Drowning in dashboards
Most CRMs ship 40 charts and call it analytics. The result is a team that stares at numbers and changes nothing. Six metrics drive nearly every real decision.
The six
- Win rate by stage. Where do deals actually die? A 70% discovery-to-demo rate but 20% proposal-to-close points your coaching at the close, not the top.
- Average sales cycle length. Per segment, not blended. Enterprise and SMB cycles averaged together tell you nothing useful.
- Pipeline coverage. Open pipeline divided by quota. Below 3x for the quarter and you're already behind — no amount of hustle fixes a coverage gap in week 10.
- Average deal size, trending. Rising ASP means you're moving upmarket; falling ASP may mean discounting has crept in.
- Activity-to-outcome ratio. Calls and emails per closed deal. Useful for spotting reps who are busy but not effective.
- Net revenue retention. The most important number for any recurring-revenue business, and the one most sales teams ignore because it lives in success.
Leading vs. lagging
Revenue is a lagging indicator — by the time it's down, the quarter is lost. Pair every lagging metric with the leading one that predicts it: pipeline coverage predicts revenue, sequence reply rate predicts pipeline, list quality predicts reply rate.
Segment or stay blind
A blended win rate hides the truth. Segment by source, by rep, by deal size, by industry. The insight is almost always in the breakdown, never in the average.
Review cadence
- Weekly: pipeline coverage and stage movement.
- Monthly: win rate, cycle length, deal size trend.
- Quarterly: net revenue retention and source effectiveness.