Sales metrics worth watching — and four that mislead you

Every metric you announce becomes a target, and every target gets gamed. So choose the ones that cannot be raised without real work.

Four that mislead

• Call count. Raised with twenty-second calls.
• Pipeline size. Raised by entering deals that do not exist. An inflated pipeline is worse than a small one because it postpones decisions.
• Proposals sent. Raised by sending proposals nobody asked for (a leading cause of deals dying).
• Satisfaction in the review meeting. People are polite. Read usage, not smiles.

Six worth watching

1) Close rate per stage. Not an overall rate, it shows exactly where deals leak.

2) Median days in stage. Shows where the process slows, and median, not average.

3) Deals past the upper quartile. A worklist, not a number: each one needs a push or a close this week.

4) Meetings per outreach. Below one in ten ⇒ the problem is the list, not the team.

5) New value entered weekly. The only genuinely leading indicator, it tells you about next quarter, not last.

6) Categorised loss reasons. The most valuable thing you own, and it only exists if everyone closing a lost deal must pick a reason from a list (price · timing · competitor · no decision · no fit). If "no decision" exceeds a third of your losses, your problem is qualification, not price.

How to read them

Review the six monthly and the third weekly only. And comparing a period to the same period last year is more honest than comparing it to last month — markets have seasons.

A metric with no number

How many deals closed with a single contact? If it is many, you are winning on luck rather than process, and that works until it suddenly stops.