3 KPIs will help ad sales managers grow their team’s revenue

By Mark Challinor

INMA

London, United Kingdom

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Sales managers are always looking for new ways to improve their sales processes, motivating their sales teams, providing efficiencies, and, of course, closing more/better deals. 

Being at the top of the tree — re: providing clients with all they need to be successful— is one of the key qualities of any sales manager. With new technologies constantly changing the landscape, it’s becoming more complex by the day. 

Determining which KPIs are the most important to a sales team is key to efficiency and increased revenue.
Determining which KPIs are the most important to a sales team is key to efficiency and increased revenue.

But how top we measure all this? There are many ways to measure achievement of sales goals. There must the ability to track a range of KPIs, but how do we know which KPIs are the most important? 

To help those sales managers enable their teams to generate more revenue, I have concentrated on what I believe are the top three areas they should lead with. These can be measured as a KPI and should be used to assess efficiency and effectiveness.

All three have single goal: generating more ad revenue to drive future sales success.

1. Reduce the sales process 

The sales process (cycle) is the time it takes for any deal to close and usually is portrayed as an average number (per sales team, per salesperson, or per whole company or a set period, e.g a quarter or full year). Shorter sales processes mean salespeople are able to move onto newer quests quicker, which, of course, increases revenue quicker, too. 

Managers should help salespeople identify the biggest “wastes of time” in their daily calendars by tracking time spent in differing channels (e-mails, CRM, specific tools for prospecting, content management platforms). Managers can also undertake individual salesperson’s interviews to highlight those time-wasting prospects. 

Look at behaviours/activities via first-party data. Once this data has been identified, it should be viewed as a percentage of the salespersons’ day to determine how much time is actually being spent in client-facing situations. Then, those sales managers can streamline sales focusses and enable salespeople with better more relevant access to any resources needed. 

Measuring time spent selling allows sales managers quickly identify any roadblocks in a salesperson’s day. Eliminating them gives sales teams more time to simply do what they do best: sell, sell, sell.  

2. Bring down acquisition costs 

The customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the overall charges amassed through the closing a deal or onboarding a new customer and might include market research, marketing determination, and general sales costs. Experience shows the CAC usually rises as a matter of course, equating to reducing returns to any acquisition activities. 

Many media sales operations have seen the CAC increase as their growth rates slow down, so it’s really important to tackle any costs associated with acquiring each customer and “trim any fat” accordingly.

3. Consider the lifetime value of the advertiser 

Customer lifetime value (LTV) is an estimated overall value a company will derive from future transactions with a customer during their entire relationship.

This KPI nudges companies to change their focus from, say, quarterly profits to a more longer-term relationship of their customers and essentially shows how to optimise any acquisition costs for maximum value rather than a minimum cost. A subtle but crucial difference.

Conclusion 

There is no doubt that any modern, successful media sales operation needs strategic sales guidance to succeed. Sales efficiency and effectiveness are both vital to the end game/sales goals of increasing revenue. 

An efficiently run sales team get deals done without wasting their time and efforts — with better success rates than those at other companies without such a focus. 

The above focuses will ultimately help achieve the strategic implications of reducing sales process, lowering the cost of customer acquisition and increasing lifetime values. These thoughts, I believe, are the most overlooked but basic metrics to better enable sales teams to sell better more, sell more intelligently, and, ultimately, generate more revenue.

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About Mark Challinor

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