4 Essential Outbound Sales Metrics for Predicting Pipeline and Revenue

The world’s most successful sales managers have something crucial in common. They make highly intelligent revenue predictions. Sure, nearly all sales managers track some sales metrics, but the truth is most inside sales leaders just aren’t going far enough.

When it comes to data-based sales coaching, you need to go beyond tracking basic outbound sales metrics like emails per day, talk time and contacts per lead. To truly influence and predict sales revenue, you need robust sales analytics that provide visibility into the actions that need to be taken to meet goals.

By tracking the following four outbound metrics with your sales tools, you can not only monitor reps’ activities, but actually see the outcome of those activities. The result: intelligent revenue predictions that will impress any executive or board member!

Dials-to-Connection Percentage

Many sales managers track how many dials their reps are making. But, activity isn’t always as important as efficiency. If you want to discover how efficient your reps are, start by tracking the percentage of dials that result in connections. This is your first step to predict how activities influence outcomes. If you notice a particular rep isn’t efficiently connecting with prospects, take a deeper dive. Remember that time of day, voicemail skills and a rep’s dialing technology can all play a role in how many dials actually result in a connection over the phone.

Dials-to-Appointment Ratio

Another crucial outbound efficiency metric is the dials-to-appointment ratio. Your reps could be having hundreds of conversations a day, but they are only successful if those conversations yield results. If you have reps that are connecting with a high number of leads but not booking meetings, drill down to their call recordings to identify ways they can improve their pitch.

Dials-to-Opportunity Percentage

This may very well be the golden metric for sales development teams. When you know how many dials it takes a rep to create an opportunity, you understand exactly how busy each rep has to be to hit his or her numbers. You can see exactly which SDRs are pulling their weight, as well as who needs to put in more effort. The dials-to-opportunity percentage also gives you an idea of how many SDRs you need to hire to create an acceptable amount of opportunities for your account executives.

Dials-to-Deal Ratio

For more actionable metrics that will help you predict pipeline and revenue, check out our Complete Guide to Inside Sales Analytics!