Top B2B Sales Metrics & KPIs you should Track in 2023

Closing a sales deal is not as hard as it used to be. With many marketing and promotional channels like social media, emails, websites, etc., marketers and sales reps have numerous ways to sell their products to the right audience. 

However, a common challenge that often creates resistance for a sales team is the cutthroat competition. In the Business-to-Business sector, the stakes are higher as the target audiences are founders, CEOs, and CMOs of companies with in-depth knowledge of the industry and its key players. Hence, standing out becomes a challenge. 

B2B sales reps must plan innovative strategies to engage the business decision-makers. A great way to decide the upcoming actions of a sales team is by tracking all the key B2B sales metrics. 

These metrics can provide a transparent overview of an organization’s sales performance and point out the strong and weak areas. This guide lists all the critical sales metrics B2B sales professionals must track to convert leads into customers. 

What are B2B sales metrics and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)? 

B2B sales metrics and sales KPIs are two completely different concepts. 

Businesses can assess the sales metrics to quantify the various measures and track the progress of different business processes. The primary intention of tracking sales metrics for businesses is to understand how much they spend on their sales activities and to what extent they successfully fulfill their short-term and long-term sales goals. 

Sales KPIs on the other hand, help sales managers define and aim for appropriate goals, track progress, and make suitable sales decisions. While both sales metrics and KPIs can influence business decisions, sales KPIs are much more important to defining goals and planning strategies. 

10 B2B sales metrics and KPIs you should track for 100% visibility 

Now that the concept of sales metrics and KPIs are clear, here is a list of top B2B sales metrics and KPIs that businesses must track to experience complete visibility: 

MQL to SQL conversion rate 

A Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL) is a lead who enters the sales funnel through different actions like clicking on “book a demo,” subscribing to a newsletter, or signing up to download a lead magnet and is further qualified by the marketing team. 

Whereas, a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL) is a lead who is qualified by sales reps over a discovery call. An SQL is interested in the product/service of the company and is ready to find out more information. 

The KPI MQL to SQL shows the effectiveness of the sales reps to qualify the MQLs into prospective customers. For instance, if you get 100 MQLs from the marketing team and only 25 of those leads are further interested in hopping on a call, the MQL to SQL conversion rate will be 25%. 

Formula 

MQL to SQL conversion rate = [ No. of SQLs / No. of MQLs ] * 100% 

Why does it matter? 

MQL to SQL conversion rate is a significant KPI for marketing and sales teams. It helps the marketing and sales managers identify whether these two teams collaborate properly and whether their goals are aligned. With this B2B sales metric, marketers and sales professionals can easily see the gaps in their current strategies that can slow down the growth of leads in their sales pipeline. 

Sales cycle length 

The next B2B sales metric on our list is sales cycle length. It represents the period for a lead to become a customer. It is one of those B2B sales metrics that help sales teams to strategize new lead nurturing and engagement tricks to reduce the sales cycle length. 

Formula 

Average Sales cycle length = [ No. of days to close deal A + No. of days to close deal B + No. of days to close deal C…] / Total No. of deals 

Why does it matter? 

The sales cycle length metric can help sales managers to create accurate sales forecasts, estimate sales efficiency, and identify the improvement areas in existing sales strategies to accelerate the lead conversion process. 

New leads by source 

This B2B sales KPI helps the sales reps to summarize all the information they have about a prospect. It also points out the status of the leads in the sales pipeline and the sources of these leads. 

Formula 

There is no specific formula for this KPI. Sales reps can use their respective CRM tools like HubSpot, Salesforce, etc., to identify the source of different leads. 

Why does it matter? 

This sales KPI helps businesses to target quality leads that are easy to convert and identify channels which have better probability of conversion. For example, suppose majority of your leads are coming through social media. In that case, you can double your efforts into social media organic posting, social media ads, and other innovative activities while minimizing your efforts in other aspects like cold emailing, cold calling, etc. 

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

CAC is a significant B2B sales KPI that helps businesses track how much they spend to acquire each new customer. It depicts the amount a business spends to convert its leads into paid customers. 

Formula 

CAC = [ Cost of sales + Cost of marketing ] / Number of New customers acquired 

Why does it matter? 

For any business, it is almost impossible to scale their operations if they don’t have a clear idea of how much they spend acquiring new customers. CAC helps determine whether a business is investing its valuable resources in acquiring customers who are not adding much value in overall profitability. 

Win-loss ratio 

The win-loss ratio estimates the number of closed deals to the number of lost deals. One of those sales metrics provides the sales managers with closer insights into the current gaps in their sales system and why some sales deals are closed while others are lost. It is a great metric to identify and implement the next steps. 

Formula 

Win-loss ratio = [ No. of leads won / No. of leads lost ] 

Why does it matter? 

The win-loss ratio KPI helps sales reps collect sufficient information on the different factors influencing user decision-making. As a result, they have a clear idea of what is working for the users and accordingly, they can match their messaging in line with the brand’s value proposition. Similarly, sales professionals can clearly understand which leads didn’t convert and dig deeper to find the underlying reasons. 

Average lead response time 

Suppose a sales rep has successfully collected a lead’s contact details and sent the first email address. Now what? 

As a next step, the sales rep needs to wait till they receive a response from the lead. Lead response time is defined as the time duration a lead requires to respond to a sales rep. The lesser the time, the better. Harvard Business Review says the average lead response time is 42 hours. 

Formula 

Lead response time = [ Time and date of contacting a lead - Time and date when lead responds ] 

Why does it matter? 

In B2B sales, every second is important. Sales reps and managers can track this KPI to get an overview of how long the high-quality leads are taking to respond. The lower the lead response time, the better the chances of converting quality prospects. Sales professionals can use this as a scope to evaluate their sales approaches. 

To practice active listening, sales teams can use social media, live chat, etc. Leads are often open about their concerns and pain points in these channels. Sales professionals can collect sufficient information through these channels to engage the leads for a long time. 

Monthly sales pipeline creation 

Sales managers require complete visibility into their sales pipeline to identify the revenue potential. Ideally, a sales pipeline must include all sales opportunities, irrespective of the funnel stages they reside in. 

The monthly sales pipeline creation KPI encourages a B2B sales team to create the sales pipeline at the beginning of a month. This can help the sales reps to stay informed about the size of the sales pipeline, no. of quality prospects, no. of prospects who are dropping off, and so on. 

Formula 

This is a qualitative B2B sales KPI, and there is no quantifiable formula. However, sales reps can follow the below-mentioned framework to create and maintain B2B sales pipeline consistently every month: 

‍Why does it matter? 

Creating the sales pipeline every month is a great practice for sales reps. It can give the entire sales team a closer look into the number of quality and poor leads in your current sales pipeline. Hence, the sales managers can understand more about the leads that need attention and what would be the best strategies to engage with them. 

Pipeline velocity 

This B2B sales metric measures the amount of time it takes for sales leads to move across the different sales process stages, from lead generation to conversion. The shorter the value of pipeline velocity, the better. As your sales pipeline velocity increases, the scope of losing prospects along the way also increases. Regular tracking of this metric can help sales teams optimize their existing sales process. 

Formula 

Sales pipeline velocity = [ ( No. of sales opportunities * Value of a sales deal * Win rate) / Length of sales cycle ] 

Why does it matter? 

Sales pipeline velocity is one of the most critical B2B sales metrics. It helps sales managers to develop an understanding of how productive the sales team is in converting the leads into paid customers. Sales managers can use this metric to build new sales strategies and forecast sales performance for a particular financial period. 

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

Customer lifetime value estimates the average revenue a business generates from a particular customer throughout their lifetime or engagement with the company. It is a critical sales metric that provides a significant understanding of what is working and what is not for each customer. Sales reps can evaluate this metric to develop new customer retention strategies. 

Formula 

Customer lifetime value = [Total contract value / Average customer lifespan] 

Why does it matter? 

CLTV helps B2B professionals to develop long-term insights into the organization’s financial viability. It also identifies which customers are easier to retain. Based on these findings, sales reps can plan new engagement strategies for the existing customers and plan up-sell/cross-sell services to multiply revenue.  

Revenue by lead source 

Most B2B sales reps are aware of the fact that all leads don’t convert into sales. Hence, for utmost transparency, businesses need to know about the sources for each lead and the revenue associated with that lead. Therefore, revenue by the lead source is a critical KPI that keeps track of all lead sources like social media, emails, websites, etc. and the associated revenue. 

Formula 

Revenue by lead source = Total revenue generated from all the leads acquired by each lead source

Why does it matter? 

Let’s explain the importance of this sales KPI with an example. Suppose LinkedIn is a critical source of lead generation for your business. In fact, the business acquires a high percentage of revenue from this source. In comparison, revenue generated through Twitter and Instagram is much lower for the same business. 

At this point, the actionable step for the business is to investigate the other channels and identify whether it should continue to invest in them or allocate the budgets of these channels to LinkedIn. The revenue by lead source can help the business in making these decisions. 

Final words 

We hope sales reps and sales managers now have a comprehensive idea of the top B2B sales metrics and why they should track these KPIs and sales metrics to improve their sales performance. 

On this note, we want to suggest Salesken, a powerful sales analytics tool that helps sales managers to: 

• Gain visibility in the overall performance of the sales team 
• Provide targeted coaching to the sales reps 
• Provide real-time sales cues and implement those into sales pitches to personalize them 

Want to know further? 

Book a demo now!