The 10 Sales KPIs Every Company Should Track
By Okun Data · March 23, 2026 · 8 min read
If you are not measuring your team's commercial performance with concrete data, you are making decisions based on gut feeling. Sales KPIs are the compass that allows any company to know exactly where it stands, what is working, and what needs immediate correction. In this article we explain the 10 most important indicators, how to calculate them, and how to visualize them in real time with tools like Power BI.
What are sales KPIs?
A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a quantifiable metric that evaluates the performance of a process, team, or business area against previously defined objectives. In a commercial context, sales KPIs measure how well your end-to-end sales process is performing.
But not all KPIs are created equal. There is a fundamental distinction every sales manager should understand:
- Leading KPIs (predictive): measure activities or behaviors that influence future results. For example, the number of calls made per salesperson or the number of new opportunities opened in the pipeline. They are indicators of "what you are doing today to sell tomorrow".
- Lagging KPIs (outcome-based): measure results already achieved, such as monthly revenue or conversion rate. They are essential for evaluating performance, but they do not allow you to course-correct in real time.
The key is combining both types. A complete sales dashboard includes leading KPIs to anticipate problems and lagging KPIs to evaluate results. And to be truly useful, they need to be available in real time or with the shortest possible latency, not in a spreadsheet someone updates on Fridays.
The 10 most important sales KPIs
Below are the indicators no commercial team should overlook, along with their definition and calculation formula.
1. Conversion rate
Measures what percentage of your leads convert into customers. This is perhaps the most revealing KPI for the health of your sales process: a low number may indicate issues with lead qualification, value proposition, or the team's closing skills.
Formula: (Number of new customers / Total number of leads) × 100
2. Average deal size (average sale value)
Indicates how much the company invoices on average per closed sale. It is useful for identifying upselling opportunities or evaluating whether the team is selling higher-margin products.
Formula: Total revenue / Number of closed deals
3. Average sales cycle length
Measures how many days pass on average from first contact with a prospect to closing the sale. A shorter cycle means greater efficiency; a longer one may indicate bottlenecks at some stage in the process.
Formula: Sum of days for each closed deal / Number of closed deals
4. Revenue / Total sales
The most direct metric: how much money came into the business during a given period. It should always be analyzed in context: compared with the previous period, against the period target, and segmented by product, region, or channel.
Formula: Sum of all invoiced sales in the period
5. Revenue per salesperson
Identifies top-performing salespeople and those who need support or training. It is also useful for spotting patterns: do the best salespeople work certain segments? Do they use particular closing techniques?
Formula: Total revenue for the period / Number of active salespeople (or broken down per individual)
6. Quota attainment
Measures what percentage of the sales target (quota) was reached by each salesperson or by the team as a whole. It is the most direct performance KPI and the one that most drives day-to-day commercial management.
Formula: (Actual revenue / Assigned quota) × 100
7. Customer retention rate
Measures what percentage of your existing customers continue buying in the next period. Retaining an existing customer costs significantly less than acquiring a new one, so this KPI has a direct impact on profitability.
Formula: ((Customers at end of period – New customers) / Customers at start of period) × 100
8. CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost
How much it costs the company to acquire a new customer, summing all sales and marketing expenses involved. If CAC exceeds the value that customer generates, the business model is not sustainable.
Formula: Total sales and marketing spend / Number of new customers acquired
9. LTV – Customer Lifetime Value
The total value a customer generates for the company throughout their entire commercial relationship. Combined with CAC, it allows you to evaluate the profitability of each customer segment and determine how much it makes sense to invest in acquisition.
Formula: Average deal size × Purchase frequency × Average relationship duration
10. Pipeline – Opportunities in progress
The total value of all active commercial opportunities in the sales process. This is the leading KPI par excellence: if the pipeline drops, next quarter's sales will likely drop too. Monitoring the pipeline in real time is critical for anticipating results and adjusting commercial effort proactively.
Formula: Sum of the value of all open opportunities in the CRM
How to visualize these KPIs in Power BI
Power BI is Microsoft's Business Intelligence tool and one of the most widely adopted platforms for commercial management worldwide. Its popularity in sales is no coincidence: it combines easy connectivity to multiple data sources, automatic refresh capabilities, and a very powerful visualization experience.
Its most commonly used native connectors for sales include Salesforce, HubSpot, Microsoft Dynamics 365, Excel spreadsheets, and SQL databases. With any of these sources, your KPIs update automatically without any manual intervention.
But the feature that truly sets Power BI apart in a sales context is cross-filtering. When you build a dashboard with multiple visualizations — for example, a revenue-by-month chart, a conversion-rate-by-salesperson table, and a total pipeline indicator — clicking on any element in any chart automatically filters all other visuals. If you click on a specific salesperson's name in one chart, every KPI on the dashboard instantly recalculates to show only that salesperson's data. This enables an exploratory analysis that would take hours of manual work with filters and pivot tables in Excel.
Other valid tools for sales dashboards include Tableau, which is very powerful for complex visualizations, and Looker Studio (by Google), a free option that works well when your data lives in Google Sheets or Google platform products. However, for companies managing mixed data — CRM, ERP, internal databases — Power BI is generally the most complete and best-integrated option.
Which KPIs to prioritize based on company size
Not every company needs to track all 10 KPIs from day one. Analytical maturity and team capacity are key factors.
- Small and mid-sized businesses (early stage): starting with 3 to 5 core KPIs is more effective than trying to measure everything at once. We recommend prioritizing conversion rate, total revenue, quota attainment, and pipeline. These provide maximum visibility with the least implementation effort.
- Mid-sized companies: can build a complete commercial dashboard with all 10 KPIs, segmented by product, geographic area, or sales channel. At this stage, CRM integration is practically indispensable.
- Enterprise companies: require dashboards with deep segmentation by region, product line, customer type, and channel. They also need forecast KPIs (sales projections) and historical comparisons for strategic decision-making.
Common mistakes when measuring sales KPIs
Measuring KPIs is relatively straightforward, but doing it right requires avoiding several frequent mistakes that undermine the analysis:
- Tracking too many KPIs: more is not better. A dashboard with 30 metrics tells the sales team nothing actionable. Focus on the indicators that actually drive decisions.
- Not refreshing data: a dashboard showing last week's data leads to decisions based on outdated information. Automatic refresh is essential.
- Misaligning KPIs with strategic goals: if the company wants to expand into new markets, it should measure KPIs related to new customers and new regions, not just historical total revenue.
- Ignoring context: a KPI should never be analyzed in isolation. The conversion rate dropped 5%: was it because more low-quality leads came in, or because the team lost effectiveness? The data point alone does not answer that question.
To go deeper on this topic, read our article on the most common mistakes in data dashboards and how to avoid them.
Want to see these KPIs in action?
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