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Are your KPIs actually key performance indicators, or are they in fact out of line with your company’s goals and objectives?

Far too often businesses measure the wrong things, and KPIs as a result don’t adequately communicate what’s going on with a company’s lead generation efforts. Using the wrong metrics can give the illusion of properly measuring a sales program, but in fact it is like a ladder leaned against the wrong wall.

Generating good leads is crucial for just about every business, so getting the metrics right is key.

When assessing your lead generation metrics to determine if they are in line with your firm’s goals and objectives, analyze each stage of the buying cycle. That includes suspect, prospect, evaluation, proposal, negotiation, and close.

Focus on three things when looking at each stage: trends over time, performance against benchmarks, and data specific to individuals.

First, you want to examine what metrics in each phase of the sales cycle reveal time-based trends. This might include tracking changes in the number of initial inquiries from prospects, for instance.

Second, look at your metrics for each phase with an eye toward measuring performance against the benchmarks you’ve established. This could be based on where your company currently is at, or where it wants to be. It should be based on data specific to your industry, however, such as the conversion rate from prospect to suspect in your industry compared with other businesses.

Third, examine individual performance data for each phase of the sales cycle. Individual performance metrics are crucial for sales teams of all types, whether an inside sales team or outside sales. You might want to look at what the performance gap is between your top performers and those who are performing near the bottom, for instance.

After assessing these three areas, you should then have a picture if your metrics are in line with your goals and objectives—or if there is a mismatch.

Data is good, but only if it is relevant. So make sure your metrics actually capture what’s going on within your business.