Introduction
Pipedrive is one of the most versatile and well-regarded CRM systems on the market. Its Plecto integration has been built over years with Plecto’s sales expertise, and refined to perfectly complement Plecto in tracking all stages of the sales pipeline. Why is Plecto such a good choice for Pipedrive users, however?
Well, if anyone can endorse Plecto, it would be Pipedrive itself! That’s right—the Pipedrive office uses Plecto to optimize its sales processes. Daniel Figuiredo, formerly at Pipedrive, explains exactly why Plecto was such an effective and intuitive choice to track and visualize data:
"It was sometimes hard to get true visibility to our KPIs. The metrics were available in their original data sources, but they were not necessarily visible to everyone in the team. Once we realized we had this challenge and we could benefit from using live dashboards and TV screens, we felt like Plecto was a good choice."
With that, here are 10 of the most common—and important—sales KPIs you can use in the Plecto x Pipedrive integration. The following sales KPIs are typically used for tracking relevant Pipedrive data, and are optimal for displaying as widgets on Plecto dashboards.
1. Number of New Leads
The Number of New Leads marks the first step of your customer acquisition journey. Right off the bat, it gives you a projection of how many potential clients you can obtain. Though don’t be fooled! A large number of new leads doesn’t mean that you’ll get all or even most of these as customers at the end of the pipeline. Leads need to be qualified as opportunities first before the conversion to customer status occurs.
2. Lead Response Time
Lead Response Time indicates the amount of time it takes for your sales team to respond to an inbound lead. Time is of the essence here, and the unfortunate truth is that most businesses don’t reach back out to leads nearly fast enough—assuming they do at all. A 2011 Harvard University study found the following surprising statistics about the importance and effectiveness of having a fast Lead Response Time:
- Companies that wait more than 24 hours to connect with inbound leads are 60 times less likely to convert them to customers than companies that contact leads within 24 hours.
- Companies that respond to their leads within an hour are seven times more likely to retain these leads than those companies that wait more than an hour to respond.
- Among American companies, only 77 percent took the time to respond to leads. In other words, one in four companies don’t respond to interested parties.
- The average Lead Response Time among these responsive companies is a staggering 42 hours—nearly two full days!
The best thing to do with Lead Response Time? Reduce it. It can be very helpful to have a “pecking order” of lead importance, so that you prioritize the leads that reach out to you in person—and do so quickly!—while waiting on those leads that have only signed up for your newsletter, for example. Finally, be sure that your sales team is sufficiently staffed, and consider adopting a chatbot that can redirect queries from less important leads.
3. Number of Emails Sent
The Number of Emails Sent KPI isn’t important just for seeing how many emails you’ve sent in a certain period. Because email marketing is fundamentally a numbers game, this KPI is also important for knowing your reach, as email response rate is usually very low. In this vein, knowing the number of emails you’ve sent in a campaign will give you indication about whether to change tactics—for example, if you’ve received a positive response from a lead via email, and so it’s time to contact the lead by phone or in person.
4. Number of Booked Meetings
Your Number of Booked Meetings isn’t essential only for better optimizing your daily workflow. It’s an ideal KPI to use (among many) to track the success of your sales campaigns. Meetings with potential clients tend to occur only after a lengthy period of email exchanges and phone calls, so having a record of your meetings booked gives an important indication of your customer acquisition process.
If you want to reach this stage of customer acquisition more frequently, it’s a good idea to not only practice outreach, but also to establish social rapport. This can occur through several means—obtaining referrals from experts in your field, partnering with other businesses, offering free merch or trials, and publishing testimonies of successful use cases of your product. And remember—it pays to be persistent!
5. Sales Conversion Rate
Sales Conversion Rate is the bread and butter of all sales initiatives. It measures how successfully you’re able to translate opportunities into deals, and so serves as an important indicator of how effectively your sales team acquires customers. Knowing your ICP (ideal customer profile) is essential to having a good Sales Conversion Rate. If your Conversion Rate isn’t matching up with expectations, it’s likely that you need to re-evaluate your ICP. It could also mean your sales and marketing efforts aren’t strong enough or, more simply, that your product or service is overpriced!
6. Sales Win Rate
The Sales Win Rate measures the percentage of successful sales from opportunities or prospects over a given timeframe. An essential KPI for any sales team to monitor, one of its biggest advantages is its versatility. Beyond the length of time you choose to measure, you can also choose whether to include all leads you’ve obtained in this period, or simply those that are formally qualified as opportunities. To increase your Win Rate, it’s important to drill down your data—for example, by analyzing your individual team members’ win-loss performance, or by accounting for seasonal fluctuations in your Win Rate.
Another key means of increasing your Sales Win Rate is to be more selective in your qualification process in order to better match your product or service to your ICP. Using the BANT method (evaluating by Budget, Authority, Need, and Timeline) can clarify how to proceed with the lead qualification process.
7. Average Deal Size (ADS)
Average Deal Size indicates the average value of deals you’ve closed with customers over a given period. There are several reasons why it’s such an important KPI. For example, you can project the value of future deals based on the average value of past deals. You can also use Average Deal Size to identify and track sales trends over time. Best practices for increasing your Average Deal Size include upselling and cross-selling your product or service. However, be cautious here! If your ADS rises too quickly while your MRR falls, it means you’re offering too many discounts, and therefore losing revenue.
8. Weighted Pipeline Value
Weighted Pipeline Value helps you determine appropriate levels of risk for your company’s sales pipeline. It measures the probability of a deal closing—not just once at the end, but at every stage of the sales pipeline. To do so, a weight (or percentage) is assigned to every stage of the pipeline, based on the probability of the deal reaching this stage in real life.
Determining how likely a deal is to close can be a tricky task, but this KPI makes it easier by combining hard-data analysis with flexibility. With Weighted Pipeline Value, you can decide what constitutes acceptable risk, as well as what “success” and “failure” mean through the entirety of the sales pipeline.
9. Customer Acquisition Cost
Customer Acquisition Cost is a hugely important sales KPI, measuring the cost needed to acquire a customer within a given period. In other words, it’s a measure of ROI (return on investment) for obtaining new customers. Marketing- and sales-related costs counted as part of CAC include salaries, ad spend, marketing tool subscriptions, promotional materials, and other similar expenses. These expenses are then divided by the total number of new customers obtained during the relevant period.
LTV and Churn Rate are also frequently evaluated alongside CAC. The ideal ratio of CAC to LTV is 3:1. To reach this “golden ratio,” you can tailor your advertising efforts to reach your ICP while simultaneously optimizing your customer experience, thereby increasing their LTV.
10. Average Sales Cycle Length
The Average Sales Cycle Length measures the mean length of time it takes for your company to close deals with clients. While the metric appears simple at first glance, it’s a metric that several factors influence, making it surprisingly complex. You can see why, because a typical sales cycle consists of the following steps:
Generating leads
You can use methods such as the following to obtain leads:
- Ads
- Webinars
- Social media content
- Outbound prospecting
Responding to leads
Ensure you establish a channel of communication with all interested leads as soon as possible.
Qualifying leads
This is where you evaluate potential clients’ suitability for their use of your product or service. Doing so now mitigates churn risk—and therefore lost revenue—down the road.
Presenting your product
Providing an in-depth introduction to your product or service will give your leads the opportunity to raise questions—and you the opportunity to answer them.
Negotiation and closing
When you’ve come to a mutually beneficial arrangement with your lead, it’s at this point where they become your customer.
Maintaining the relationship
Going forward, it’s important to cultivate and nurture your new customers to increase their LTV to your company.
Your Average Sales Cycle Length will serve as an important tool to determine several relevant factors to running successful sales campaigns. Of course, a good overall goal for this KPI is to reduce it. But because it can be easily influenced by customer profiles and preferences as well as external, market-based factors, this KPI can help you project cycles of high and low revenue so you can better allocate resources to cover both.
Conclusion
Using the right sales KPIs within Pipedrive while visualizing them on Plecto dashboards carries tremendous potential to enhance your sales performance by grounding it in data-based decision-making.
Tracking metrics such as Sales Conversion Rate, Average Sales Cycle Length, and Sales Win Rate allows you to obtain important insights into your sales processes and team effectiveness.
Understanding and optimizing KPIs like Average Deal Size, Customer Acquisition Cost, and Weighted Pipeline Value lets you understand how to manage risks and allocate resources more efficiently.
Finally, monitoring communication-related KPIs—such as the Number of Emails Sent and Lead Response Time—ensures that your outreach efforts are timely and effective.
Integrating these KPIs into your sales strategy gives you the ability to drive continuous improvement, foster stronger customer relationships, and ultimately achieve your sales goals more effectively.
A bonus tip—to make your Pipedrive x Plecto integration even easier and more effective, Plecto offers prebuilt KPI templates and a ready-to-go Pipedrive dashboard! You can find these and more on the Plecto Store.
With all of that said, if you’re already a Pipedrive customer, it’s time to give Plecto a try and see what the integration can do for you! As Daniel Figuiredo says:
"We wanted to become a more data-driven company and meet the needs of a scaling support and sales team. Plecto was the obvious choice. I knew it was going to be interesting and effective. I was not expecting to find ourselves celebrating each positive customer rating and each won deal together as a team!"
Sign up here for a free 14-day Plecto trial—and start smashing your sales goals with the power of data.
