Many organizations today measure lagging sales indicators – they stack rank their sales force (best to worst) based on some measure like quota attainment, which only reveals what has already taken place. Such rear view mirror decision-making is based on the idea that what happened in the past will continue to happen in the future. Not such a good assumption.

I have seen an increasing number of proactive sales leaders trying to understand what factors are predictive and causal. They instill sales management processes that support such measures, an example of which is a metric like Pipeline Ratio. This leading indicator allows a sales leader to understand the breadth and depth of opportunities in which they are currently engaged. If this ratio trails the historical external average, it may suggest that quota in future quarters may not be attainable. If this ratio is superior to historical external averages, it may suggest over-achievement is possible.

How many of the indicators do you view that look forward and how many backward?