The field sales KPIs that actually matter
Your CRM can report on 80 metrics. Four of them correlate with revenue. Here's how to pick them.
Every CRM ships with dozens of stock reports. Most of them measure activity, not outcomes. Here are the four KPIs we see correlate with quota attainment in field sales — and why the others don't.
The four that matter
**1. Distinct accounts touched per week.** More unique companies engaged, not more meetings with the same account. Pipeline width beats pipeline depth in most segments.
**2. Next-step commit rate.** Percentage of meetings that end with a specific, dated next step. If a rep walks out of a meeting without a next step, the deal is already slowing.
**3. Average days from stage-move to stage-move.** How fast deals are actually progressing. Stalled deals are the #1 hidden killer of quota.
**4. Weekly coaching theme completion.** A softer metric, but the one that compounds: did the rep practice what they said they would? Tracking this turns coaching from a one-shot conversation into a cumulative lift.
What to stop tracking
- **Calls logged.** Gameable and uncorrelated with outcomes past a baseline.
- **Emails sent.** Same.
- **CRM fields filled.** Worse than useless — encourages busy-work.
- **Meetings scheduled.** Vanity. Meetings happened or didn't.
How to roll this out
Don't add four new KPIs to an existing dashboard with eighty. Delete the old dashboard. Build a new one with these four. If your reps see four metrics that matter, they'll focus on four things. If they see eighty, they'll focus on nothing.
A dashboard is a coaching tool, not a compliance report. Design it that way.