5 KPIs to get a clear vision of your Financial Services or Banking Products Sales Funnel

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In this post, we will present 5 KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) that are crucial to have on your Manager Dashboard if you’re to get a crystal clear vision of your Financial Services or Banking Products Sales Funnel.

There are well-known Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in Sales which, just like images, are worth a thousand words, and especially when it comes to Financial Services or Banking Products Sales, a field of activities where more than anywhere else, performance is law, right?

Some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) can literally take your Sales Department to a whole new level; unfortunately, very few realize that.  We are thinking about all these C-level Managers here that we have come to run by over the years as a Software Developer and which have told us: « You know what? When it comes to Business Intelligence and those metrics that can tell you what’s happening with your Sales Force… well, the truth is, I’m pretty blind! »

Not that we would pretend to know or to understand perfectly the subtleties of operations of  all the many businesses at work in the field of Financial Services or Banking Products but just that, with 30 years of experience as a Software Developer including many large mandates for Banks and Financial institutions, well, we have acquired a certain expertise about what information exactly it is that Managers need and require to make sound decisions and to base their Business Development and Sales Strategy upon.

So what does the Manager – Sales Director – Marketing Director (CMO) really need to to get a clear vision of his actual Sales status?

The true nature of KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) in Sales

The question actually do provide part fo the answer, in the word « actual »; because whatever criteria or metrics you want to use, you will want to compare the actual with the future, what is with what will be and what should be: both in terms of individual performance and global sales. There lies the secret of the sauce!

 

Individual Performance

Individual performances can help you mark the frontier between individual performance problems and global ones that may be linked to a specific product, territory or competitor.

If all representatives of one specific territory or a few territories experience the same simultaneous sales performance decrease; well, evidently, there most be a common denominator, either competition or the global economy or…

Hence, we would like to know if sales reps have reached their objectives by period of time; weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual, of course, in terms of:

 

Actual Performances vs Objectives

  • Sales Volume
  • Nb of Client Calls
  • Nb of Client Meetings
  • Sales Profitability (average profit margin)
  • Nb of Quotations produced

N.B.  Normally, it should be quite easy to extrapolate these metrics from the KPIs below.

 

KPIs – Global Performance

Here also, we would like to extract data in order to display performance metrics to make a comparison for each period of time (monthly, quarterly and annual), territory and / or sales point and products, if applicable.

Actual Sales versus Objectives

The ABC of any sound Sales Management; so, by time period, territory and product.

  • Sales Volume (per product, per territory, by time period)
  • Nb of Sales (per product, per territory, by time period)
  • Type of Sales (ratio Sales of Actual Clients vs New Business)
  • Lead to Sales
  • Sales Force
  • Inbound Marketing
  • Traditional Advertising
  • Referral

N.B.  Repeat Business with actual Clients most of the time will generate a smaller profit margin than sales with new clients.

 

Sales Pipeline

Here again, although, it’s old school stuff, we still need it.

  • Confirmed Sales (presented, accepted, approved)
  • Ongoing Sales (ongoing approval process)
  • Future Sales (still negotiating / proposal to develop)

 

Sales Activities, global and per representative

For each time period (monthly, quarterly and annual), territory and / or sales point and products, if applicable.

  • Nb of Sales
  • Nb of Client Calls
  • Nb of Client Meetings
  • Nb of Quotations presented

 

Sales Profitability

Often neglected, this metric is nevertheless quite revealing in terms of any business health and can help identify the source of sand in the gears with fatal potential consequences.

Average Profit Margin vs Global Profit Margin

  • Top 10 Clients
  • Large Clients
  • Medium Clients
  • Small Clients

Transactions ROI

  • Top 10 Clients
  • Large Clients
  • Medium Clients
  • Small Clients

N.B. It can be quite enlightening to examine closely Profit Margins by Client Segments; for example, if your Top 10 Margins are below objectives but still represent 40% of all profits; well, that’s something to think about. Likewise, if small clients’ margins are humongous, that’s also something to dwell on and to re-examine the amount of efforts devoted to this Clientele’s segment.

 

Lost Opportunities

This metric is also very often neglected and God knows it is important because it is certainly as important to recognize and explain your good knocks as the bad ones!  Identify at leats 5 main reasons.

  • Product not in stock
  • Discontinued Product or Service
  • Not the right Product or Service
  • Price
  • Client has abandoned project or purchase (document the situation)

 

Conclusion

According to business type, field of activities and business orientations, KPIs vary a lot. Likewise, a wide variety of tools are used to gather data and crush metrics according to business size and levels of innovation; it goes from Excel files to sophisticated custom dashboards.

Unfortunately, many decision-makers underestimate the usefulness and benefits they could get from Business Intelligence and metrics:

  • Provide a clear vision (help identify quickly and easily the cause of any problem – negative performance)
  • Enable faster reaction
  • Help making sound decisions

It is not abnormal that tools people use are actually just not providing the right KPIs or all those needed; it is quite common. Likewise, we very often see businesses where the tools providing crucial KPIs to their decision-making were actually developed with a simple program such as Excel.

ON THE OTHER HAND, there comes a time when getting the right KPIs might require much time and efforts; then one must do the Business Case (cost vs gains) to determine if the investment required to develop the data gathering program and automate the KPIs display is worth it.  It would be as much important to do a Dashboard comparative analysis of “cost vs benefits” between a Commercial Product vs a Custom-Developed one.

 

Have a good… Performance!

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