Key Metrics Building a great sales organization is critical today.  A fundamental part of building and sustaining a great sales team is identifying the key leading indicators which give you a heads-up on where your business is going, what's working and not working -- before it's too late.   Often though, the obstacle is too much information. Information systems provide a sea of data that can swamp an organization.  Metrics must be thoughtfully designed to answer specific questions.  Next, metrics must be separated into key metrics, which indicate how a process is functioning, versus secondary metrics, which are used to drill down for root causes or to identify high and low performers.  Redundant metrics need to be removed from view so that they don’t compete for attention without adding value. Below is an example of key and secondary metrics that can be used to evaluate a sales funnel:
		Today's sales operations teams and finance teams are very small and have difficulty generating lots of reports and analysis.  This is actually a good thing, because it forces the organization to prioritize, to focus.  And it can save sales managers and executives from wading through lengthy reports looking for a few nuggets of intelligence. The trick is to make the most of the analytical resources you have.  Sales Ops, Finance and Marketing must cooperate and share data (Sales Ops is in a great position to facilitate this).  Data must be cleverly managed so that it is efficiently processed and feeds other stakeholders, so that your few analysts don't spend time recreating data and wondering why the results don't agree.  Finally, information for decision support must be packaged in a way that focuses clearly on findings and insights, and respects the time that senior management spends reviewing reports and analysis.
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