Do you know your metrics?

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Do you know your metrics?

Honest talk here: can you recite your stats and metrics if your CEO or board asked you for them right now? Could you access them within minutes? How hard would it be to attain the basic info you need to know how your team is performing? 

Sadly, when we talk to sales leaders, the norm is actually to NOT know their numbers. Even worse, many sales leaders can’t even access this information without jumping through a series of hoops and red tape. If you talk to any successful sales leader, they’ll tell you just how important the key performance indicators (KPIs) are to their success. KPIs guide your progress toward your sales goals. They are indicators of if and how well you are meeting your goals. 

Are your rates indicating you’re doing well, or are they indicating problems in staffing, training, systems, or process?

Are you missing important KPI’s that are holding your business back?

If you don’t know your metrics, you have no guidepost to tell you how you’re doing. It’s almost as if you have set out on a boat to reach Hawaii, but you have no map you’re going off of. Without the data guiding your moves, you’re just hoping you’ll hit land at some point in the vast Pacific Ocean. That’s what it’s like when you’re trying to make your sales goals, but don’t have the metrics to guide you.

Sensentia’s contact center expertise andAI-fueled solutions can positively impact all of these metrics and many more while reducing overall costs associated with running the business.

Sales Teams – Contact Centers

  • Abandon Rate – The percentage rate at which a call or lead is presented to the queue that is not answered or acted upon in a timely manner causing loss.
    • What is an acceptable level of abandoned rate? 2%, 4%, 6%?
      • Zero abandon rate could mean you have too much staffing causing waste; too little staffing and your abandon rates can hit double digits quickly.
  • Is your staffing off at that time interval causing you to lose calls?
    • Staffing forecasting can be as much an art as a science usually involving historical trending. If your abandon rates are high, validate the staffing plan. If they are low, evaluate the staffing plan. 
    • Are you checking your abandon rates at intervals early mornings, mid-morning, late afternoons, always check your “off shifts” when you cut staff to match volume.
  • Are there specific centers, teams, agents, increasing your abandon rate? This could indicate MGMT and engagement issues, or simple performance mgmt issues.
  • Average Speed of Answer (ASA) – Average time a call or lead is sitting in your queue before answer/activity.
    • What is an excellent ASA? 5 Seconds, 10 Seconds, 20 Seconds, 30 Seconds. If you are operating a sales team the same as you would a customer service team you are missing the boat. For example, 30 Seconds can feel like an eternity hearing a phone ring or queue music. In a sales situation where calls are created in an instant, the opportunity can disappear in an instant just as quickly when potential clients are waiting in a queue for service.
    • If your ASA is too low indicating you may be over-staffed, if it’s too high, are you under-staffed, or are their morale issues where reps are not happily taking the next call, or system inefficiencies causing challenges getting to the next call
  • Conversion Rate – The percentage rate at which your calls or leads are turned into sales.
    • This is often a rate that many sales leaders know off the top of their head and widely share, but the definitions can differ widely where one 30% doesn’t equate to the performance of another 30%.
    • Always define the calculation to ensure teams are speaking about the exact same metric.
    • For example a carrier’s sales team has a lot of call types incoming to their sales centers (customer service transfers, erroneous dialer attacks, calls from legacy marketing, and marketing driven calls) 30% conversion from this level, is much different than an FMO that the majority of calls they receive are sales related from marketing.
    • Always ask if they are measuring their conversions off qualified leads, or all leads. This makes a huge difference. Is it “call to sale,”or “lead to sale?”
    • Outbound teams convert much less than inbound teams, blended teams can influence conversion rate by having a higher mix of inbound. 
  • Average Handle Time – The average length of time a call or lead takes to be fully serviced
    • This is a largely important metric that can equate to a large expense if people and processes are not managed well, or it can be a huge competitive advantage if managed well.
    • Time is money in a call center, and each wasted second adds up over the aggregate to large dollars.
    • People and processes should be consistently managed and evaluated to ensure your calls are being expertly serviced as efficiently as possible.
    • When you take a $37 per hour employee, and break it down to minutes, you’re running at 62 cents a minute. With hundreds of employees, and hundreds of thousands of calls, what is the value of shaving off three minutes of handle time off your AHT?
    • We have seen companies save $5M or more in one year when they implement our solutions. Often the solutions pay for themselves in savings alone, and allow excess budget to be applied elsewhere.
  • Cost Per Lead – Fully loaded cost per generated lead (Marketing + Admin)
    • This metric allows you to assign a value to a lead and socialize this value with your teams, so they can understand and equate loss of not working leads.
    • When employees understand how much it costs to generate that lead, they will feel closer to the business, and feel empowered to help the business regain its ROI by working their leads.
    • This metric helps bridge the gap between Marketing and Sales Teams and allows an understanding of both initiatives and when you unite marketing and sales teams together to pursue the lowest CPL it can create a fluid information exchange that improves the business
  • Cost Per Sale – Fully loaded cost per sale (Marketing + Admin)
    • This metric allows you to assign a value to a sale and socialize this value with your teams, so they can understand and equate loss of not working leads to their fullest potential
    • When employees understand how much it costs to generate that sale, they will feel closer to the business, and feel empowered to help the business regain its ROI by working their leads to the fullest potential.
    • This metric helps bridge the gap between Marketing and Sales Teams and allows an understanding of both initiatives and when you unite marketing and sales teams together to pursue the lowest CPL it can create a fluid information exchange that improves the business.
    • When you combine conversion rate with cost per lead and cost per sale, you can easily communicate to your teams what could have been attained, and the value of the loss.
    • Gross vs.Net – The amount of applications submitted vs. the amount of accreted members from the applications
      • This metric allows you to measure the efficacy of your agents, centers, and teams when measured at each level. Essentially every time an application for membership is submitted, that creates an expectation for the prospective member.
      • It can also define additional training needs for agents. Teams, or centers, or issues in the enrollment process.
      • It can also be used as a sales forecasting tool to communicate to leadership on the expected volume of sales once you know how many gross submission have happened
  • Early Cancellation Rate (EC) – The amount of people that canceled the application prior to the effective date indicating buyer’s remorse
    • What is an acceptable EC rate 2%, 5%, 10%, 20%
    • We suggest looking at your high & Mid performers and establishing a normalized goal to strive for. If compliance is driving the goal, you need to ask yourself are they managing to a mandate, or a best practice.Always strive for best practice.
    • This rate is an excellent measurement of buyer’s remorse, which can detail how effectively your sales teams have cemented the value proposition of the plan they recommended.
    • If the EC is low, your teams are generally doing a good job. If it’s in double digits, you may need to look into further training efforts or evaluate your business process to ensure it’s providing full support for optimal experience.
  • Complaint Rate – Percentage of members filing a formal complaint (CTM,Grievance, Mgmt Escalation)
    • Are complaints coming from a center, a team, or specific agents?Digging in to evaluate at this level can help you form opinions and define whether it’s a systemic issue, or an isolated area.Evaluating the dta at this granular of a level is important when problem solving.
    • If you’re in Medicare (MCAG, CTM & Grievance) rates are usually widely known
    • If you’re in other business segments, you may need to look at supervisor escalations and the types of escalations they are servicing. Are these issues that should have been able to be solved at a lower level, or are these truly complex issues that need careful guidance? This will help define if it’s a people or process issue depending on how many are experiencing similar trends.
  • Attrition Rate – Rate at which fully trained employees leave the position
    • What is an acceptable attrition rate? 5%, 10%, 15%, 20%
    • If your attrition rate is low that is a great thing and can signal you’re doing things right, when they creep up into double digits and higher it can signal challenges in people and/or process, or a combination of both..
    • We have often found that with many sales teams, agents want to feel like they can truly help members, and have a deep desire to deliver on that.If systems and process limit their ability to help, they feel powerless and start to dread taking the next call, which has a compounding effect on them mentally, and eventually physically.
    • Perform focus groups and truly listen with an open mind where it’s not perceived as a complaint session, it’s perceived as a roadmap to success.When fully trained employees leave a position, that equates to sunk costs of time, effort, and money that cannot be easily gained back.
    • Licensed Agents are one of the highest expenses a contact center can have, and losing a high-performer has a huge impact on both ROI and employee morale.

At Sensentia we have the expertise and the capabilities to influence each of these metrics positively, and have experienced companies maintaining budget-parity by paying for our solutions simply through AHT savings alone, while improving their sales performance by 3X, or more.

Each of these metrics tell a piece of the story, and evaluating all these will help you correct any course and topple your sales targets. Let Sensentia equip your teams with a best in class solution, and see what their true capabilities are!Book a demo today!