3 Incredibly Important Prospecting Metrics to Keep Track of in B2B Sales

For a salesman, the most important metric they keep track of is how much business have they closed per month, quarter, year. This helps set up payout, promotion, and advancement. But how do you get there?

What’s important to keep track of that keeps a salesman headed in the right direction and not chasing bad prospects?

There are important indicators that help set up those closes, and they are important because they keep the salesman on track and help identify when adjustments need to be made in order to keep the sales journey headed towards a close.

Here’s what gets you there:

Email Conversions

Keeping track of open and response rates — this is key — you need to know what is working. Are you drawing prospects in with a quality subject line? If you are not getting good open rates, then you know you need to get better subject lines to draw the prospect in — you need to make them want to open your email.

Higher open rates mean higher probabilities of getting responses. You need to stay on top of your open rates and be quick to adjust to make them better. Use your best copywriting skills to make those subject lines scream “open me!�?

Then, are you getting responses? Is your copy good enough? Are you getting accurate results from you’re A/B testing? If your response rates are low, you can be sure you are not providing an engaging copy — your value is not being properly conveyed. If you’re just writing about features without explaining the benefits of your service and why they will add value to the prospect, you will not get responses and you lessen the chance of response when you proceed with your email cadence. You can have done everything to optimize your cadence, but without a good copy, you look foolish.

Positive Conversations

Sure, you keep track of dials, contacts, etc, but are you keeping track of positive conversations? Are they at the top of your list? These are the higher quality, higher probability prospects that go through your sales funnel quicker. You may make plenty of contacts each day and put certain prospects in the follow-up file, but the good, positive conversations should be tracked and determined why they are positive. What makes them positive and can you replicate those types of calls with other prospects?

When you keep track of these types of calls you are focusing on your higher probability prospects that you will set appointments with, do demos for, and will ultimately buy from you and become a valued customer. Focus on these conversations and your ratio of positive calls to closed business.

Closing Ratio

We can have had plenty of email conversions and positive conversations all day long, but unless you actually close the prospect and get them to purchase your SaaS service, subscription, etc, none of those numbers matter. You need to close. What is your closing ratio from the time of initial contact -the time from email conversion and time from the initial call?

Bonus metric

How many times per week/month are you working to improve your sales skills? We have been able to automate just about everything, have you automated learning? Are you reading up on your industry? Connecting with sales pros who can give you different ideas/ ways to close difficult prospects and handle unique selling situations?

How many sales-related books/articles do you read per month?

How many self-improvement/motivational books/articles do you read per month?

James Altucher says that we can get a lifetime of information when we read someone’s biography because the knowledge is condensed into a book and that you can outsource 90 percent of mentorship to books and other materials. 200–500 books equal one good mentor. Read every day — be committed to making yourself better. That’s one metric that if you continue to raise the bar with knowledge and self-work, will help put you over the top when you keep track of the previous 3 metrics. Be better every day, and let the numbers guide you.