We’re excited to introduce you to Playbooks Reports by XANT. 

Playbooks Reports brings all the performance and outcome level insights you need to generate more revenue faster. And it works out of the box on our Playbooks Platform without any additional CRM configuration.

You’ll spend more time coaching and mentoring reps, and improving their performance, and less time wondering what in the world is going on. 

A Variety of Metrics

Use default views of total activities for inbound calls, outbound calls, emails sent, and other tasks, or easily select custom metrics. For example, see activities by a specific call disposition, or choose an email interaction metric like opens, replies, or clicked links. Review your teams’ total talk time over an adjustable period or see how many meaningful conversations are occurring right now.

Visualize Activities

We built Reports with a beautiful new data visualization engine within which you can view sales activities by totals or by averages per day. You can drill into specific sales teams or into individual reps’ performance. You can even look into your historical activities with weekly and monthly trends.

Choosing Conversion Metrics

Go even further with your performance analysis by layering in a conversion metric on top of your data. Customize Reports to include conversion data by selecting your most important activity metrics and then choosing from more than a dozen different conversion metrics. For example: compare total emails sent vs email opens; phone calls placed vs. correct contact rates; or all activities vs Plays marked successful.

THE BIGGER PICTURE OF REPORTING

We’ve always taken a different approach to reporting than others in our space. Our customers don’t want a shadow CRM; they want to amplify the value of their CRM investments, and a big part of that is how we treat and report on data. 

One of the ways we’ve aligned to our customers’ needs is by pushing all activity and outcome data back into the CRM with a reliable, native integration and complete bi-directional sync.

That will never change. 

Those insights are an important mechanism by which everyone across your organization can see the impact your team is having on the business. 

But we take it even further. For example, we add up to 25 additional fields in your CRM allowing us to produce a wealth of custom, cadence-level reports for you to properly manage to key outcomes.

See who’s working, what’s working, what’s not, which campaigns deliver meetings, which ones lead to closed deals, A/B test Plays and templates, measure the effectiveness of your efforts, and continue leveraging real-time dashboards.  

This level of visibility is one of the reasons why enterprise teams love our unique platform strategy. 

Reports only enhance our broader strategy by giving you easy, real-time access to actionable insights directly within the Playbooks Platform.

HERE’S WHAT TO DO NEXT

Want to see how Playbooks Reports can help your team accelerate results?

Click this banner to schedule your demo today:

If you’re a Playbooks customer, you already have access to Playbooks Reports!

Talk to your customer success manager today and get started.

We live in a world of inside out marketing. We’re guessing at who we are talking to. We are guessing at what we should say to them. We need to rethink how we are engaging with the marketplace. Chief Customer Officer at Big Willow, Neil Passero poses the question, how many deals are you missing out on? Many of your buyers will not be in your CRM, they are not responding to your marketing program but they are out on the web searching for you, searching for services, or searching for competitors. This is the power of data and particularly intent and behavioral data and if you can use this data effectively you can grow your sales pipeline significantly.

In This Episode You’ll Learn:

• The missing link in the sales process and why companies are missing out on a lot of sales deals
• The power of data and how it can help you sell more
• What is behavioral and intent data and how you can use it in your business

Links and Resources Related to This Episode:

• 116: The Three Value Conversations That Can Change Everything w/Tim Riesterer @CorporateVisions

• 114: Next Era Selling: Key Strategies to Make Your Business Unstoppable w/Britton Manasco @Visible Impact

• 115: The Digital Sales Revolution: Are You In Or Out? w/Mario Martinez Jr. @Vengreso

Subscribe to the Playmaker podcast here:

When most think about looking at results or reports, what usually comes to mind is looking retroactively at the success of a calling campaign. While this type of reporting is fine and can be beneficial in returning useful information, imagine the benefit that could be gained if you tracked your progress throughout the life of a campaign. This is the approach that Ken Krogue, President and co-founder of XANT, takes in a recent webinar. It’s very important that managers look at metrics throughout the process of a campaign to ensure that the execution of the campaign remains on the right path.

In the final webinar of the “high velocity sales” series, Ken defines 7 Levels of Reporting. These levels, particularly the higher ones, are heavily used by XANT as a benchmark to see where organizations stand in their reporting process and have been very helpful in establishing the success or failure of an initiative.

The 7 Levels of Reporting:

0. No Reporting.

1. Metric = Number
What good does a simple number do if it isn’t related to anything? Alone, a metric is not very helpful.

2. Rate = Metric/Time
A report that includes rates can actually tell you something. An example of a rate is, “My reps are making 38 calls/day.”

3. Ratio = Metric1/Metric2/Time
Ratios are helping when comparing one metric to another. For example, if you want to find your daily contact ratio, you would use the formula: contacts/dials/day.

4. Disposition = Why did that happen?
A disposition answers all the “why” questions a sales manager might have, “Why did I gain or lose those customers?” Often times to get the correct disposition you have to ask your customers.

5. Trend = Comparison over time
In a trend report, the calls/day for the current month, for example, would be compared with the calls/day of the previous month. This gives you a comparison that can be helpful in tracking improvements or failures.

6. ROI Analysis = Cost/Revenue or Cost/Dials
ROI reports are generally used by CEOs that want to know what is happening within their company from a cost perspective.

7. Predictive = Forecast
This is different from all the other reports because it isn’t as concrete. It is based on metrics from the past that give an educated guess.

In order to know which reports matter the most, it’s important that a sales manager start asking the right questions! “How many calls/day are my sales reps making?” “What is our contact rate?” “What sales rep is the most effective at closing?” As Ken says, “The discipline of good reporting starts with the discipline of asking a good question.”

In addition to asking the good questions, reviewing key indicators can be very telling in terms of the success of a sales team and in knowing that you’re on the right path while you’re still on the path. Here are some of the indicators that XANT looks at:

• The percentage of leads that have been contacted;
• How long we are taking to respond to our leads;
• How many call attempts per lead we are making;
• How long a lead has been in the hand of a sales rep with no progress;
• The percentage of hot transfers; and
• The number of same day appointments.

By understanding these indicators you can keep track of your campaigns while they are in progress instead of waiting until they are over and there is no room to improve results.

What metrics have you found to be the most helpful in creating your sales results?

View the final webinar in the Building a High Velocity Sales series:

Free Whitepaper: 15 Time Wasters to Avoid

Learn the best practices to overcoming these typical inside sales and lead generation time wasters.

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RELATED: 5 SaaS Sales Principles To Boost Performance

In this article:

1. What Is SaaS? 
2. What Each Metric Is and How to Use It
3. TCV and ACV Sales Metrics Comparison
4. Use These Metrics to Drive Explosive Growth
5. What SaaS Businesses Should Keep Track

ACV Sales Metrics and the Other SaaS Metrics That Will Help Grow Your Sales Efforts

What Is SaaS? 

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a relatively new but thriving industry. This industry has been led by companies such as Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors and RightNow Technologies (the latter two recently acquired by SAP and Oracle, respectively).

Much of their success can be attributed to the unique business model associated with SaaS. This uniqueness is reflected in their new financial language and acronyms.

Even though the concepts are not new, the way they are applied can help you view and understand your business in a way that can, in turn, help you experience explosive growth.

The key is in understanding the difference between “customer value” and “cash flow”. Customer value measures sales/growth success, while cash flow measures what you can re-invest.

Listed here are seven key SaaS metrics:

• CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost
• TCV – Total Contract Value (Bookings)
• CLTV – Customer Lifetime Value
• ACV – Annual Contract Value
• MRE – Monthly Recurring Expense
• MRR – Monthly Recurring Revenue
• CMRR – Contracted Monthly Recurring Revenue

These metrics can be applied to almost any business with a little creativity. When applied, you can drive growth like that of Salesforce.com, SuccessFactors, and Google, among others.

What Each Metric Is and How to Use It

I will define and explain how to use each of these metrics:

CAC – Customer Acquisition Cost – (Customer Value Metric)

What is it? CAC is the total sales and marketing expense associated with acquiring a single customer. These expenses should include both variable and fully burdened fixed costs (including sales/marketing salaries, commissions, overhead, etc).

What does it mean? CAC should be used to analyze and compare the value of the customer vs the cost. Your CAC should be between 30% and 100% of your annual revenue associated with the customer (the lower CAC ratio is, the better).

Acquisition cost can help you figure out whether you need to get more customers or whether there is an opportunity for you to up your upselling efforts.

TCV – Total Contract Value (Bookings) – (Customer Value Metric)

What is it? TCV is the total sales number committed in the contract or service order by the customer. For example, if a customer contracts 24 months at $6,000/month, plus $25,000 of professional services, the TCV is equal to $169,000 = (($6,000 x 24) + $25,000).

What does it mean? This is the measure of initial customer value. This number is most commonly used to pay commissions, build internal support/processes/systems, and project infrastructure/product delivery needs.

This metric is your crystal ball into your future, enabling you to manage operational requirements without overspending or under-resourcing as you grow your customer base.

CLTV – Customer Lifetime Value – (Customer Value Metric)

What is it? CLTV is the total revenue that a customer will pay your company until they stop purchasing, renewing, or using your products or services.

CLTV is similar to TCV with the addition of projected growth, contract renewals, and additional purchases from a customer. For example, if a customer contracts a 24-month agreement with an initial TCV of $169,000, then is projected to add 50% to the contract in the initial term, you can anticipate an initial term value of $253,500 ( $169,000 + $84,500).

If the customer is expected to renew for an additional two-year term at the increased contract value ($253,500) and grow an additional 25% during the second term, the CLTV would be $633,750 ($253,500 + 253,500 + (253,500 * .25%) = $633,750).

What does it mean? Assuming your goal is growth, a good guideline is that your CLTV should be three or more times greater than your CAC (higher is better). A common mistake is to measure your CAC against TCV, a much more conservative measure of profitability, than CLTV.

To understand and use CLTV effectively, you must truly understand your customer, their attrition rates and upsale/downsale patterns–otherwise you can get yourself into trouble.

ACV – Annual Contract Value – (Customer Value Metric)

What is it? ACV is the annual revenue paid to your company by a specific customer, regardless of multi-year contracts. ACV would be identical to TCV if your contract term was one year.

What does it mean? If you do not have a good sense of customer retention and growth rates, ACV should be used instead of TCV to pay commissions, build internal support/processes/systems and project infrastructure/product delivery needs. It is also a great metric to measure and trend annual growth numbers.

MRE – Monthly Recurring Expense – (Cash Management Metric)

What is it? MRE refers to the anticipated recurring expenses including payroll, services, facilities, materials, depreciation, and all other operating expenses that can be assigned to a given month. This metric measures the predictable monthly expense.

(NOTE: MRE is not a traditional SaaS metric because most SaaS companies are venture-backed and therefore have an “unlimited” access to cash through multiple rounds of investment. However, if you intend to apply these other metrics to a non-SaaS company with limited resources, you must incorporate MRE into your financial analysis metrics.)

What does it mean? MRE is an expense management tool. It tells you what your monthly spend is anticipated to be.

It is different than a cash analysis because it is based on committed expenses, not spent cash. Use it to compare to MRR (see below) for short term spend decisions.

The anticipated difference between the two gives you insight into investments that can be made to support short-term growth opportunities. Looking into your TCV growth, you can spend cash that you will earn within the next three months with a very high degree of accuracy without risking your business – you can spend your TCV growth today.

MRR – Monthly Recurring Revenue – (Cash Management Metric)

What is it? MRR applies to products and services that have a monthly cost associated with the contract. This metric measures predictable monthly revenue regardless of contract commitment.

Also, if you multiply your MRR by twelve, then you’ll have the Annual Recurring Revenue.

What does it mean? MRR is a cash management tool that can be used to understand and predict cash flow. When you know exactly what to expect from MRR, you can make aggressive purchasing decisions.

However, to use this effectively, you must carefully understand growth and attrition trends in relation to your MRR. In the early stages of a company, MRR is a safer metric to use for sales compensation to prevent the spending of money you may not have or collect, because continued customer purchasing may not be highly predictable, yet.

RELATED: 11 Insanely Effective SaaS Sales Secrets Right From The Salesforce Playbook

CMRR – Contracted Monthly Recurring Revenue – (Cash Management Metric)

What is it? CMRR is exactly like MRR but is the subset of MRR that measures only the MRR that is bound by a contract.

What does it mean? This is ultimately what you should be driving towards in order to increase your insight and visibility to future cash flow. As you build your business around CMRR, you can build a “Just In Time” business model, turning marginal increase in CMRR, coupled with marginal decrease in MRE, into increased revenue.

ARR – Annual Run Rate – (Cash Management Metric)

What is it? ARR forecasts future earnings that is annualized based on a short time frame. You can do this by multiplying your earnings in one month by twelve.

What does it mean? ARR is a great way of measuring possible earnings and projections for companies that are just starting out. Of course, this has a limit.

Since ARR is only basing its formula off of a short time period, it is not as precise of a measurement of your projections. However, it will work well for companies that have only started out.

ARPU – Average Revenue Per Customer (Monthly) – (Cash Management Metric)

What is it? ARPU is exactly as it sounds, which is how much on average the revenue that you get per customer is. This metric is not only important in the SaaS industry, but it is also important to most industries, but even more so in SaaS.

You can get the ARPU by dividing your total revenue with the total number of customers that you serviced.

What does it mean? One of the reasons why ARPU is perhaps one of the most important SaaS metrics is because it’s a great way of understanding how certain actions you make affects your customers, or specific segments of them.

If used incorrectly, then ARPU may seem like a shallow metric, but using it as a way for your sales reps to identify which parts of the sales process fits your ideal customer is the best way to use it. Also, ARPU is needed when you’re computing for the MRR.

TCV and ACV Sales Metrics Comparison

It’s understandable that you might get a little confused between TCV and ACV. Since they both talk about the value of a contract, here is a brief explanation on their key difference.

TCV Meaning vs. ACV Definition

As you know, TCV is the value of having a contract with each customer. With that said, you don’t only account for the subscription revenue which is recurring, but also the one-off revenue that you get.

On the other hand, ACV is the value of the subscription or the contract with a client over a 12-month period. When accounting for the ACV, one should not include in the rate the one-off revenues that you get.

TCV vs. ACV Importance

TCV helps a SaaS business identify a realistic overview of revenue predictions. Although optimism is great, idealism is not great for when you want to have practical information to work with.

Plus, it will help you identify the more profitable segments of your customer base. Knowing this information will make it plausible for your marketing and sales efforts to become more effective.

On the other hand, ACV is a metric best used to track the growth of a company, instead of other factors like profitability (which will be mentioned later on). It will help organizations figure out whether they are leveling up each year so that they can see if there are changes to be made in the sales cycle or not.

Use These Metrics to Drive Explosive Growth

Explosive growth is achieved by hiring sales people and acquiring product resources, not as CMRR is acquired, but by anticipating predictable revenue through the analysis of all of your key growth ratios and the management of MRE, thereby leveraging your sales just as banks and investment professionals leverage their money, but without the risk. You can spend the money because you know you are going to get it.

It’s all about forecasting and short-term decision making. These two categories of metrics give two different outlook perspectives.

• Customer Value Metrics — Long-term outlook of today’s performance. Use these metrics to manage long term strategic and growth decisions (hiring plan, investment strategy, forecasting, etc.) and to build your company’s strategy.

• Cash Flow Metrics — Short-term outlook of yesterday’s performance. Use these metrics to make immediate, aggressive operational decisions (hiring, short-term investment, strategy adjustment, etc).

Use them to execute operationally; to tell you if you can execute to or in excess of your strategic plan determined by your Customer Value Metrics.

What SaaS Businesses Should Keep Track Of

SaaS metrics help businesses figure out where they stand on key areas of their business. These can guide decision-makers in coming up with strategies and action plans to help drive growth to the company.

SaaS metrics can help you make more informed decisions in the present using information from the past. In turn, this will help you create a profitable future.

Track all your metrics, build your strategy, execute, and adjust like the high growth SaaS companies do and you can build a similar growth trajectory.

The first step to utilizing SaaS metrics is to understand what they are and how they can impact your business. Hopefully, this list has helped you do just that and you can now rethink your strategies to utilize these metrics and drive growth to your business.

Which SaaS metric has been particularly helpful for your sales efforts and how has it helped? Let us know in the comments section below! 

UP NEXT:

• 4 Strategies For Training Employees On Salesforce & Other SaaS Products
• Behind The Scenes Of A High-Growth SaaS Company
• Only 28% Of Business Deals Are Forecasted Accurately, Shows New Research

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on July 11, 2012, and has been updated for quality and relevancy.

Since I have been busy updating our reporting model for XANT and tying it to our new 7 Tier Consulting Model I have thought deeply and discussed reporting with many of our team and our customers.  The question is “which reports are really needed for the sales and marketing teams?”

In our industry you can do one of about four things to design reports:

1. Think about the logical categories in your software; like Leads, Accounts, Deals, Cases, etc.
2. Copy what everyone else is doing.
3. Respond to what your customers ask for.
4. Ask what questions your customers are needing answers to.

Which method would you choose?

If you Think about the categories in your software and write reports that work with each category you tend to focus on the product and the features of your product.

If you Copy what everyone else is doing you only do as well as as their best thinking and research and the entire industry seems to get tunnel vision.  (We shy away from this because we learned a long time ago to Zig when everyone else Zags.)

If you Respond to what your customers ask for you tend to go by the prevailing wisdom.  This may be a safe bet.  But what is the result if your customers are typically looking to you for best practices?  If you respond to them when they are really looking to you, this produces a circular loop of mediocrity.  In highly developed industries (of which we are not), the customer is much more educated on what they want and this works much better.

We have tried all of these methods… and each one has proven to miss the mark.

It is best to ask the customer the questions they are trying to solve, design a report that clearly answers as many of those questions as possible in one simple place.

What customers are really needing is answers to their questions:

1- Which lead source actually closes the most revenue?
2- Which campaign is converting the most leads?
3- Which sales reps is most/least effective?
4- Are my leads getting contacted?
5- Why don’t my sales close?
6- Why do my sales close?
7- Do my leads trend up?
8- Do I make money?

What are your key questions?

After careful analysis and lots of thought I have come to the conclusion that there are about 7 levels of reporting structure and value.  This model is quickly becoming part of our new book and more important the consulting model that will follow thereafter.

Level 1- Metrics: This is a simple number.  7 calls.

Level 2- Rates: This is a simple number over time.  7 calls in an hour.  This is the only way to actually compare people over time and especially helpful in comparing full time to part time reps where they work differing hours in a day.

Level 3- Ratios: This is a Rate over a Rate, like Contacts over Dials during the same period of time is a Contact Ratio.

Level 4- Trends: This is a Rate or Ratio over time.  Like Dials per hour for each day in a month, or revenue per week for each week in a quarter.

Level  5- Dispositions/Surveys: This is the only report that answers the key question of ‘Why?’ something happens.  If you follow up with every prospect that does not close and ask why they don’t, you will gain invaluable data to help you change your offering, approach, price, term, etc., based on their combined answers.

Level 6- ROI (Return on Investment): This is the number that owners and management really want.  This is cost compared to revenue.  Each dollar in buys how many dollars out?  This is most valuable for leads, sales people, offers, and marketing content because it focusses on what is most effective.  This report is very hard to get in real time when their is still time to make a difference.

Level 7-  Console/Dashboard: These are Rates, Ratios, Trends, Dispositions, or ROI in real time; while you can still do something about them.

Best Practices:

1- Strong companies invest in Level 3 reports or higher.
2- Managers or Executives think the holy grail are Trends and ROI reports in real time consoles or dashboards so they can do their jobs better and gain visibility over what their people are doing.  Wise companies give these consoles and real time dashboards to the front line sales rep so they can actually make changes during their day.

Author: Ken Krogue | Google+
Summary of Ken Krogue’s Forbes articles