Account-Based Sales Development Key Performance Indicators to Benchmark Success

August 13, 2016

The 5 KPIs that will provide structure for your daily ABSD strategy


When implementing and launching an account-based sales development strategy, there are a variety of key metrics that will need to be reviewed and altered if you have previously been taking a contact-based selling approach. These metrics will cover total outbound dials, follow-ups, power dialing sessions, new contacts needed and fresh accounts to review. By measuring a sales team based on the metrics below, sales managers can begin to benchmark performance and determine how these numbers should shift in order to generate the optimal number of sales opportunities.


KPI #1: Total Outbound Dials


In order for a sales rep to have the optimal number of meaningful sales conversations in a given day, you must first determine the total number of outbound dials needed. How much output is needed in order to reach your desired results? This number will vary based upon industry, targeted titles, account and contact locations, and your average connect rate.


KPI #2: Follow-ups


As your sales team builds their prospecting plan and reaches various stages of the prospecting cycle with contacts in their database, they will begin to generate required follow-ups with nurtured prospects. In order to stay on task and never miss a requested conversation, implement a process that keeps track of these follow-up tasks. With QuotaFactory’s PRM, this process is automated and prospecting workflows are created for contacts that are in “open” prospecting stages. Follow ups are generated based on last activity logged in the system, as well as the lead status of the contact, and the specific date that a requested follow-up is noted in the system. Some other ideas to ensure that your team never misses a follow-up include creating manual calendar reminders or creating a text or checkbox within your CRM or prospecting software that will allow for customized reporting to be run on a daily or weekly basis. This metric should be treated as a percentage of total outbound activity.


KPI #3: Power Dialing Sessions


Automated dialing technology is critical when working through an extensive list of new contacts or a brand new campaign because it can be used to quickly identify key contacts and sift through inaccurate data. Ultimately, power dialing saves more time than manual dials. Pre-call research and previous call notes are served up in the dialing screen and one-click buttons can be used to change the status of a contact. This technology allows reps to disqualify accounts quickly in order to find the viable prospects to focus on during manual follow-ups. The use and number of power dialing sessions will vary by team.


KPI #4: New Contacts Needed


As part of data management best practices, new contacts should be added to your sales rep’s database every day as they disposition out bad data or disqualified accounts in order to maintain an ideally-sized database. Track and report on the amount of contacts disqualified or removed from the prospecting process on a daily basis. Then, as you determine the average amount of contacts removed from your sales process on a given day, use that number as a benchmark for the amount of net new contacts that should be added daily.


KPI #5: Fresh Accounts to Review


In addition to requiring sales reps to bring new contacts into their database on a daily basis, they should also be prospecting new accounts, and their corresponding contacts. By doing so, your reps are maintaining a healthy strategy that will set their sales pipeline up for success. The last thing you want for your team is to allow them to get hung up on a handful of target accounts that end up going nowhere (disqualified, not interested, you name it). Then, when they are disqualified, the rep has to start over from the very beginning with new accounts, rather than being able to manage accounts in various prospecting stages so as not to be left in a lurch come crunch time.


The KPIs that will provide structure for your long-term ABSD strategy


As your sales team begins to adopt and ramp up on the account-based selling methodology, it is important to track and measure success in order to continuously improve and make necessary changes. A great place to start is to begin actively recording and benchmarking against the following key performance indicators.


Account-Based Sales Development Key Performance Indicators to Benchmark Success


 

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