Are you managing an inside sales team? Are they failing to jump on the phone and make the calls? It's no secret that a debate exists among many managers on how to track the performance of a sales team; and this is particularly true when it comes to the discussion around inside sales. What’s more important, the number of calls a sales rep makes, or the quality of the call? Let’s face it, if you’re not making calls, you can’t measure the quality. We recommend you need to monitor and set KPIs for both! Read on to discover 6 key metrics that can help you to manage your inside sales team!

1. 6 Sales Performance Metrics
That Matter Most…

2. Are you managing an inside
sales team? Are they failing to
jump on the phone and make
the calls? If yes, what does the
phone mean to them?
Are you managing
an inside sales team?
Are they failing to make
enough phone calls & talk time?
The Sales Challenge

3. Are you managing an inside
sales team? Are they failing to
jump on the phone and make
the calls? If yes, what does the
phone mean to them?
How do you track the performance
of a sales team?
Number of calls?
Quality of calls?
The Sales Debate

4. How Effective is Your Sales Team?
You need to drill down and understand the performance levels of
each person. Here are our 6 suggested KPIs:
1. Number of Calls Per Day & Talk Time
2. Percentage of Calls at Each Sales Cycle
3. Conversion Rate
4. Close Lost Rate
5. Average Value of Merchant Won
6. Performance Against Target

5. 1. Number of Calls Per Day & Talk Time
• The number of outbound sales calls will differ greatly from one industry to another. In the payment
industry, sales reps have a lot of pre and post-sale work to do. Very often they need to assist the
merchant with underwriting, pricing, contracts, etc.
• The range of outbound calls will typically be from about 40 to 80+ a day. I normally aim for between
50-70
• With an outbound dialler, salespeople can potentially generate 100+ calls a day
• We recommend sales reps having a talk time target so they aren't just picking up the phone and
dialling reception instead of talking to decision makers. Consider a talk time target of 2-3 hours

6. 2. Percentage of calls at each sales cycle
It’s important to know how each salesperson is
progressing along their sales cycle
Here’s an example of good and bad sales pipeline progression:
Good
Bad
The second example highlights the sales rep failing to get past the gate keeper, and struggling to
schedule time with the decision maker.
Monitoring the sales cycle progression will help you identify coaching and training opportunities for
the salesperson to help improve efficiency in their outbound calls

7. 3. Conversion Rate
Some say that a 10% conversion rate for an inside sales team is quite good. But this can vary from company
to company.
If your company is well known and with a strong market position, your salesperson could generate in
excess of a 30% conversion rate, vs a startup which could be generating only a 5-10% conversion rate

8. 4. Close Lost Rate
Although a sales rep may have a high conversion rate, make sure to monitor their close lost rate too, as
that could also be very high. If it is, it could be that they are burning leads, in which case you need to put
out the fire!
5. Average Value of Merchant Won
When setting a sales target, you must consider the average value of a merchant to be won. I’ve worked
with sales teams where they’re winning thousands of merchants, which was great, but the average win
was so low that they were missing their sales targets by miles…not so great.

9. 6. Performance Against Target
Sales targets are normally set at: country, team, and sales rep level. Consider also
including targets for:
• Average merchant size
• Close won rate
• Close lost rate
• Number of calls to be made each day, week, month
• Commission target

10. In Summary…
I hope that these 6 KPIs can offer you a helping hand in managing your sales team,
and understand the performance levels of each salesperson.
Naturally this is a long term effort, but it should pave the way for you to better
implement the metrics necessary to measure sales performance, and keep track of
how well your sales team is doing.

11. Thank you for your time
Liz Fulham, CEO
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