A company’s VP of Sales is responsible for nurturing, developing, and managing both strategy and talent towards the accomplishment of revenue targets within the Sales department. To be as effective as possible in this role, they must have adequate access to data regarding the performance of their sales workforce and demand generation efforts. 

Fortunately, through the use of CRM platforms like Salesforce, VPs of Sales can set up  dashboards that seamlessly summarize all the relevant metrics, allowing them to access the information they need to make operational adjustments more effectively. With this information on hand, the VP of Sales can ensure that the efficacy of the sales department continues to climb. 

Learning which KPIs to track can be immensely helpful if you haven’t started using Salesforce dashboards to manage and track KPIs yet. 

VP of Sales Main Goals

VP of Sales is a strategic role that involves managing sales teams and maintaining profitable sales operations. To be most effective in this position, leadership skills are needed to motivate the sales team to achieve their goals. The position also requires critical thinking skills, as a VP of Sales must be able to monitor the market to anticipate competitor activities and consumer needs.  

• Overall a VP of Sales’ main goals are:
• Developing Sales strategies in alignment with competitive landscape 
• Calculating Sales forecasts and corresponding sales and revenue targets
• Nurturing and managing Sales teams towards the achievement of Sales targets
• Overseeing Customer Satisfaction indicators to build sustainable customer relationships
• Tracking and boosting revenue 

Other goals and responsibilities held by a typical VP include providing detailed sales forecasting that dictates how much the company may sell and how much the sales team will commit to selling. By doing this forecasting, the VP can more effectively set quarterly and annual sales and revenue goals. 

The VP of Sales always keeps a close eye on customer satisfaction as well. One of their goals should be to cultivate high-quality interactions between their customers and the sales team, and building long-lasting relationships. To these ends, any VP of Sales must be equipped to measure and evaluate changes in performance over time using KPIs.

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Salesforce Dashboards To Track KPIs

Sales dashboards are visual sales reports that display overall sales team performance from within a specific time frame. These automated dashboards put all sales data into a single report, allowing you to avoid jumping from platform to platform. 

Without sales dashboards, it’s incredibly challenging to track the aforementioned KPIs. That’s why you should consider leveraging the following sales dashboards. 

1. Sales Performance Dashboard

This dashboard gives you insights into your team’s overall performance during a specific time period. It tracks a variety of KPIs, including number of new customers, sales target success, average weekly sales revenue, and customer acquisition cost.

• A Sales Performance dashboard should include:
• Closed deals compared to Sales forecast for the period
• New customers: Open Opportunities: Sent proposals (Ratio)
• Customer acquisition cost
• Total revenue generated

With these metrics front and center, VPs of Sales can quickly gain an understanding of how their sales team is performing. For example, having a high sales target success rate combined with low customer acquisition cost, you may be spending less to acquire each new customer. This is great if your goal is to encourage predictable revenue. 

2. Sales Cycle Length Dashboard

This dashboard tracks another KPI, called sales cycle length. This KPI tracks the average length of each sales stage, allowing you to identify how long it takes your employees to guide customers through the purchasing process. 

• A Sales Cycle Length dashboard should include:
• Average length of sales stage (days)
• New customers: Open Opportunities: Sent proposals (Ratio)
• Sales quota compared to Sales forecast Per Manager
• Percent of recurring customers vs 1st time customers

The sales cycle length dashboard shows the average number of days it takes to identify a prospect and convert them into a lead, then eventually into a customer. Having this data available can be used to find bottlenecks in each phase of your sales cycle. You can set this dashboard to break the data down based on the performance of each sales manager, allowing you detailed insight into their individual performance. 

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3. Sales Conversion Dashboard

This dashboard tracks your conversion rate, churn rate, and loss rate. These metrics tell you if your sales team is converting leads to paying customers successfully. Reports can even be broken down to show sales based on campaigns. 

• A Sales Conversion dashboard should include:
• Overall Conversion rate
• Overall Churn Rate
• Overall Loss Rate
• Metrics per Campaign
• Best performing Campaigns
• Low performing Campaigns

If you notice you’re dealing with repeatedly low conversion rates, that could mean you’re going after the wrong leads. The sales conversion dashboard can help you score leads, allowing you to quickly identify the best leads to capitalize on. With an effective lead scoring model in place, it’s much easier to find and nurture better leads. 

4. Sales Opportunity Dashboard

This dashboard shows the latest opportunities and potential revenue from prospective customers. The data can be filtered by the individual sales rep, region, or closing ratio. Through the dashboard, you can find out how many sales opportunities were generated, the average order value, and how many sales opportunities exist across a region, such as a state or country. 

• A Sales Opportunity Dashboard should include:
• Active opportunities
• Estimated revenue of Active Opportunities
• Average order Value
• Opportunities and Estimated revenue per Sales Rep
• Opportunities and Estimated revenue per Region

The sales opportunity dashboard should ideally be used to understand more about the performance of your sales reps. By taking a closer look, you can uncover hidden revenue opportunities and make changes to your sales strategy based on where resources are most needed. 

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5. Overall Sales Performance Dashboard

The overall sales performance dashboard allows sales leaders to access a birds-eye view of  their team’s performance. It displays metrics like revenue generated, current deals being worked on, and other sales growth metrics, like revenue per unit, customer acquisition cost, and customer lifetime value. 

• An Overall Sales Performance Dashboard should include:
• Open Opportunities: Closed Sales: Sales Forecast (Ratio)
• $ Revenue compared to $ Sales Forecast of the period
• Revenue per Sales team
• Average Customer Acquisition Cost
• Customer Lifetime Value

Using this dashboard, your VP of sales can see whether or not your team and reps are meeting their goals. You can also find out if they are slated to meet their sales targets. Based on what is shown, sales leaders can plan future activities, such as offering additional staff training. 

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Conclusion

If your VP of Sales isn’t equipped with the right sales dashboards, they may not be as effective as possible in leading your sales team. Ensure that you provide them with access to the best tools available, so they’ll be capable of measuring and tracking critical key performance indicators, like customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, average order value, etc. 

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Which KPIs Should a VP of Sales Track?

The VP of Sales can use KPIs to enhance the effectiveness of their sales departments. For example, checking the volume of sales actually generated in comparison to the forecast during a set period. If the metrics show that they were ineffective, sales leadership can assess the KPIs and implement solutions to improve.  If you want your VP of Sales to start tracking KPIs, here are a few they should keep an eye on.

Revenue per employee 

It’s essential that the VP of Sales understands how much money each employee brings into the company. A great way to get an idea of this is using the revenue per employee KPI. This KPI is calculated as a company’s total revenue divided by its current number of employees. 

By knowing this ratio, companies can better understand the utilization of their employees. Making changes to how employees are utilized can make it easier to keep sales teams properly organized while maintaining sales budgets. 

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Customer acquisition cost 

The customer acquisition cost is the amount of money that a company must spend to acquire a new customer. Using this KPI, your VP of Sales can measure the return on investment of efforts aimed at growing your company’s clientele. Tracking this metric allows the VP of Sales to optimize departmental budgets. To calculate customer acquisition cost, add the costs associated with converting prospects into customers and divide the sum by the number of customers acquired through those efforts. 

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Customer satisfaction score 

Your customer satisfaction score measures customer loyalty by determining how satisfied a customer is with a specific interaction or their overall experience with your company. This KPI must be tracked if you want to deliver the optimal customer experience. Customer satisfaction can lead to long-term customer retention or indicate what isn’t working to tweak strategies and drive customer retention. 

Customer satisfaction scores are acquired by asking a simple question that measures a client’s satisfaction with a service, product, interaction, or transaction. The customer should be asked to choose from a range of options that represent their satisfaction level. The options can be numerical scores, verbal indicators, or symbols. 

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Net promoter score (NPS) 

Net promoter score is a metric used in customer experience programs. This metric measures the loyalty of your company’s customers. The score is measured with a single-question survey that is reported with a number ranging from -100 to 100. To calculate net promoter score, you must determine how many of your customers are detractors, passives, or promoters. 

Detractors are unhappy customers, passives are satisfied but unenthusiastic, and promoters are loyal enthusiasts who will keep buying products, fueling growth. To get your net promoter score, subtract the percentage of detractors from the percentage of promoters. 

Repeat customer rate 

Knowing how often customers come back to make more purchases can help the VP of Sales find out if the sales team and products are performing well enough to attract customers more than once. Tracking this metric allows the VP of Sales to more accurately forecast future sales. To calculate the repeat customer rate, divide the number of return customers by the total number of customers and multiple by 100 to convert to a percentage. You can do this based on a variety of time frames, such as daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly. 

Revenue generated 

Understanding how much revenue has been generated by your company in a given timeframe can help you identify new ways of increasing that number. Comparing overall revenue to your profit can also help you get a better idea of how much your business is earning overall and what could occur in the future. By tracking revenue generated, the VP of Sales can more attentively pursue their objective of achieving sales targets while staying within the sales budget. 

Number of proposals sent

Tracking the number of proposals that have been sent by your team can help you understand how well your employees are performing. If there are a lot of proposals sent, but few sales, that means the employees are lacking the skills needed to successfully close deals. By understanding this, you can implement training that gets them up to speed. 

Remember, if not many proposals are sent, it will be difficult to be able to close deals. That’s why it’s important that the VP of Sales is able to identify how many proposals are being sent and also track if they have been successful or not. 

Average Contract value

Through close monitoring of the average contract value, the VP of Sales can more accurately estimate sales forecasts and achieve sales targets. Average contract value is the average amount customers spend when they make a purchase from your business. By identifying this number, you can better understand customer purchasing behavior. The average order value is calculated by dividing the total revenue by the number of contracts signed. Most companies calculate this metric on a monthly basis.  

When calculating ACV in Salesforce, filter the Opportunities Object and by Amount. Then calculate the average during a period of time, for example years.

Lead quality score (ease of conversion, low or high close rates, etc.) 

If your company uses leads, you need to score them and track their scores. This can help you improve conversion in the long term. Leads can be scored based on how easy they are to convert, how they behave, their demographic, etc. Keeping an eye on lead scores can offer you insight into the reason why other KPIs, like revenue generated, are over or underperforming. 

Customer Lifetime Value  

Customer lifetime value describes the total amount a customer has spent on your products across their lifetime. This metric shows how much a customer is worth to a business, which is important because it costs less to keep existing customers than to acquire new ones. 

By tracking this metric, the VP of Sales stands to gain a deeper understanding of customer needs. They also get new insights into customer behaviour. These insights can be used to forecast sales and predict what the company should produce in the future. 

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