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Sales KPIs for B2B sales teams: ten measures that matter, each with its formula and the export it comes from

The ten sales KPIs a B2B sales team should run on, whatever it sells, each with its formula, the export it comes from and what it tells you: value coverage at cadence, dormant accounts by prior value, share of wallet against similar customers, win rate from a stated stage, pipeline coverage against required, forecast bias per rep, time to first touch on new accounts, rep load against capacity, meeting to opportunity conversion, and customer concentration. Also the three measures most teams miss, the figures to drop, the identities, and who owns what.

The short answerA B2B sales team should run on ten measures: value coverage at cadence; dormant accounts by prior-year value; share of wallet against similar customers; win rate from a stated stage, by count and value; in-period pipeline coverage against what the win rate requires; forecast bias per rep; time to first touch on newly assigned accounts; rep load against capacity; meeting to opportunity conversion; and customer concentration. Four are about existing accounts, three about pipeline and forecast, and three about how the team is organised. They come from the CRM, the ledger, the assignment file and weekly forecast snapshots. The three most often missed are coverage by value, because activity is counted and direction is not; forecast bias per rep, since team accuracy hides offsetting errors; and rep load, because a book too large to cover guarantees neglected accounts however hard the rep works.

Whatever a B2B team sells, its number comes mostly from accounts it already has, plus a pipeline, produced by people with finite time. Ten measures cover all three.

The ten measures

# Measure Formula Export What it tells you
1 Value coverage at cadence Revenue of accounts touched within tier cadence ÷ revenue of assigned accounts CRM activity; assignment file; ledger Whether the accounts that matter are being reached
2 Dormant accounts, by prior value Prior-year revenue of accounts past k × own order gap ÷ prior-year revenue Ledger Revenue that stopped quietly
3 Share of wallet against similar customers Account spend by category against the median for its segment; valued gap Ledger; account master Where customers buy elsewhere
4 Win rate from a stated stage Won ÷ (won + lost + stalled), from the stated stage, by count and value CRM opportunities The rate coverage and forecast depend on
5 Pipeline coverage against required In-period pipeline, aged deals removed ÷ target, against 1 ÷ win rate CRM opportunities; targets Whether there is enough real pipeline
6 Forecast bias per rep Mean signed error at a fixed horizon over four quarters Weekly forecast snapshots; closed revenue Who sandbags and who hopes
7 Time to first touch Days from assignment to first two-way contact, by tier Assignment history; CRM Reassigned accounts left waiting
8 Rep load against capacity Touches owed by the book per year ÷ touches available Assignment file; tiers; calendar Books too large to cover
9 Meeting to opportunity conversion First meetings that became a qualified opportunity within the window ÷ first meetings CRM Meetings that lead nowhere, by rep and source
10 Customer concentration Top ten share; largest customer; effective number of customers Ledger, rolled up to parent Dependence, and its direction

Every one of these is computed per account, per rep and team, and in total, and every one carries an identity that must hold before the table is shown.

The three most sales teams miss

Coverage by value. Dashboards count calls. Whether the top fifty accounts were spoken to is not on them.

Forecast bias per rep. The team lands within 3 percent because two reps cancel each other out.

Rep load. Accounts are added to books for years and nobody checks the arithmetic of covering them.

A worked line

A rep has 300 accounts. Tier A, 20 accounts, is owed monthly contact; tier B, 60, quarterly; tier C, 220, twice a year: 920 touches a year. The rep also needs 150 touches for prospecting. Capacity is 880. The book is over capacity by 190 touches, and last quarter the uncovered accounts included three from tier A holding 14 percent of the book's revenue, because nobody had decided which accounts would be the ones left out.

What to drop

Calls, emails and meetings as counts. Coverage at cadence, by value.

Total pipeline value. In-period, aged removed, against required.

Leaderboard by revenue. It ranks the books reps were given.

The identities

Table Must hold
Coverage Assigned accounts = covered + overdue + never touched; one owner each
Pipeline Deals = won + lost + open; open = in period + out of period
Forecast Every actual is matched to a snapshot at the stated horizon
Load Touches owed sum across tiers; every account has a tier

A table whose identity fails is a table with a row missing or counted twice. It is not shown until it is fixed.

Who owns what

Measure Owner Reviewed
Coverage; dormancy; time to first touch Sales managers; reps Weekly
Pipeline coverage; meeting conversion Sales managers Weekly to fortnightly
Win rate; forecast bias Sales director Monthly to quarterly
Share of wallet; rep load; concentration Sales director; sales operations Quarterly

A measure with no owner is a metric, not a KPI; see KPI versus metric versus measure.

Go deeper

The short version

Ten measures: four for the accounts you have, three for the pipeline and forecast, three for how the team is loaded. Start with coverage by value, because the other nine move when accounts are spoken to. Covirage computes all of them from the exports sales teams already produce, files only, with the definitions stated and the identities checked. See Covirage for B2B sales teams.

Questions people ask

Why are four of the ten about existing accounts?

Because in most B2B companies 70 to 90 percent of next year's revenue comes from customers it already has, and most sales reporting is about new pipeline. Coverage, dormancy, share of wallet and concentration are the measures of that base. A team that tracks only pipeline is managing the smaller part of its number.

What replaces activity metrics?

Coverage at cadence, by value: the share of the book's revenue held by accounts that have had a real two-way contact within what their tier is owed. It uses the same activity data and asks a different question: not how many calls were made, but whether the accounts that matter were reached.

How many accounts can a rep cover?

Work it out from the cadence: touches owed per account per year by tier, summed across the book, against touches a rep can make in the selling days available. Most field reps can make 800 to 1,000 meaningful touches a year. A book that needs 1,600 will be half covered, and the uncovered half will not be chosen by value unless someone chooses.