Practical Sales Training™ > How To Convert > Success Metric
What is it?
A success metric is the invisible checklist your buyer has in their mind. They will judge your product or service a success based on whether or not you tick all of the boxes.
Why does it work?
It works because your buyer has bought your product or service to achieve something and they will have a specific set of things in their mind that they are looking for to feel like they have made the right buying decision. Your ability to understand what those things are and then focus on delivering on them will not only make a difference for your buyer, it will also help you to shape your offering and know where to place your energy.
How can you use it?
There are two ways you can make this work for you.
- Ask buyers as they come into your world about how they will judge success and what they are looking for.
- Tell buyers how they may judge the success based on previous experience.
The metrics could be things like:
- Time saved
- Money saved
- Money made
- Increasing the speed of something
- Decreasing the speed of something
- Simplifying something
- Providing opportunity / access
- Compatibility
- Ease of transition
They may also consider things like:
- Location of provider
- Experience of provider
Hypothetical Example:
A company hires a marketing agency to manage their paid advertising. The agency thinks the client will judge success based on ad click-through rates and impressions, so they focus their reports on these metrics.
However, the client’s real success metric is “increased sales and profit” – they don’t care how many clicks the ads get if revenue doesn’t improve.
Midway through the contract, the client is frustrated, saying, “We’re not seeing results,” even though the ads are performing well by industry standards.
To avoid this, the agency could have asked upfront:
“What does success look like for you?”
The client would have answered, “We’ll consider this a success if we can generate an additional £20k per month in sales.”
With that clarity, the agency could align efforts with the client’s actual success metric, not just internal performance data.
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