I ran a 70-person revenue team with a single spreadsheet.‍

This one right here (you can have it for free).

On the first day of each month, I would sit down with a coffee and manually run each report. Then I would insert the appropriate number into the corresponding cell.

This document tells me EVERYTHING that I need to know about the team’s performance and where we should be investing to increase revenue.

I have shared this ritual and format with hundreds of founders and sales leaders over the years.

And I’m sharing it with you, right here.

The reason this report works? It cuts through all the noise in your business and puts the raw output right in front of your face.

There’s no way to hide from what’s going wrong in the business when you can see each part of your sales funnel month-over-month.

Let’s dig into this report, why it works, and how to use it.‍

You have to key in the numbers, do not automate this report‍

The first thing about this report: you have to put the numbers in manually. Every single month.

At scale, we had a Business Intelligence team and all the fancy analytics tools that you could imagine.

But every month I would choose to sit down and run each report and review the numbers as I put them into the spreadsheet.

It’s human nature, you will be more interested in the things that you spend time doing.

When you automate reports, especially reports as important as this one, they are less valuable to you. So you won’t pay attention to the numbers.

When you manually input each number, and you have done this every month for 6+ months, you start to notice trends in the business.

You spend more time thinking about each metric on the report, and thus thinking more about the business performance.

It may seem painstaking, but the that’s the work.

Force yourself to do it manually. Block out the time to focus on the numbers that you are entering to the spreadsheet.

You will pay closer attention and you will learn things about the team while you do the work. Which is what you are supposed to do as a leader anyway, right?

‍What’s in the report? And what’s not?

This report is for sales leaders who run a sales team. This report is not for marketing. It is not for customer success. It is for sales.

You will notice that it doesn’t include important metrics like organic visits, or number of leads, or even the churn.

Why? Because sales leaders need a place where they can measure the performance of a team without the distraction of the rest of the organization.

Other metrics are equally important to the business, but there is not place for them in this monthly exercise.

This One Page Sales Overview report highlights the entire sales funnel from end-to-end.

It starts with the number of business days in the month and ends with the total bookings for the month.

With this information in hand, you can see exactly how the team  is performing so you can make decisions that will drive more revenue for the business.

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The most important metrics in this report

It’s tough to explain how to use a report or a spreadsheet, but I’ll do my best to show you what to look for in this report.

Here are the inputs for the report:

• Biz Days - exactly what it says. How many selling days are there? This matters in months like February or December where reps have fewer days to hit their number.
• Managers - how many front-line sales managers are there (this does not include Director or VP level leaders)
• Rep Headcount - total number of front-line salespeople on the team. Includes SDRs, AEs, ramping reps, or anyone else that has a number and isn’t in a manager role
• Reps on Quota - how many front-line salespeople are carrying a bookings quota. This doesn’t include SDRs
• Total Dials - the sum of all outbound phone calls made in the month.
• Total Talk Time - the sum of all minutes that the team spent on the phone during the month
• SALs - the total number of leads accepted and worked during the period
• Opportunities - the total number of opportunities created in the month
• Champ Confirmed Opps - the total number of opportunities where we have confirmed a champion
• Demos Scheduled - the total number of demos scheduled in the month
• Demos Held - the total number of demos that showed up to the scheduled meeting
• Closed / Won - the number of new customers added in the period (this doesn’t include upsell deals)
• No Demo Closes - the number of customers that signed up without seeing a demo (this was an important metric for our SMB team)
• Zero Sales Days - The number of days with 0 new customers. This was an important number at an earlier stage. You never want a day with 0 sales.
• New ARR Bookings - The sum of all new bookings from new customers in the month
• New ARR Quota Capacity - The sum of the quotas of all new logo reps on the team
• Expansion Bookings - The sum of all upsell and expansion bookings in the month
• Expansion Quota Capacity - The sum of the quotas of all install-base reps on the team
• Median Sales cycle - the median number of days to close a deal
• Average Sales cycle - the average number of days to close a deal
• % of Bookings Annual - what percentage of our total new bookings is paying annually
• % of Customers Annual - what percentage of our total new customers is paying annually
• # of Reps at 100% - the total number of reps at or above 100% of their quota
• # of reps at 80% - the total number of reps at or above 80% of their quota
  

It may see like a lot of metrics, but the report fills out quickly once you get it set up.

This is everything you will need to know to run a sales team.

The signal in the noise

This report is only as good as the insights that you gain by reviewing the numbers.

Whenever I review this report, I gravitate toward a handful of metrics that tell me about team performance.

Here’s what I look at:

1. Dials and talk time
   This is our “above the line metric” it tells me if our team is putting in the work. Specifically I like to look at the “dials per rep” and the “talk time per rep”. If these numbers start to get low relative to other months, I know how to address it with the team. An increase in activity generally leads to an increase in revenue.
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2. $ per SAL
   Perhaps the most important metric for a sales team. How much money are we generating per lead that we work. This one metric cuts through all the others. It tells me how the team is woking the company’s assets. When you drive up revenue per lead, bookings increase.
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3. Scheduled:Hold Rate
   Or simple “hold rate”. This is the number of demos that actually show up to the scheduled time. This is a signal for demand quality. You can’t sell to people that won’t show up to a meeting.
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4. Hold:Close Rate
   How many demos are converting to customers? This becomes VERY important when you are onboarding a class of new reps or when you are rolling out a new product. When your close rate drops, the team is struggling with the sales playbook. That’s where you lean in.
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5. $ Per Rep on Quota
   This is the second most important metric for a team. It shows the average bookings per rep carrying a quota. This is important relative to the average quota per rep on quota. You want these numbers to be close to each other.
   

Honorable mention: % of reps at 100% of quota and % of reps at 80% of quota.

You know that it’s time to add reps to the team when you have at least 50% of the team at 100% of quota, and 80% of the team at 80% of quota.

Putting the report to work‍

You can create this report today. It will take about an hour the first time, but it will get easier after that.

You don’t have to use every metric I have listed here. You can use the ones that are most important for your business.

Go back 6 months with the data so you can see the trend for each metric.

And remember, you have to fill it out manually. You have to sit with the data and think about the team performance. That’s the real value in this exercise.