Sales & Revenue Metrics explained

ACV vs ARR

ACV vs ARR is the distinction between two subscription-revenue metrics: ACV (annual contract value) measures the average yearly value of a single customer contract, while ARR (annual recurring revenue) measures the total recurring revenue across the entire customer base, annualized.

ARR vs MRR

ARR vs MRR is the distinction between two recurring-revenue metrics that measure the same thing at different time scales: MRR (monthly recurring revenue) is the predictable revenue earned each month, and ARR (annual recurring revenue) is that figure annualized, so ARR equals MRR times twelve.

Activity Metrics

Activity metrics are measures of the sales actions reps take, calls, emails, meetings, demos, the leading-indicator inputs of selling rather than its results, capturing the effort that produces pipeline and revenue downstream.

Annual Contract Value (ACV)

Annual contract value (ACV) is the average annualized revenue from a single customer contract, the total value of a contract normalized to a one-year figure, so deals of different lengths can be compared on equal footing.

Automation Rate

Automation rate is the share of a process, tasks, interactions, or workflows, that is handled automatically rather than by a human, measuring how much of the work is done by software.

Average Deal Size

Average deal size is the typical revenue value of a closed deal, calculated by dividing total revenue won by the number of deals over a period.

Average Handle Time (AHT)

Average handle time (AHT) is the average total time an agent spends resolving a customer interaction, including talk time, holds, and after-contact work like logging notes. It is a core efficiency metric in support operations.

Average Revenue Per User (ARPU)

Average revenue per user (ARPU) is the average revenue a business generates per user or customer over a period, calculated by dividing total revenue by the number of users.

Baseline Sales

Baseline sales is the level of revenue a business would generate without any new initiative, campaign, or change, the business-as-usual figure against which the impact of new efforts is measured.

Blended CAC

Blended CAC is the total cost of acquiring customers across every channel, paid and organic alike, divided by the total number of customers acquired, giving a single average cost per customer regardless of where they came from.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate is a web analytics metric: the percentage of visitors who arrive on a page or site and leave without taking any further action, no second page, click, or interaction. It measures how often a visit ends almost as soon as it begins.

CAC Payback Period

CAC payback period is the number of months it takes to recover the cost of acquiring a customer from the gross margin that customer generates, marking when a customer stops being a net cash drain and starts paying back the acquisition investment.

CAC to LTV Ratio

The CAC to LTV ratio (usually written LTV:CAC) compares the lifetime value of a customer to the cost of acquiring them, showing whether a business makes more from customers than it spends to win them, and by how much.

CPL (Cost Per Lead)

CPL (cost per lead) is the average amount a company spends to generate a single lead, calculated by dividing total lead-generation spend by the number of leads produced.

CRM Analytics

CRM analytics is the analysis of customer and deal data stored in a CRM to reveal patterns in pipeline, conversion, and forecasting, turning raw records into decisions about where to focus and what to fix.

CSAT

CSAT (Customer Satisfaction Score) is a metric measuring how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction, product, or experience, captured by asking them to rate it on a short scale right after the moment in question.

CX Score

A CX score is a quantified measure of customer experience, a number that summarizes how customers feel about their interactions with a company, used to track and improve the experience over time.

Churn Rate

Churn rate is the percentage of customers or revenue that a business loses over a given period, the measure of how fast customers are leaving. It is the inverse of retention and one of the most important numbers in any recurring-revenue business.

Click Rate

Click rate (or click-through rate, CTR) is the percentage of email or message recipients who click a link inside it, a measure of whether the content and call to action were compelling enough to prompt action.

Click Tracking

Click tracking is the practice of recording when and where someone clicks a link, button, or call to action, attributing it to a recipient or visitor so the action becomes a measurable engagement signal for sales and marketing.

Closing Ratio

Closing ratio, also called close rate or win rate, is the percentage of opportunities a salesperson or team wins out of the total they pursue.

Cloud CRM

A cloud CRM is a customer relationship management system hosted by the vendor and accessed over the internet, where the provider handles infrastructure, updates, and security and you pay a recurring subscription instead of running it on your own servers.

Conversation Quality

Conversation quality is a measure of how effective and well-executed a sales or service conversation is, how well the rep or AI listened, asked, handled objections, and advanced the relationship, beyond simply whether the call happened.

Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO)

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) is the systematic practice of increasing the percentage of visitors or prospects who take a desired action by improving the experience and offer through research and controlled testing, rather than by driving more traffic.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost is the total cost of winning a new customer, the full sales and marketing spend over a period divided by the new customers it produced, answering how much it costs the business to acquire one more customer.

Customer Lifetime Value

Customer lifetime value (CLV or LTV) is the total profit a business expects to earn from a single customer over the entire span of the relationship, from first purchase to the day they stop buying. It answers how much a customer is actually worth.

Customer Retention

Customer retention is the discipline of keeping existing customers, the strategies, relationships, and work that lead them to stay, keep using the product, and keep renewing rather than churning. It is the practice, not the metric that measures it.

Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is the measure of how well a product, service, or experience meets a customer's expectations, capturing how content they are with what they received. It is both a concept and something businesses deliberately measure and manage.

Dashboard

A dashboard is a visual display that brings together the key metrics and information a person needs to monitor a business, team, or process, in one place, at a glance.

Deal Health

Deal health is an assessment of how likely an open deal is to close successfully, based on signals about its momentum, engagement, and risk, rather than just the rep's gut feeling.

Deal Velocity

Deal velocity is the speed at which an individual deal moves from creation to close, how quickly an opportunity progresses through the sales stages to a decision.

Deflection Rate

Deflection rate is the percentage of customer inquiries resolved through self-service or automation, FAQs, help centers, chatbots, or AI agents, without a human agent getting involved.

Email Engagement Metrics

Email engagement metrics are the measures of how recipients interact with the emails you send, opens, clicks, replies, bounces, unsubscribes, and more, used to judge whether email outreach is working and how to improve it.

Engagement Metrics

Engagement metrics measure how prospects and customers interact with your outreach and content, such as opens, clicks, replies, meeting attendance, and site visits, serving as early signals of interest before a deal closes.

Engagement Rate

Engagement rate is a metric measuring how actively an audience interacts with content, a campaign, or an experience, expressed as the share of people who took a meaningful action relative to those who had the chance. It quantifies interaction, not just exposure.

First Contact Resolution (FCR)

First contact resolution (FCR) is the percentage of customer issues resolved in a single interaction, on the first call, chat, or message, without the customer needing to follow up or be transferred.

Forecast Accuracy

Forecast accuracy measures how close a sales forecast comes to the revenue actually closed, indicating whether the forecasting process can be trusted for planning hiring, spend, and targets.

Gross Margin

Gross margin is the percentage of revenue left after subtracting the cost of goods sold, the direct costs of producing or delivering what you sell, measuring how efficiently a business turns sales into money it keeps.

Pipeline Coverage

Pipeline coverage is the ratio of the total value of open opportunities in a sales pipeline to the revenue target for a period, a measure of whether there is enough pipeline to realistically hit the number.

Pipeline Velocity

Pipeline velocity is the rate at which revenue moves through the sales pipeline, combining the number of opportunities, the win rate, the average deal size, and the sales-cycle length into a single measure of how fast the pipeline generates revenue.

Quota Attainment

Quota attainment is the degree to which a salesperson or team hits their sales target, expressed as the percentage of quota actually achieved over a period.

Revenue Attribution

Revenue attribution is the practice of assigning credit for closed revenue to the marketing and sales touchpoints that contributed to it, so a company can see which channels, campaigns, and activities actually drive deals.

Sales Reporting

Sales reporting is the practice of compiling sales data into structured reports and dashboards that show what is happening across activities, pipeline, and revenue, turning the raw record of what reps did into a picture leaders can steer by.

Sales Velocity

Sales velocity measures how quickly a team turns opportunities into revenue, combining the number of opportunities, win rate, average deal value, and sales cycle length into a single figure for revenue generated per unit of time.

Speed to Lead

Speed to lead is the time it takes a company to respond to a new inbound lead, measured from the moment the lead comes in to the first meaningful contact attempt.