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Blog · Territory, capacity and quota planning

How to measure sales effectiveness: five ratios from the ledger and the CRM

Five ratios that together describe whether a sales team is effective, each computed from exports the company holds: coverage at cadence, meeting-to-opportunity conversion, win rate by segment, revenue per touch, and share of wallet against the norm. Why activity counts and quota attainment are not among them, how the five are read together per rep, and the one-page view that replaces the activity dashboard.

The short answerSales effectiveness is what a team gets for the effort it puts in, and five ratios describe it: coverage at cadence, whether the effort goes where it should; meeting-to-opportunity conversion, whether meetings become pipeline; win rate by segment, whether pipeline becomes revenue; revenue per qualifying touch, what the effort returns; and share of wallet against the norm, whether the base is being grown. Activity counts measure effort without result, and quota attainment measures result without effort. The five, read together per rep, say where in the chain effectiveness is lost.

A sales effectiveness dashboard usually shows calls, emails, meetings and attainment. Three of those are effort and one is an outcome, and none of them says whether the effort produced the outcome. Five ratios from the ledger and the CRM do. This guide sets out each, the chain they form, and the one page per rep.

The five ratios

# Ratio Formula Question Source
1 Coverage at cadence accounts touched at cadence ÷ assigned Is the effort going where it should? Activities, assignments, tiers
2 Meeting-to-opportunity first meetings → qualified opportunity in window ÷ first meetings Do meetings become pipeline? Activities, pipeline
3 Win rate by segment won ÷ (won + lost), per segment Does pipeline become revenue? Outcomes
4 Revenue per touch revenue from touched accounts ÷ qualifying touches What does the effort return? Ledger, activities
5 Share of wallet vs norm share ÷ segment norm, across the book Is the base being grown? Ledger, master, norms

Why not the usual ones

Usual metric Why it is not here
Calls per day Effort without direction; rewards calling the same ten accounts
Emails sent Effort without result
Meetings held Effort; ratio 2 is what they produce
Quota attainment Outcome that depends on the quota-setter as much as the rep

The rows you need

  • Activities: account, rep, date, type.
  • Assignments and tiers: account, rep, tier; tier, cadence.
  • Pipeline and outcomes: opportunity, account, rep, stage, created, outcome, value.
  • Ledger and master: account, revenue, segment.
  • Norms: per segment.

Identifiers only.

A worked page per rep

Rep Coverage Meeting conversion Win rate (segment-adjusted) Revenue per touch Share of wallet vs norm Where the chain breaks
R-04 53% 13% 31% $2,100 0.7 Effort placement and meetings
R-11 86% 64% 24% $3,400 0.9 Winning: pipeline is there, deals are lost
R-17 94% 38% 41% $5,900 1.1 Nothing; a benchmark for the team
R-22 49% 40% 36% $6,200 1.0 Effort placement: high return on a half-worked book

Rep R-11 does everything right until the deal, and loses more than the segment's rate; that is a closing or pricing conversation. Rep R-22 returns the most per touch on half the book, which means the other half is where the next revenue is. Neither finding is visible in calls per day or attainment.

The identity

revenue from touched accounts + revenue from untouched accounts = rep's credited revenue

If ratio 4's numerator plus the untouched revenue does not equal the rep's total, an account is attributed twice.

Where it goes wrong

Effort measured, result not. The dashboard of calls.

Result measured, effort not. The attainment league table.

Ratio 4 read alone. Inflated by touching only buyers; read with ratio 1.

Win rate unadjusted for segment. The enterprise rep looks bad for the segment.

Every month, one page per rep

Mapped once, the activities, the pipeline, the outcomes, the ledger and the norms produce the five ratios per rep, the chain reading and the identity every month. Covirage builds this from the exports as they are. The sales insights solution describes the setup, and the activity metrics guide covers why the first ratio replaces the activity dashboard.

Questions people ask

Why not quota attainment?

Attainment is an outcome that depends on the quota as much as on the rep. A rep at 110 percent on a quota set too low and a rep at 85 on one set too high are not ranked by attainment; they are ranked by the quota-setter. The five ratios describe the rep's own effect on the chain, whatever the quota.

What is revenue per touch?

Revenue in the period from accounts the rep touched, over qualifying touches. It is the return on effort, and it separates a rep who touches sixty accounts for little from one who touches thirty for a lot. Read with coverage, because a rep can inflate it by touching only the accounts that already buy.

How are the five read together?

As a chain: effort placed, meetings converted, deals won, revenue returned, base grown. A rep low on one and high on the rest has one thing to fix, and the ratio names it. A rep low on all five has a different problem from one low on the third alone.