Hi cuties - Can you believe we’re halfway through 2024? HOW?!

Also, Happy Dad’s day to all who celebrate.

Alright, this month, we’ve covered when to create and close a deal and how to structure your deal stages.

This week, we will dig into what to track and measure on your deals.

TLDR; the MOST important things to track and measure are -

• Where are you deals coming from?

• What % of deals are you converting to revenue?

• Do you have enough activity and deals to hit your revenue goal?

• Where are you losing the most deals (stage)?

• How long does it take you to close a deal?

Measure and optimize those things, and your pipeline will transform from a fiction novel into a predictable math problem!

What to track and measure on your deals

Key pipeline metrics to measure

These are the table stakes pipeline metrics you want to measure and optimize.

There are absolutely more advanced pipeline metrics…but this is where I would start.

So many startups I’ve worked with can’t even tell me these basic things, and they are foundational to anything more advanced.

Walk before you run. 🏃‍♂️ 

Deal Source

Where did you get the deal from? Outbound, a referral, or inbound to your website?

Who was the referral source? Where/how did the inbound lead find you (search engine, G2, social media)?

Track those things separately as primary and secondary deal sources.

• Primary: Outbound, Referral, Inbound, Conference/Event, Existing Relationship, Other

• Secondary: Referer Company or Type, Organic Search, Paid Ad, Social Media, etc

Now, create a pie graph showing where ALL of your deals came from by source (across all deal stages).

What trends are we seeing? Does the distribution align with our investment in sales or marketing from a hard dollar and time spent perspective?

Then, drill down into your Closed Won and Closed Lost.

What sources are driving the most closed-won revenue? Which sources are converting the least (lost)? Do more or less of that, respectively.

Conversion Rates

How many deals make it from the first meeting allllll the way to closed won (average)?

This is where we start to figure out our math problem. Our conversion rates are a required component to determine our pipeline coverage and activity needs.

Pipeline coverage is the total value of deals in our pipeline that we need to cover (or achieve) our revenue goals.

For example, if we only convert 20% of our deals to closed-won revenue, we need to have 5x our revenue goal in pipeline value.

Next, we want to determine how much top-of-funnel activity (new deals) we need to hit our revenue goal. How many net new deals do we need to create to generate 5x pipeline?

Activity is a leading indicator of your revenue or quota attainment.

If the required activity isn’t there week to week….it’s unlikely you’ll hit it.

Pay attention to the leading indicators; don’t wait until the end of the month or quarter to realize you’re short.

How many make it from stage 1 to 2, 2 to 3, and so on?

In addition to looking at conversions from beginning to end, ALSO look at conversions at each stage. This is called pipeline leakage reporting.

Where is our pipeline leaking? At what stage are we losing the most deals? Why?

This helps us identify where we need to improve our sales process (or which rep needs more coaching on a certain sales stage). Fix the leaks.

Deal Lifecycle

How long does it take us to close a deal (beginning to end)? How long does each individual sales stage take on average?

Some products will inherently have longer sales cycles. For example, enterprise deals or more complex products.

The first step is just to set your baseline. How long does it take you NOW?

Then, we can start inspecting the longer sales stages to identify areas for improvement. How can we accelerate this stage through new sales assets or other means?

As you change your assets or process, track the impact on your conversion rates AND lifecycle.

We want conversion rates to go up 👆️ and lifecycle (time) to go down 👇️ .

Need a speaker for your next founder summit, conference, or event?

I’m pretty good and have a whole bunch of content ready to rumble.

Want to learn more about how I help startups increase their revenue by 150-590%? 👀 

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With love and gratitude,