What does sales success look like in a small business?

Figure 1: Modern marketing, Marketing KPIs

To successfully gauge its achievements and milestones, small business owners need to be prepared to measure their businesses. If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it — and that’s the importance of sales key performance indicators (KPIs). Grossman (2020) writes about how measuring KPIs has become pivotal for small businesses in the information age. He continues to describe KPIs as quantitative metrics that businesses of all sizes can use to assess how they’re performing in different areas of operation.

Small business growth that occurs ‘by accident’, may leave the owner scrambling in a game of catch up, however, its expansion can be carefully considered and planned for by applying KPIs to its sales goals.

Sales success looks vastly different to different people, that is why it is important to understand the difference between vanity and true performance indicators. Vanity metrics may make you feel happy; however, it is pivotal for the small business owner to analyse the sales KPIs that tell the real story. The key lies in identifying the relevant KPIs for the small business, they should directly relate to the objectives the business sets to achieve. Focusing on the wrong performance indicator can result in neglecting one that has a bigger impact on the business’ growth.

Watch this video on examples of sales KPIs a small business can track:

Improving Sales Through KPIs