How To Use 20 Sales Pipeline Metrics To Track Real Growth

Last updated on August 3rd, 2023

This article teaches sales reps and leaders what sales pipeline metrics to track and why.

Not sure which sales pipeline metrics to track?

You’re not alone — people in sales are constantly debating which metrics are the most important.

We created this guide to inform you on important sales pipeline metrics and what each metric means for your business and sales team.

You’ll learn:

What they are
How they work
How to improve them

By the end, you’ll have more sales pipeline know-how to manage your team better and new information to apply to your sales process.

Table of Contents:

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Which Sales Pipeline Metrics Should Businesses Track?

1. Win rate

The win rate outlines the percentage of won deals.

The RAIN Group Center for Sales Research found that the average win rate is 47% across all industries.

A high win rate indicates that sellers are effectively converting on deals and that there’s a precise product fit.

On the other hand, a low win rate shows the opposite and can have multiple factors as to why deals aren’t closing.

Win rates can be improved by analyzing where deals fall through and making adjustments. For instance, maybe you find deals to fall off between the sales meeting and the proposal stage.

Here, you can add talking points and sales enablement materials that make investing in your product a no-brainer by the time the proposal surfaces (testimonials, restating a guarantee, etc.)

2. New Discovery Meetings Booked

This metric measures lead generation performance.

A high number of discovery meetings booked means that your marketing offer fits the demographics that come across it.

When this metric is low, it’s telling you that:

You’re not speaking to the right audience
You’re using the wrong marketing channel
Your offer could be better
Your product’s value proposition could be improved

The number of new discovery meetings sets the tone for the rest of your sales pipeline.

So it should be improved continuously by testing and optimizing your marketing content.

Another good way to use this metric is to pinpoint how many discovery meetings you need on average to acquire a customer.

Once you know this, you can set goals for the number of discovery meetings you need to reach sales quotas.

3. New Proposal Meetings Booked

This measures how effectively a company books SQLs and how good reps are at moving prospects from discovery to proposal meetings.

When this metric is strong, it can act as an aid in speeding up your sales process.

But when you’re not seeing too many MQL leads turning into SQL leads, there’s a chance it’s one of multiple things:

You’re marketing to the wrong audience
Product value isn’t conveyed well enough
Urgency isn’t being built in the discovery by reps uncovering pain points

4. Number of Opportunities By Stage

This tracks how many deals you have at each sales cycle stage.

A company with many opportunities in each stage maximizes its chances of closing. (especially when more deals are in the later stages)

A lack of deal opportunities will tell you that you need to bring in more leads.

In a given month, the number of opportunities should reflect the revenue quota you’re aiming for.

5. Percentage Chance Of A Deal Closing Based On Stage

This metric conveys the closing probability of each sales stage.

As prospects go further in your pipeline, the likelihood of them becoming a won deal increases.

Ideally, you want as many prospects deeper in your sales funnel as possible, requiring tons of qualified leads (and sale effectiveness.)

Pipeline percentages are usually divided by:

Prospect – 10%
Discovery – 25%
Sales Meeting – 50%
Proposal – 75%
Closed/Won – 100%

Keep in mind to consider other factors even when a prospect is further in your sales cycle.

In some cases, this metric may not mean too much if a deal stays stagnant for a long time.

For instance, if a deal stays in the “sales meeting” stage because you have to meet with multiple stakeholders, it may be less than a 50% chance of closing.

The reason being is that some stakeholders could be against your product and could be shopping around.

6. Sales Velocity

Sales velocity calculates your opportunities, average deal size, win rate, and average sales cycle to pinpoint how quickly your organization sells.

A faster sales velocity means revenue is scaling well.

However, if you’re accelerating sales velocity, there needs to be systems to support all the new accounts. (More account managers and customer support to serve the increase in customers. Or CRM automation to send onboarding documents faster rather than done manually.)

If your sales velocity is low, you should ensure you’re getting enough opportunities and that your sellers are both effective and efficient (you can use sales enablement materials to boost effectiveness and efficiency.)

One of the easiest ways to track this is using your CRM reports rather than calculating it yourself.

7. Item Counts

Item counts track how many contacts, accounts, opportunities, open tasks, and completed tasks each sales rep has completed.

In other words, it deals with the productivity of your team.

When item counts aren’t ideal, productivity takes a hit, affecting your other pipeline metrics like stage conversion rates and average sales cycle time.

You can keep your item counts adequate by making sales training a staple and reducing the admin tasks your team is doing (if admin tasks aren’t part of your item counts).

Perhaps you can appoint admin-specific team members and have your reps just focus on selling.

The end result?

More sales productivity and a higher likelihood of reaching quotas.

For item counts, set KPIs for your team to reach each week, month and quarter.

Remember that this metric deals with money-generating actions, so its value means more than it might directly showcase.

8. Average Deal Size

The average deal size (ADS) is the amount a client or customer is paying your business.

It’s calculated by taking the amount of revenue made in a set period and dividing it by the number of closed/won deals.

It helps when you want to calculate how many deals need to be closed to hit quotas.

Remember, Average Deal Size can still be increased after you win deals.

So if you want to increase your ADS, try strategizing upselling and cross-selling campaigns to your clients.

9. Number Of Lost Opportunities

This shows the number of opportunities lost in your pipeline.

Knowing how many deals have been lost can help you take steps to improve deal management.

You want this number as low as possible, and if it’s high, it’s telling you:

Your sales approach could be tweaked via sales enablement
Too many unqualified prospects may be going past the discovery phase

For lost opportunities, it’s essential to see where most of your deals are falling through in the sales cycle.

This way, you can concentrate your efforts on fixing the one or two areas that matter most.

If it’s happening during your sales meetings, you could add sales enablement like:

Battle cards
Sales presentation software (to help make your value prop more clear and memorable)

The number of lost opportunities is a major indicator of the level of sales process effectiveness, so there are rare instances when this metric doesn’t mean much.

10. Deals Lost Reasons

Deal lost reasons help explain why a deal didn’t close.

Sure, it’s a qualitative metric but it’s still crucial.

You can use direct prospect feedback as to why the deal didn’t move forward as well as deductive reasoning:

Were all their objections truly based on the price of the product?
Are there competitors they prefer?
Did the sales rep convey valuable product use cases
Does the product meet customer needs?

Deal lost reasons give contextual information and open the door for learning on behalf of the sales rep. Reps should add the reasons to the opportunity’s card notes in their CRM.

Without these notes, this vital information could get lost. And when a new similar deal surfaces, there won’t be a documented reference experience to refer to.

It would just be from memory.

For that reason, documenting “deal lost reasons” should be included in your sales playbook as part of your sales protocols.

11. Average Sales Cycle Length

ASCL (average sales cycle length) calculates the average time it takes your deals to close

When a company shortens this metric, it boosts the odds of closing more often.

A study from Implisit found that the average ASCL was 102 days.

Here are some factors that influence sales cycle length:

The number of stakeholders
Cost of the product
Buyer personas
Implementation logistics

If this metric is suffering (I.e., having one longer than your industry average), you can:

Strengthen lead qualification by adding contact scoring
Increase the amount of social proof present in the sales process
Give time frames for your different offers (if applicable)
Increase follow-up cadence
Offer free trials or a proof of concept phase
Automate action items (ex., sending whitepapers using CRM automation)

12. Monthly Pipeline Value

Monthly pipeline value helps forecast based on win/close rates.

It gives you an estimate of what you could expect to gain from your opportunities.

A high monthly pipeline value tends to mean high revenue, but it depends on your average sales conversion rate.

Let me explain.

Two companies could have a high monthly pipeline value, but if one company has an account church rate of just 5% more, monthly revenue could look very different between the two companies.

A low monthly pipeline value means there need to be more opportunities generated or your average deal size needs to be increased.

13. Total Open Opportunities

Total open opportunities shows you the total number of deals that could be won or lost at some point.

The more opportunities there are the more chances of meeting revenue KPIs.

Many opportunities are ideal, but if some reps have more than they can handle, consider leveraging a lead distribution system (this ensures that prospects are distributed evenly or given to specialized AEs).

On the opposite side, if your total open opportunities are light, your lead generation should be tweaked to bring more leads.

With fewer opportunities, not only will your numbers not be reached, but reps will be missing out on commissioned deals affecting team morale.

Having this metric balanced means, reps get just enough opportunities to work to meet commissions.

14. Number Of SQLs

SQLs or sales qualified leads are leads qualified to buy.

This means they fit the criteria of your ideal client and their persona and behavior match what you’re looking for (one of the best ways to help screen for SQLs is using contact scoring).

More SQLs in your pipeline should mean a higher win rate.

Having few SQLs could mean:

You have to hyper-target your marketing further.
Your qualification criteria are too strict.
Not enough meetings are getting booked from lead generation

A study on lead follow-up found that many SDRs give up after contacting leads 1.5 times. However, it can take up to 8-10 touchpoints.

You also have to factor in the very person your rep is speaking to.

Sometimes, there are multiple decision-makers, and sometimes you’re engaging with the wrong role in the account.

15. MQL To SQL Rate

This sales pipeline metric tracks the ratio of a prospect moving to buyer qualified.

If this rate is high, then you’ll also have a high number of SQLs.

If you’re finding that you’re not converting MQLs into SQLs, you could:

Boost sales effectiveness through sales enablement
Have more CTAs with enticing offers for your MQL segments
Improve lead quality by improving your ICP

16. Number Of Lost SQLs

This showcases the number of SQL-specific leads in lost opportunities.

Many lost SQLs tell you that your sales meetings and proposal stages could use improvement.

You have to factor in what patterns you see that cause dropoffs:

What common objections are your SQLs saying during sales meetings?

What sales enablement content are your reps using?

What are the reasons the opportunities were lost?

The lost SQLs metric is similar to lost deals, but it’s specific to leads in your ICP.

17. Custom Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer Acquisition Cost calculates how much it costs to gain a customer considering your marketing and sales expenses.

You want this metric to be as low as possible since it cuts less into the bottom line.

And when you’re spending less to acquire a customer (compared to a competitor), you can invest even capital in attracting more customers.

CAC is about spending just the right amount to get a customer. This can be done by calculating your ideal profit margins in your average deal size. From there, you can allocate monthly budgets to find customers.

If you’re spending too much to acquire a customer, you can tweak the following things:

Who you’re targeting
Your offer (make it more enticing – discounts, guarantees, etc.)

CAC is one of the clearest indicators of marketing success, especially with paid advertising.

18. Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Customer lifetime value showcases how much revenue customers, on average, generate for your business.

SMBs often look at customers from a monthly price point (if it’s a monthly retainer model).

But a more accurate value judgment is CLV.

Companies with high CLV take advantage of upsells, cross-sells, and more to increase the value of their different accounts.

But no, they don’t stop there.

They also put the customer experience at the forefront by leveraging CRM and other tools that improve the customer experience.

A good CLV can help cut marketing costs since your current customers are spending more with your business and potentially referring it to their network.

If your CLV isn’t where you’d like, consider:

Improving customer experiences to reduce churn
Upselling more often and where it makes sense
Offering incentives for longer-term contracts (ex., discounts for yearly memberships like SaaS companies do).

19. CLV:CAC Ratio

This ratio calculates the cost per acquisition of a customer relative to the value they bring to your organization.

The ideal CLV:CAC ratio is said to be 3:1, where a customer brings in 3x the value it cost to acquire them.

This ensures that what you make from the customer covers what you invested and brings profitability.

When the ratio is low or perhaps even (1:1) it can lead to unprofitability.

To tip this ratio in your favor?

You should focus on increasing CLV and cutting CAC as much as possible (without investing too little in marketing).

20. Sales Per Rep

Sales per rep showcase how much revenue a given sales rep is achieving in a timeframe.

This KPI directly shows effectiveness but can also hint at how efficient a sales rep is with their time.

If a rep is given as many opportunities as their colleagues yet aren’t hitting revenue numbers, they could improve by:

Reviewing sales enablement
Re-taking sales quizzing in your LMS
Sales coaching
Getting performance appraisals routinely

Having your reps meet or exceed this metric can be a positive feedback loop.

Reps closing more deals means more commission for them and more revenue for the company.

Final Overview Of Sales Pipeline Metrics

Thanks to data, sales pipeline metrics put you in command of sales success. It’s essential to set KPIs, know what to track, and iterate your process based on the information.

But keep in mind that not all sales pipelines are made the same.

The best ones are easy to use and come with customizability, so you can make them fit your company.

That’s why VipeCloud created a customizable sales pipeline feature in its all-in-one CRM, for users to track the sales metrics that matter most.

Request a demo today to learn about VipeCloud’s pipeline and reporting metrics.
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