5 Metrics to Optimize Inbound Sales ROI

One of the best parts of modern-day marketing is the massive amount of data that is available to us. This data provides complete visibility into the performance of marketing campaigns, especially those that capture inbound leads. With this insight, we can maximize our inbound efforts to collect as many leads as possible. This newfound ability has produced large increases in inbound lead volume for nearly every company, creating the need for reps who specifically handle inbound leads.

An increase in marketing effectiveness also calls for additional effort on the sales side.  Drift found that a rep’s chance of making contact with an inbound lead decreases by ten times after 5 minutes. That means inbound reps have to be fast, especially if your company wants to maximize their marketing spend. No matter how many leads your marketing team generates, you lose money if your inbound reps can’t capitalize on them.

Fortunately, sales also benefits from new data. We’ve found five metrics that are key indicators of your inbound reps’ effectiveness. By monitoring them, you gain direct visibility into how quickly and effectively your team (and each rep) responds to each inbound lead. You can also instantaneously diagnose an issue and respond before you damage your pipeline.

Here are five metrics to optimize inbound sales ROI:

Average Lead Response Time by Rep

The average lead response time by rep reveals, on average, how long it takes reach rep to respond to an inbound lead. In the Revenue.io dashboard this is displayed as an overall rate and on a rep-by-rep basis. With average lead response time by rep, you see what your average team response time is, as well as which reps are faster or slower.

When you compare average response time with each reps’ score, you can identify a problem before it begins. If a rep is faster, that’s great, they can serve as an example. What specifically do they do that allows them to respond quickly? Or, do they handle less lead volume?

If a rep is slower, they should receive a little extra help. Are too many leads assigned to the lagging reps? Do they spend too much time trying to reach each individual contact? Or, are they simply not quick enough? If a rep’s time increases, you must intervene quickly. Every second a lead goes uncontacted, the chance of a win drops.

Opportunities by Lead Response Time

Now that you know how long it a takes a rep to respond to any given inbound lead, you can start to understand how it impacts your pipeline. Opportunities by lead response time takes the inbound leads that get converted to opportunities, and then examines how long it took a rep to make contact.

This is combined with the average lead response time by rep so you can immediately know if inbound response time is affecting your pipeline. If your opportunity by lead response time is 10 minutes, but your reps’ average lead response time is 30 minutes, your reps are responding too slowly to effectively create an opportunity. Therefore, your funnel will likely slow. On the other hand, if the average lead response time is faster, they could be on the path to outperform their goals.

The same method can be applied on an individual basis as well. If a rep struggles to convert inbound leads, examine their response time. It may be slower than what is necessary to create an opportunity.

Conversion Rate by Lead Response Time

Conversation rate by lead response time makes a direct comparison between your reps’ inbound lead response time and their lead conversion rate. With it, you can directly examine how response time impacts your conversion rate.

Many companies create SLAs (service level agreements) that dictate how quickly reps are supposed to respond to leads. How exactly do you determine that time? If you know that your conversion rate drops after 30 minutes of no contact, then you know where to set your standard.

Conversion rate by lead response time also shows how response time impacts your sales goal attainment. In fact, you can set a response time as a goal, then view its impact in Revenue.io. You might notice that conversions rapidly increase when reps respond faster.

Inbound Web Leads by Product

This is where marketing can get in on the fun as well. Most companies either sell multiple products or run multiple marketing campaigns at the same time. Inbound web leads by product tracks how many leads are generated by each different campaigns. This is especially useful if you have a team with product specialists who only focus on the sales of a specific product.

With inbound leads by product, you can see exactly how many those inbound leads those specialists need to handle, and marketing can understand how effective their campaigns are.  

Follow-up Rate

Follow-up rate tracks the percentage of inbound leads that have calls and emails logged. Basically it shows you how many attempts at contact each rep makes on their inbound leads. In B2B sales, it can take up to eight or more calls and emails to secure a meeting. Therefore you can see which reps are doing their due diligence and making multiple contact attempts on each lead.