Sales Metrics and Key Performance Indicators Questions

Covers the selection, design, interpretation, and operationalization of sales metrics and key performance indicators to measure and improve revenue generation, pipeline health, sales productivity, and customer retention. Candidates should be able to define leading versus lagging indicators and activity metrics versus outcome metrics, and construct a balanced metrics framework that aligns measurement to strategic objectives while avoiding perverse incentives. Core metrics include pipeline value and pipeline velocity, pipeline coverage, win rate, average deal size, average contract value, sales cycle length, conversion rates by stage, lead to opportunity conversion, quota attainment, forecast accuracy and bias, customer acquisition cost, customer lifetime value, churn and retention rates, and representative productivity measures. Discussion should include how metrics vary by business model such as subscription software as a service, enterprise sales, direct to consumer, and channel models, and how to segment metrics by representative, territory, product, or customer cohort to surface meaningful insights. Practical implementation topics include clear metric definitions and ownership, data quality and governance, reporting cadence, target setting and thresholds, dashboard design and automated reporting, cadence reviews and root cause analysis, and how metric design influences coaching, compensation and incentive design, forecasting, resource allocation, and cross functional decision making. At senior levels expect to explain how to implement dashboards and data pipelines, establish metric driven routines, and redesign metrics to drive desired behaviors and strategic outcomes.