The SaaS industry continues to grow alongside a host of SaaS sales strategies and metrics. One of the most popular and effective is sales enablement, which encourages the best performance from employees through training and sales enablement resources.
To ensure your sales enablement tactics are a success and not a waste of time, you need to track a few sales enablement metrics. There are dozens to choose from, some more important than others.
We’ve listed the top 28 sales enablement metrics worth monitoring. Browse these metrics, choose those most relevant to your company, make data-driven decisions, and increase your revenue.
What Is Sales Enablement?
Sales enablement is a process that provides sales and marketing teams with the tools and resources they need to master the SaaS sales cycle and close more deals. Through information and technological solutions, sales enablement aims to empower employees, for the benefit of the employee and company.
In the SaaS industry, sales enablement takes many forms. Some of the most common are onboarding and training, continued learning, software solutions, product guides, individual coaching, and content creation tools.
While sales enablement mostly applies to sales and marketing teams, it isn’t limited to just them. Oftentimes, enablement includes other teams, like dev teams, to foster better collaboration and software understanding under the sales and marketing members.
Why Track Sales Enablement Metrics?
Sales enablement is a major benefit to any company, as it helps teams improve their sales and marketing strategies. By comprehensively tracking sales enablement metrics, it’s possible to track just how effective your sales enablement strategy is.
The metrics can be used to point your team in the right direction. The metrics show exactly which sales enablement strategies aren’t working as well as they should. For example, lead engagement. Lead engagement is a sales enablement metric that tracks prospect engagement through various stages of the SaaS sales pipeline, mostly clicks, likes, comments, etc.
By tracking your sales enablement metrics, you can expose the areas where you’re lacking and fortify your sales enablement strategy – effectively improving internal operations and increasing revenue.
Top 28 Sales Enablement Metrics To Monitor
With the definitions and benefits out of the way, let’s take a look at the top sales enablement metrics to track.
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the resources a SaaS company spends to acquire a customer. The cost covers the investment a company makes into sales and marketing, and other forms of client development. The lower the customer acquisition cost, the higher your return on investment and profit.
- Market Penetration
Market penetration is how much of the market your SaaS company dominates. While it does cover the whole SaaS industry, it’s better to narrow your metrics search to your niche in the industry. A high rate of market penetration means you have more happy customers, occupy a sizeable portion of your industry, and are effectively persuading and taking away competitors’ customers.
- Time To Productivity
Time to productivity is how long it takes your company to onboard, train, and coach new hires before they’re working. The time-to-productivity metrics are a great way to track how long it takes to onboard a functioning employee. If the time to productivity metric is too long, look into improving your onboarding strategies.
- Win Rate
The win rate is the rate at which your sales team successfully turns sales opportunities into successes. The higher the win rate, the better. It’s a helpful metric for tracking the effectiveness of your sales approach and tracking where you’re losing opportunities.
- Sales Cycle Length
The sales cycle refers to all contact between a sales representative and a lead, from initial contact to the final negotiation and deal. Tracking the length of the sales cycle lets you determine how long it takes for your sales reps to close deals and forecast revenue for the coming months. It’s also an effective way to determine where your sales enablement strategy and employees need more resources or training.
- Sales Velocity
Sales velocity compares the customer conversion rate with other sales enablement metrics to determine the rate of growth for your company. A high sales velocity shows a positive growth trajectory. Your goal should be to increase your sales velocity and nurture its momentum.
- Customer Retention
Customer retention is how many customers your SaaS company retains over a specific period. Customer acquisitions can cost 5 times as much as customer retention, which is why it’s important to track customer retention and work on improving it. The longer you retain customers, the higher your return on investment.
- Net Promoter Score
The net promoter score determines how likely a customer is to recommend your software to other people. The score is run on a simple scale, from 1 to 10 or 1 to 5. The higher the score, the more likely customers are to recommend your product.
- Time To Ramp
Time to ramp is similar to time to productivity, in that it measures how long it takes for an employee to become productive. The difference is the end measure. Time to ramp measures how long it takes not just for an employee to become independent, but an active contributor to company sales and revenue. A short time to ramp period means your training and onboarding are successful.
- Sales Funnel Conversion Rate
There are seven stages to the sales pipeline, from prospecting to post-purchase retention. The sales funnel conversion rate measures how many customers convert to paying customers through various stages of the sales pipeline. It pinpoints where your sales tactics are doing their best. It also exposes where in the pipeline you’re losing customers.
- Team Performance
Team performance measures a team’s (usually sales) conversion and success rates. The metric also includes the manager, to determine whether the manager is a positive or negative influence. Measuring team performance helps identify successful teams and their strategies, which you can then apply to the teams that are suffering under bad management and sales tactics.
- Coaching Time
Coaching, unlike training, involves individual sessions between an employee and a mentor. The mentor keeps an eye on the employee’s operations and provides specific guidance. The coaching time measures how long a mentor has to spend on an employee before they’re fully independent.
- Training Time
New employees have to go through training when joining a company. This sales enablement metric lets you track how long training takes before an employee can take on responsibilities. This includes onboarding. While training shouldn’t be rushed, a shorter training time indicates efficient training practices. A longer training time is indicative of inefficient training. It’s also more expensive to maintain.
- Behavior Change
Behavior change measures how an employee, particularly a sales rep, changes after undergoing training. It can go both ways, either good or bad. If good, your training practices are succeeding in their goal. If bad, it’s time to reevaluate your training program and improve the curriculum.
- Seller Retention
Seller retention measures how many sales representatives have stayed with your company and for how long. The metric is measured over a specific period by comparing how many employees have left and how many new ones have joined. A high seller retention rate is a good indicator. It means employees are satisfied with their work and training.
- Lead Conversion Rate
Lead conversion rate measures how many leads turn into paying customers with your company. The higher the lead conversion rate, the better your sales pitching and software solution. If the lead conversion rate is low, it means there is an issue somewhere along the sales cycle that needs improvement.
- Sales Confidence
Sales reps have to learn a lot of technical jargon to effectively sell software to laymen. Sales confidence measures how confident a sales rep is in their sales speeches and demos, how well they handle questioning, and how much knowledge they confidently hold regarding your software’s more technical aspects. A higher sales confidence is linked to a higher sales conversion rate.
- Email Opens
Emails are an integral part of SaaS sales and marketing and tracking how many of your promotion emails are being opened can help you improve your customer acquisitions. If the email open rate is low, your email subjects aren’t engaging customers enough. It’s also a sign that you’re not sending content at the right time.
- Email Engagement
Email engagement measures all customer interactions with your email content, mostly link clicks and responses. The higher the engagement, the better the content. If the email engagement rate is low, it’s an indicator that the content is not relevant or engaging enough and needs an overhaul.
- Buyer Engagement
Buyer engagement measures how often a customer interacts with your company’s content. This includes how often they use their software, whether they follow your social media, how often they interact with posts, etc. A high buyer engagement is a sign that you’re providing a valuable software product and engaging content.
- Demo Completion Rate
Sales demos are a critical part of the SaaS sales cycle. The demo completion rate measures how many prospects decide to stick around and complete the sales demo. A high completion rate signals a good demo environment and customer interest. However, if the demo is not engaging or interactive enough, prospects often opt out.
- Customer Satisfaction Score (CSAT)
The customer satisfaction score is exactly what the name implies. It measures how satisfied a customer is with your software and your service. The rating is most often from 1 to 5, with a higher score indicating higher customer satisfaction. It should be every company’s goal to have a high CSAT score.
- Content Creation
Content creation metrics fall under a few banners. Two of the most common metrics are content creation time and content research time. Content research time refers to how long it takes for sales and marketing to research relevant content. Content creation time is how long it takes to transform the research into usable content.
- Available Selling Price
The average selling price is how much, on average, customers spend on your software. In the SaaS industry, it is especially useful if you offer tiered software packages or multiple software solutions. Use this metric to track which software solution is drawing the most users.
- Tool Adoption
A big part of sales enablement is providing employees with tools, most notably software solutions for improving the sales cycle, creating content, and tracking sales analytics. Tracking tool adoption and usage lets you see what resources provide enough support to employees, which lesser-used ones to get rid of, and what to replace.
- Discounting Percentage
Discount percentage is how much revenue you’ve offered up in discounts and promotions. Discounts are an effective acquisition tactic, but too high a discount percentage can spell trouble for the future of your SaaS company.
- Sales Representative Performance
Similar to team performance tracking, sales representative performance tracks how well a sales rep is performing. It’s different in that you’re tracking individual employees’ performance, not a whole team. By tracking individual performance, you can see which employees are doing exceptionally, how they compare with your team average, and which employees need more training or coaching.
- Churn Rate
The churn rate measures how many customers you’re losing. While it’s normal to lose customers, you shouldn’t lose more customers than you’re acquiring. You also shouldn’t be losing more than your industry average. Tracking your churn rate and comparing it with that of your competitors provide valuable insight into your company’s growth trajectory.
Quick Tips For Tracking Sales Enablement Metrics
There are dozens of sales enablement metrics to track. Trying to measure all of them isn’t a viable option, especially if you’re just starting in the SaaS industry or have a smaller team. To effectively track and monitor your sales enablement metrics, keep these tips in mind.
First, start small. With such a wide variety of metrics, it’s tempting to start tracking all the metrics you’d like to eventually collect data on. However, when you’re just starting, it’s better to track only a handful of metrics. Once you get the hang of it and have some automation to help you along, then consider adding more sales enablement metrics to your portfolio.
Until you’re confident, take it slow and master your initial tracking. Don’t overwhelm yourself or your team.
Next, only track those that are relevant to your business operations. As mentioned, there are dozens of sales enablement metrics to choose from. Our knee-jerk reaction is to track as many as possible. While there’s nothing wrong with comprehensive data collection, it’s not always necessary.
Instead, browse through the sales enablement metrics and choose the ones most relevant to your SaaS company. Don’t track metrics that will have no real impact or valuable input in your business operations.
Conclusion
Sales enablement is a popular strategy for improving a company’s sales potential. But like all strategies, you need to collect data to determine whether or not the strategy is effective.
Sales enablement metrics allow you to track how effective your sales enablement strategy is and where it needs improvement. While there are dozens of options to choose from, these 28 metrics provide a comprehensive overview of the metrics worth your time and effort.
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