How Multi-Metric Sales Contests Impact the Sales Funnel

The goal of any sales team? Incentivize overall performance, not just a single, isolated activity. The goal of using any sales enablement initiative? Show immediate and sustained return-on-investment.

Unlike other sales productivity tools, the competitions you run in Ambition center around composite performance, not individual metrics. Why is that critical? Because, as any sales professional knows, there are a number of different activities that go into the so-called sales funnel. Focus on just one activity, and you only incentivize elite performance in a limited section of the funnel. 

The following is a demonstration of how Ambition uses multi-metric competitions to incentivize your entire sales process, and how a new Ambition customer saw head-turning impact on ROI upon implementing one such competition.

How a Multi-Metric Sales Contest Works

The goal of every sales rep is to close more quality deals, more efficiently, ultimately generating a greater amount of revenue and thus personal commission.

To do that, a sales rep must perform well at every level of the sales funnel, which is why Ambition's multi-metric sales competition incorporates metrics at the funnel's top, bottom and middle sections.

Below is a sample illustration of multiple metrics that may go into a Sales Rep's Ambition score. The Ambition score is ultimately determined by the Rep's ability to meet the daily benchmarks his or her company sets for each metric.

Note that this example competition focuses around six metrics that span the Sales Funnel:

1. Prospecting: Outbound emails, open rate, reply rate
2. Mid-Funnel: Web Demos
3. Closing: Profit
4. Aggregate: Pipeline

This is the typical setup of the Ambition Score, and showcases a best practice in product use. The fundamental idea behind Ambition is to sales reps on composite performance, rather than performance in a small subset of the sales funnel.

Improving ROI of an Enterprise Sales Team

We recently completed a 5-week trial run with a Fortune 1000 real estate company whose sales process focused heavily on cold calling and new lead generation. The competition included a number of metrics, but for the purposes of this blog post, let's focus on those two metrics in particular.

Average Daily Calls Per User

At initiation of the competition, the real estate sales team was averaging under 40 outbound phone calls per day. Within 4 weeks, that number had skyrocketed to 90 calls per day, where it remained for the remainder of the competition. 

The result is a sizable impact on the sales reps' core function at the top of the funnel: daily outbound calls. Heartening results, right? In a sense, but it fails to answer the ultimate question that must be asked of any sales productivity tool -- does the increased productivity translate to improvement in ROI?

Average Daily Leads Per User

Here, we see an excellent correlation in daily outbound calls and daily lead generation. Prior to the competition, the company's sales reps' were averaging just under 5 leads generated, per day.

Roughly 5 weeks into the competition, that number had jumped to 8 leads per day, approaching an average of 9 by the end of the competition. In this scenario, we saw the sales funnel expand not just at the top, but at the bottom as well. More importantly, the mirror-image results indicate not just correlation, but causation.

Turn Sales Contest Ideas into Reality via Ambition

Ambition is a sales management platform that syncs business teams, data sources, and performance metrics on one system.

Sales leaders use Ambition to enhance sales performance insights and build sales reports, scorecards, contests, and TVs that supercharge focus, effort and accountability.  

Ambition is endorsed by Harvard Business Review and AA-ISP (the Global Inside Sales Organization). Hear more from business leaders who use Ambition in their organization.

Watch Testimonials:

1. FiveStars: Adam Wall. Sr. Manager of Sales Operations . 
2. Filemaker: Brad Freitag. Vice-President of Worldwide Sales.
3. Outreach: Mark Kosoglow. Vice-President of Sales.
4. Cell Marque: Lauren Hopson. Director of Sales & Marketing.
5. Access America Transport: Ted Alling. Chief Executive Officer.

Watch Product Walkthroughs:

1. ChowNow. Led by Vice-President of Sales, Drew Woodcock.
2. Outreach. Led by Sales Development Manager, Alex Lynn.
3. AMX Logistics. Led by Executive Vice-President ,Jared Moore.

Read Case Studies:

1. Clayton Homes: HBR finds triple-digit growth in 3 sales efficiency metrics. 
2. Coyote Logistics: Monthly revenue per broker grew $525 in 6 months.
3. Peek: Monthly sales activity volume grew 142% in 6 months.
4. Vorsight: Monthly sales conversations grew 300% in 6 months.

Contact us to learn how Ambition can impact your sales organization today.