From Noise to Narrative: How to Focus on Metrics That Matter

Knowing which sales and marketing metrics to prioritize in today’s competitive landscape can make all the difference. By focusing on the right data, businesses can streamline their processes, engage customers more effectively, and confidently communicate their success to leadership. 

BOL and Salesloft recently came together to identify key strategies for improving performance measurement and driving business outcomes. Here’s what you need to know.

Prioritize Your Metrics

Focus on both deterministic (e.g., number of calls) and correlative metrics (e.g., the impact of marketing efforts on deal closure). Deterministic metrics offer quick, clear insights, while correlative metrics provide deeper insights into activities that drive growth. By leveraging both, companies can gain a fuller picture of their performance and make informed decisions that directly contribute to their revenue goals.

Touchpoints Matter

Salesloft’s research shows it can take up to 27 touchpoints to turn a lead into a Marketing Qualified Lead (MQL). Understanding how touchpoints affect the customer journey can help businesses accelerate deal cycles and ensure prospects are engaged at every step.

The takeaway? The right number of touches—whether through email, calls, or digital engagement—can significantly impact conversion rates.

Speed vs. Success 

While pushing for faster deal cycles is tempting, moving too quickly can hurt success rates. It’s all about finding the right balance.

Consider how quickly leads move through the funnel while ensuring prospects are given enough time to evaluate their options and make confident buying decisions. The right mix of speed and thoroughness leads to more successful deal outcomes.

Focus on Contract Value

Boosting overall revenue is the goal, but that doesn’t always mean targeting the biggest contracts—it means targeting the right ones. Analyzing deal size helps you understand which opportunities are worth pursuing and how best to allocate resources. 

Understanding how metrics like annual contract value ($ACV) affect your overall sales strategy ensures that your team is not only closing deals, but closing the right deals. By focusing on the right mix of small and large deals, companies can drive pipeline without overwhelming their teams.

Maximize Close Rates

Evaluate how changing $ACV and closed/won percentages impact your Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) to meet your targets. Modeling different scenarios—such as increasing deal sizes while adjusting close rates—can help sales teams predict how these variables impact their overall performance targets. This type of forecasting ensures that companies are hitting their goals with the right balance of deal volume and close rates.

Communicate Metrics to Leadership

Understanding the full account journey—from brand unaware to closed-won—is essential for optimizing revenue strategies. And when you gather and present metrics that clearly connect marketing and sales efforts to outcomes, you equip leadership with the insights they need to make confident, strategic decisions.

Rather than overwhelming executives with raw data, focus on a few high-impact metrics that illustrate buyer progression, deal velocity, and conversion quality. Advanced analytics and closed-loop reporting help ensure that every metric ties back to business growth — making your reporting not just informative, but indispensable.

Conclusion: From Data to Strategic Action

Strong communication and clear alignment around metrics can transform the way leadership views marketing and sales contributions. By focusing on the most meaningful data points, teams can optimize processes, improve forecasting, and build stronger business cases for strategic investment.

As market dynamics continue to evolve, organizations that leverage data-driven insights—not just track data—will stay more agile, competitive, and connected to their buyers’ journeys.

Learn more about how we can support your performance measurement and analytics needs. Let's Talk.