“If you don’t know your numbers, you don’t know your business.” — Marcus Lemonis
“It’s a numbers game, but I don’t know which numbers” — Average Salesperson
Okay — I made-up the last quote, but it’s still true. Too many times, I meet with sales managers and salespeople who firmly believe that sales is a “numbers game”, but they have no idea what numbers they need to know or even what numbers they should be tracking.
Most sales leaders focus on KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) and while they are important, they do not help produce sales improvements. KPI’s are like your scorecard after a round of golf, fun to see how you played, but they can’t help you play better for the round you just finished.
Rather than focus on KPIs, it’s time to concentrate on Leading Indicators so that we can effect change during the game that will help you and your team win. Think of leading indicators as data that allows you to make “in-game” adjustments, so that your team can keep scoring.
What Are Leading Indicators in Sales?
Salesforce states that, “a leading indicator describes everything that leads up to making the sale. It’s the top of your sales pipeline and defines how capable you are at opening an opportunity — not closing a sale.”
Leading indicators provide insight into likely future outcomes, giving organizations the ability to act accordingly in the present. To improve “in-game” performance, we need to add leading indicators to your sales management toolbox.
Leading indicators help you determine whether you and your salespeople are doing good, bad, or ugly. They help us manage our activity so that we can know how much more we need to do to produce success. If this was a football game, your leading indicators would be:
- The number of offensive plays
- The yards per carry
- Your completion rate
- Your quarterback rating
If you know these numbers, you know if you’re doing the right things, in the right way, to score touchdowns and win the game.
In the world of sales, leading indicators give us real-time data on how sales are going. They tell you if your team has enough activity, the right amount of proposals, and what your closing ratios are.
Leading Indicators Sales Managers Need to Track
How often have you assumed that your sales team was going to hit their goals and then suddenly, all of their pending disappears, and they miss budget? Sadly, it happens too often. Most Account Executives are not good forecasters, which puts sales managers in difficult situations.
So, which Leading Indicators should you track? The answer depends on what is important to your organization and what indicators are predictive of the overall success of your team.
5 examples of Leading Indicators that you can track:
- Number of New Business Appointments
- Number of Needs Analysis Completed
- Number of New Proposals
- Closing Ratio
- Average proposals sold
Tracking leading indicators does three things for you:
- Gives you real-time data for your sales team and salespeople
- Helps you know what they need to be doing to be successful
- Predict the success of your sales team
You’ll be able to see in real-time if a rep is making enough new appointments, presentations, and ultimately sales to meet or even exceed their sales budget.
“Knowing your numbers” will help you not only know your business but also help you hit your goals.
Want to hear more from Trey? Register today for the virtual Revenue Momentum Summit on February 19, where he will be sharing about shifting from products to solutions!
Trey Morris
Senior Consultant, The Center for Sales Strategy
Trey Morris is a Senior Consultant for The Center for Sales Strategy. He is known as a leader, a creative storyteller, and for delivering hefty sales results.
He has spent 25+ years in the world of broadcasting and advertising by holding every significant role in the sales funnel. He’s sold advertising, managed radio station sales teams, ran his own full-service advertising agency, been a Chief Marketing Officer, and started a successful restaurant chain.
Born and raised in Dallas, he spent the first 10 years managing radio stations in Dallas and Chicago. While in Chicago, he branched out and ran a full-service advertising agency that specialized in developers and home specialty retailers.
In 2008, he launched Q BBQ, a Michelin award-winning barbecue restaurant with 4 locations in the Chicago area. In 2013, he left the business world for the ministry world. He joined the ministry of Pastor James MacDonald’s Walk in the Word. As Executive Producer, Trey oversaw his radio ministry and created the NRB award-winning Walk in the Word Television program that aired on TBN, Daystar, and Hope Channel in Canada.
In 2015, Trey felt the calling of Texas and moved the family back to North Texas, where he was the Chief Marketing Officer for the Boenker Group of Companies, a family-owned insurance holding company, that had revenues of over $300 million per year. Trey has been married for 25 years to Rebecca, his Baylor sweetheart, and father to Haley and Jordan.
The team at 94.9 KLTY has served the Dallas/Fort Worth community for over 35 years. In 2020, the need was never greater. Through their local campaigns, Christmas Wish and Speak Love, they were able to assist many families who were impacted by not only the pandemic, but by hard times in general. The Speak Lovecampaign helped first responders, teachers, servers, food service staff, and many more within the community throughout the year. In 2020 94.9 KLTY’s Christmas Wish campaign brought Christmas joy to hundreds of families in the DFW area. They provided vehicles, food, toys, and other forms of relief to families in their community. They could not have reached any of these needs if not for their listeners and their generous donations to 94.9 KLTY’s nonprofit programs. In total, Speak Love and Christmas Wish raised more than $160,000 for those in need in Dallas/Fort Worth. They also recognized those sacrificial front-line workers and first responders who keep our community safe. Each week, 94.9 KLTY honored them, raised funds throughout the summer, and then presented each first responder with a check as a token of their gratitude. With countless families in need because of the pandemic, 94.9 KLTY also helped the Tarrant Area Food Bank distribute food essentials on multiple occasions in September, October, November. It is 94.9 KLTY’s sincere honor to serve our listeners in Dallas/Fort Worth.
LIFE 96.5 seeks to empower and serve the Sioux Falls area by reaching out in faith to help make it a better place to live and work. They want to lead their listeners to Jesus and help them grow in their faith through opportunities to love and serve others. In January 2020, LIFE 96.5 listeners donated over 950 brand new baby items during the Sioux Empire’s Largest Baby Shower. The Baby Shower grows every year, demonstrating their community’s love and support of the couples who are choosing life for their unborn children. LIFE 96.5 listeners, in partnership with Dacotah Bank, provided gift cards and cash donations to the Sioux Falls School District social workers to meet the needs of 1,000 homeless students. LIFE 96.5 also invited listeners to participate in a city-wide prayer parade, where they prayed for health care and government officials while driving past hospitals, schools, and city government offices. During the months of September and October 2020, LIFE 96.5 listeners provided over 250 twin sheet sets and 100 mattresses to the Sioux Falls Sleep in Heavenly Peace organization for children who are sleeping on floors. Through LIFE 96.5, listeners also made a difference in the lives of patients spending Christmas at Avera Behavioral Health Hospital. Each patient received a Christmas stocking filled with gifts and a note of encouragement. In addition, each Saturday morning LIFE 96.5 staff host Life Connection, a program featuring community leaders and discussing the needs and concerns of the Sioux Falls Community.
89.5 KVNE exists to glorify God by encouraging people, connecting their community, and pointing people to Jesus Christ. When their community was turned upside down by COVID, they knew they had to jump into action and mobilize their listeners to make a difference for Christ. To best serve their local community, KVNE held multiple drives to support local ministry partners and those most impacted by the pandemic. They collected 1,500 gift cards (totaling more than $15,000) to benefit those in need because of shutdowns, gathered over 12,000 diapers for foster families, and collected 150 care packages for senior citizens. They also collected 1,032 fans for the Salvation Army and over 1,000 pairs of shoes for kids heading back to school. Additionally, listeners donated 1,512 care packages for the homeless in East Texas, and KVNE hosted two blood drives to help those fighting the coronavirus. People across East Texas needed connection during the pandemic, so they organized a social media outreach, called Praise Defeats, a coordinated time where listeners shot videos of themselves singing “Raise A Hallelujah.” The videos were shared thousands of times, as they deepened their community’s connection. In addition, KVNE launched a Hispanic Christian music station (Fuzión), started a worship station (Lift Worship), and began a Bible Teaching Station (The Well) – all to help people grow in their faith. God allowed them to impact His Kingdom in profound ways and serve their local community powerfully during an unprecedented time when people needed hope like never before.
Since 1986, The JOY FM has made community service a hallmark of its ministry to listeners – first in Sarasota, and then expanding to Tampa, other Florida markets, and most recently to Atlanta and Middle Georgia. Even with this growth, community outreach remains hands-on, with legacy events like T-Shirts for Turkeys, which helped feed more than 28,700 families in all markets served last year. 2020 created new challenges for serving, so The JOY FM innovated several service projects to accommodate contactless delivery and social distancing. JOY Drop and Restock, a brand-new outreach, collected 30 tons of food to restock local food banks hit hard by the pandemic. Partnering with Natalie Grant and Hope for Justice, Team Freedom approached a grand total of $1,000,000 in 2020 to fight human trafficking. As listeners faced political rhetoric and serious questions about race and justice, as well as practical challenges like hybrid classrooms, The JOY FM programming (on terrestrial signals, as well as its LF Radio and JOY Worship platforms) responded with a recommitment to our mission of “Helping You Find JOY.” Resources for listeners, such as the Off Air with Carmen podcast, was provided to help listeners wrestle with big questions like Christian citizenship. Possibly The JOY FM’s most relevant community service effort for 2020 was prayer. The JOY FM’s Prayer and Crisis Referral service interacted with 620,936 listeners in need of prayer or help. Of those calls and texts, 4,949 listeners reported praying to place their faith in Jesus Christ.
“Hope Starts Here” is more than The Light FM’s tagline. It’s their mission. In 2020, they were intentional in regularly offering community-needed resources and hope-filled encouragement. They hosted their 5th annual Make a Difference training to encourage listeners to share God’s hope and saw 14 people begin a personal relationship with Jesus. The Light FM also visited eight local Law Enforcement agencies to share words of encouragement and care baskets. They partnered with East Tennessee Children’s Hospital and artists of Winter Jam for a private concert and time of prayer with families battling pediatric cancer. The Light FM listeners from five different cities donated 258 wheelchairs, 262 crutches, 259 walkers, 71 transport chairs, and 66 canes to Wheels for the World, which brings mobility and the hope of Christ around the world. During stay-at-home orders, The Light FM began offering free monthly virtual events, including: a graduation ceremony, featuring artists and Bible teachers; a conference with Crown Financial on how to manage finances during the pandemic; Girl Talk LIVE, a women’s event with worship and Bible study; God’s Hope in Crisis training with chaplains of the Billy Graham Rapid Response Team; a pastor appreciation event for local churches, featuring Chip Ingram and Matthew West; and a Family Christmas Night with live music, games, and a devotion from The Light FM staff. Even throughout the pandemic, The Light FM also found ways to be out in the public, safely, with six drive-in events featuring movies and live music.
