Six sales numbers are enough for an owner who does the selling: leads in, contact rate, reply rate, meetings booked, close rate, and average deal with sales cycle. Each one comes from rows in a plain spreadsheet, and together they multiply to your revenue, so when revenue drops you can see which one moved.
Lists of sales KPIs online run from 8 to 38 items and include lifetime value, quota attainment and lead velocity, which suit managers of teams. If you are the team, those are a distraction. Here is the short list, how to compute each, a month worked end to end, and five numbers to leave alone.
The six numbers at a glance
- Leads in: the number of new people who could buy, this month.
- Contact rate: contacted within a day, divided by leads in.
- Reply rate: people who replied or talked to you, divided by people contacted.
- Meetings booked: calls, site visits or demos that actually happened.
- Close rate: deals won, divided by meetings held.
- Average deal and sales cycle: revenue divided by deals won, and the average days from first contact to signed.
Why six numbers and not twenty
Because the six are a chain. Leads times each rate in order gives you deals, and deals times average deal gives you revenue. Every other number you could track either sits inside one of the six or measures effort rather than outcome. If you can't act on a number by changing something this week, it doesn't belong on the sheet. A longer treatment of the funnel arithmetic is in lead conversion rate.
Numbers 1 and 2: leads in and contact rate
Count a lead only once it has a name and a way to reach them. Count it in the month it arrives. Contact rate is the share you reach out to within 24 hours. It is the number owners overlook, and it is the cheapest to improve, because it is only a matter of speed. Anything under 80 percent means leads are sitting. The layout of the sheet that holds these is in lead tracking spreadsheet.
Numbers 3 and 4: replies and meetings
Reply rate tells you whether your message and your list fit. Count any real reply, including "no thanks," because a "no" proves the right person saw it. Meetings booked is a count, not a rate, and the one that most predicts next month's revenue. A meeting is one that happened, not one that was scheduled and cancelled. Dividing meetings by replies gives you a third figure, the meeting rate, which tells you whether your replies turn into time with you.
Number 5: close rate
Deals won divided by meetings held. Not by leads. Close rate measured against leads mixes in everything upstream, so it moves for reasons you can't see. Measured against meetings, it tells you how you do once you're in the room. Be careful with small samples. Four wins from twelve meetings is 33 percent, but one more or fewer win moves it eight points. Look at three months before you decide that anything is working.
Number 6: average deal and sales cycle
Average deal is revenue from won deals divided by the number won. Sales cycle is the average number of days from first contact to signature, which sets how far ahead you must work: a 21-day cycle means leads you find today pay in a month. Average sales cycle length shows how to measure yours from past deals in an afternoon.
One month of Harlan's numbers
Harlan Cabinetry, a four-person custom cabinet shop, last month:
| Number | Count | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leads in | 60 | 40 inbound + 20 found by outreach | 60 |
| Contact rate | 51 | 51 / 60 | 85% |
| Reply rate | 21 | 21 / 51 | 41% |
| Meetings booked | 12 | 12 of 21 replies | 12 |
| Close rate | 4 | 4 / 12 | 33% |
| Average deal and cycle | $30,000 | $30,000 / 4 won; 21 days average | $7,500; 21 days |
Check: 60 leads, 51 contacted, 21 replies, 12 meetings, 4 won, at $7,500 each, is $30,000. Now the useful part. Next month Harlan's contact rate falls to 70 percent because he is on a job site. With everything else equal that is 42 contacted, 17 replies, 10 meetings, 3.3 wins, about $25,000. One number slipping cost him about $5,000, and the sheet shows him where to look.
What a low number usually means
Low leads in: not enough people reaching you or being found. Low contact rate: slow response, so fix speed before anything else. Low reply rate: the wrong list or a weak first message. Low meetings from replies: your next step is vague or your answer was late. Low close rate: price, proof or fit. Low average deal: you are selling the small version of what you do, or discounting. A long sales cycle: more people must agree than you assumed, or your follow-up leaves gaps. Each of these has one place to start, which is the point of keeping the numbers apart.
The 10-minute Monday review
Minutes 1 to 3: update last week's rows (new leads, contacted, replies). Minutes 4 to 6: compute the six numbers for the last 30 days. Minutes 7 to 9: find the number that fell most against the month before. Minute 10: write one change for this week. Not three. If the number that fell is the contact rate, the change is "reply to every new lead by noon," which is a habit, not a project.
Numbers to ignore
Email opens: they count image loads, not interest (stop measuring opens). Website visits and impressions: a visit isn't a lead. Social followers. Activity counts such as emails sent or calls dialed, which measure effort, not results. And total pipeline value, which adds up deals with very different odds. If you want a number for cost, use customer acquisition cost once a quarter instead.
If you track by hand, the part that slips is the contact rate and follow-up. Rocketship finds the buyers, emails them from your own Gmail, follows up, and books the meeting on its own, so those numbers stay up while you work. Plans that get you customers start at $24.99 a month (Launch), and both Launch and Frontier start with a 7-day free trial, card required. For what to do when the chain breaks, see why am I not getting clients, and for turning the numbers into a forecast, how to forecast sales.