The Top Business KPIs for Marketing, Sales, and Service

Did you know that businesses that document their strategies receive a 538% greater chance of succeeding in their efforts? No, that wasn't a typo. When everyone in your organization understands how they should be performing, where their weaknesses and strengths are, and why the business is proceeding the way it is, it becomes easier for everyone to work as a cohesive team and to reach business goals—no matter what department you're in.

What Are KPIs?

Part of creating solid documentation for a strategy are key performance indicators (KPIs). These data points paint a clear picture of how the organization performs and how they should move forward. And, they're typically created in associate with a larger goal.

For instance, the goal might be $20 million in revenue, but the KPIs to track ongoing performance toward that goal are:

• Monthly retention of clients
• Number of proposals presented each week
• Size of proposals
• Leads generated from a specific marketing campaign

There are countless metrics that businesses can track, but over-reporting can create confusion and take away from the value of the statistics. Instead, businesses should pay close attention to the numbers that align best with their appointed goals.

Here are some key metrics to consider when building your own customized KPIs for your business.

Marketing KPIs to Track

• Organic traffic. You want to see how well your content and inbound marketing efforts attract organic traffic on the web. This provides insight into your reputation, ability to understand and engage customers, and see what matters most to prospects. It also tells you if your website and content are getting found online and if your content and SEO strategy is working. 

• Landing page/form conversion rates. This helps you see how many people on dedicated conversion pages are actually connecting with the content, resources, and messaging. You gain insight into what matters to prospects, your copywriting ability, and the overall success of your marketing funnel.

• Visitor-to-lead conversion rate. It doesn't do a business much good to attract large amounts of website traffic that never convert into leads (and eventually sales). Looking at this ratio offers insight into the alignment of content with target personas and helps you ensure you have the right lead conversion paths and CTAs strategically placed throughout your website. 

• Lead-to-customer conversion rate: As you acquire leads, you want to make sure that they fit your target business or ideal customer profile, and that you have a solid plan in place for converting these leads—no matter where they are coming from. This KPI, in particular, will help you see how well your marketing efforts produce quantitative ROI for the organization.

• Cost per lead. Marketing needs to be cost-effective. See how much investment is required to acquire each new lead. It will help you calculate the ROI of particular efforts and campaigns.

• Cost per customer. In addition to knowing how much it costs to gain each new lead, you also want to know the cost of each new customer. This will help you develop strategies and identify the campaigns that work best.

• Percentage of customers who were influenced by marketing. Generally, the modern consumer hits many touch points before converting. For example, they might interact with sales team outreaches and engage with marketing material while clicking on a social media post in between it all. Calculate the percentage of customers who were nurtured or touched by your marketing efforts to determine the overall impact of marketing on customer acquisition. (Marketing automation software like HubSpot can calculate this for you.) 

Sales KPIs to Track

• The number of leads and opportunities contributed (on an individual and team basis). See how well your team performs by monitoring how many leads and opportunities they secure. You can also track people within the team to identify those exceeding expectations and those who need to step up.

• Rate of client acquisition. Look at the percentage of prospects that your sales team reaches out to that turn to customers. Again, look at how the team performs as a whole and individually. Collect statistics, such as the average number of touch points needed to convert and the most effective means of reaching prospects, to establish benchmarks.

• Percentage and value at each stage of the sales funnel. Track the rate at which each stage of the process progresses including lead to sales qualified lead (SQL), SQL to opportunity, and opportunity to customer. See the percentages that move through each stage and identify potential weaknesses that can be improved.

• Up-sell and cross-sell rates and values. See how successful your sales team is at promoting up-sells and cross-sells to current customers/clients. Look also at when in the client lifecycle the most successful up-sells and cross-sells occur and use this information to establish best practices.

• Engagement rates of existing customers. See how happy the business keeps customers once they have officially signed on to the organization. (This might also be a customer service metric depending on how your organization is set up.) 

• Sales funnel length. See the average amount of time and touch points it takes to bring a customer from a newly acquired lead or identified prospect to a customer. This can help establish benchmarks and see where road blocks lie in the sales process.

Customer Service KPIs to Track

• Customer satisfaction scores and net promoter scores. Customer satisfaction scores and net promoter scores  give organizations a clear look at how likely people are to recommend their brand to others and how happy they feel with their service. Watch for numbers that rise or fall.

• Average first response time. Customers want to know that brands care about their issues and needs, and how long it takes the company to respond to questions or problems is a good indicator of customer care. Nielsen-McKinsey found that customers preferred a quick response, even if it did not immediately solve their problem, over a slow response that did solve the problem.

• Average resolution time. Look also at how long it takes your team to resolve customer problems as well. Even if you score highly for rapid first response times, dragging out problems and transferring the customer through multiple ineffective representatives will hamper any goodwill otherwise gained.

• Customer renewal/retention rates. It costs businesses between 5 and 25 times more to acquire new customers than to retain old ones. How well your business holds on to existing customers provides valuable insight into how well you meet their needs. This statistic not only offers key insight into organizational success, but also the bottom line.

• Employee engagement and retention. Employees who feel valued at their company and remain on the job for a longer time will improve motivation, continuity in services for their clients, and the care these employees offer their clients. Look at turnover rates in your organization and ask employees directly about their experiences at the company.

• Average number of active issues. Although resolving problems quickly remains important, track also how many problems arise in the first place. Although no product or business model is perfect, a high rate of active issues on a regular basis indicates a quality problem, which can also turn customers elsewhere.

Tracking KPIs provides any organization with valuable insight into how well their organization runs, what performs well, and what stands to be improved. Selecting the metrics that matter the most to your organization and reporting needs will provide you with a clearer picture of business performance, helping you move forward with confidence.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive, and it's certainly not a one-size-fits-all approach, but hopefully, these get you thinking and send you in the right direction so you can establish firm KPIs for your own organization.