Benchmarks for Profitable Growth in 2017
by Ricardo Guardiola
How should we manage and measure growth in 2017? What actions lead to growing and closing the most profitable sales opportunities and what should we track from those actions? We have 525,600 minutes in 2017 and five specific sales metrics enable accountability and optimal return on investment throughout the organization for each minute spent on growing the business.
Every minute spent with a poor or average fit prospect is a minute not spent with a highly qualified prospect. The better your leads align with your core capabilities and differentiators, the more of your time that will go into profitable sales.
Here are five benchmark metrics to incorporate into your business and communicate to your team to drive profitable growth from GetApp’s independently ranked number one business intelligence app Domo:
- Pipeline velocity — While it’s important to know how much is in the pipeline, how fast the pipeline is moving is a better predictor of whether sales prospects will convert into customers
- Winning percentage — By tracking the average close rate of the deals worked on, you can predict how many current deals will convert to sales, and better forecast and anticipate growth
- Closing speed — Knowing the average time it takes to close a deal predicts monthly and quarterly benchmarks for sales growth
- Acquisition cost — Winning businesses are not always the ones who spend the most money. Leveraging social media and web initiatives to get in front of prospects is one way of engaging customers and producing quality leads.
- New Business — Planting seeds by growing new business is the kind of growth with exponential potential that excites stakeholders, frightens competitors and attracts top talent and community support for your business
The better targeted your approach with prospects in existing and adjacent industries, the more growth potential available to your business. At Decision Associates, we welcome the opportunity to have a brief chat with you personally to talk about how to implement a tailored lead generation process with the right prospects to approach, the right people to talk to and the best ways to engage them for your key marketing and sales challenges in 2017 and beyond.