn rate by 25% through proactive account management and retention efforts.

• Key Result 3: Increase customer lifetime value (CLV) by 20% by driving upsell and cross-sell opportunities and delivering exceptional value to customers.

5. Objective: Foster Team Development

• Key Result 1: Implement a structured onboarding program for new sales hires and achieve 100% completion within 30 days of joining.

• Key Result 2: Provide ongoing training and development opportunities for the sales team, resulting in a 10% increase in average performance metrics (e.g., conversion rate, quota attainment).

• Key Result 3: Foster a culture of collaboration and accountability within the sales team, as measured by a 15% increase in team satisfaction scores.

These examples illustrate how sales OKRs can be structured to align with broader business goals and drive measurable outcomes that contribute to revenue growth, market expansion, operational efficiency, customer satisfaction, and team development. Each OKR should be ambitious yet achievable, with clear metrics and milestones to track progress and success.

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.

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