BenchSights for Software Sales Metrics
Metrics for Team & Compensation Plan Decisions (30+ decision metrics collected)
Team
Sales Organization & selling decisions
- What distinguishes this sales Segment? e.g., geography, target contract size, product, industry etc.
- Do you have a separate team of “farmers” to do upsells/expansions?
- Where did leads come from?
- How effective (% of their quota) were the lead-gen people generating leads?
Account Executive Team (AEs)
- How many AEs did you have?
- By how much did you grow the AE team?
- What hiring criteria (required selling experience) do you typically require?
- How long does it take to ramp a new AE?
- How important is the equity component of AEs’ compensation?
- Where are they located?
- How big a problem was it hiring AEs?
- What was voluntary and involuntary AE turnover?
Broader Sales Team
- Ratio of AEs-to-Sales managers
- Ratios of AEs to each of SEs, BDRs, and SDRs
- What was the ratio AE cost-to-total sales cost
Compensation Plan
Quota
- How high was quota?
- What was included in measuring performance against quota? ARR or TCV? P.S.? Renewals?
- Over what period did you measure performance against quota? Annually? Quarterly? Hybrid?
On-Target-Earnings (OTE)
- How high did you set OTE?
- What was your Quota-to-OTE ratio?
- What percentage of OTE was from variable comp?
- What was the effective commission rate at OTE?
Accelerators, Decelerators & Caps
- Did you have decelerators for AEs performing below quota? If yes, at what effective commission rates for achievement of 50% and 75% of quota?
- Did you have accelerators for AEs performing over quota? If yes, at what effective commission rates for achievement of 125% and 150% and 200% of quota?
Penalties & SPIFs
- For which performance criteria did you have either penalties or SPIFs? Areas include: upfront cash, contract length, debookings, renewals, discounting, linearity, etc.
- What level (percentage change in variable comp) in economic penalty or bonus?
Did you use “farmers” for upsells/expansions?
- If so, at what commission rate?
- How did they perform?
Did you have a cap on AE variable compensation? If so, at what level?
Did you pay a separate commission to AEs for P.S.?
Metrics for Other Relevant Attributes (20+ decision metrics collected)
Product
- What category of software does your company sell?
- What is the ASP across all of your existing customers?
- What was the ASP of new customers from your AE team last year?
- What was the ASP of upsells/expansions?
Selling Environment
- How important a factor was market headwinds/tailwinds in performance last year
- How important a factor was competitive dynamics (beyond AEs’ control) in performance last year
- What is the typical sales cycle (beyond AEs’ control)
- How much of your overall bookings have been self-serve? How much of the bookings are coming from the CEO/Founder(s)?
Company Financial Profile
- Size of company (ARR)
- Growth rate of company
- Software business gross margin
- FCF profitability
- Annual gross dollar retention
- Professional Services attach rate
Other Company Factors
- How old is the company?
- Ownership profile (VC, PE, Public, bootstrapped, etc.)
- Is software the main business? If not, what %?
- What is your customer NPS score?
- Where is HQ?
- ASP across entire software business