OKRs for Sales & CS

Sales OKR Examples

Sales teams are considerably more data-driven than any other team in a company. 

Which makes them better prepared to draft their Objectives and Key Results but also unexpectedly confused about the value of the OKR methodology. Why do we need a different goal structure if we already have our targets to hit? 

To eliminate the confusion, watch the video below 👇 and take a look at good OKR examples for a Sales Team.

Before we move on to look at more examples, there is one important takeaway to discuss.

You shouldn’t put your KPIs into your OKRs but there is a clear connection between performance metrics and improvement goals.

You will discuss KPIs and OKRs in the same conversation when you are looking into one of these 2 scenarios:

• You are falling behind on sales KPIs and you need an OKR to fix what’s broken and bring performance targets back on track
• You want to double/triple or 10x your growth, and you need an OKR to pursue something you haven’t tried before  

In both scenarios, you are facing a gap between the current performance and the expected performance. Now, instead of constantly talking about the size of this gap, think how you would build the bridge over it:

• Are there any areas that seem to be broken or slow, and what can you improve about them?
• What has been working in the past, and can you double down on that effect? 
• Or can the team come up with something totally new and achieve better results through innovation?

The answers to these questions will be the basis for your OKRs. Now let’s look at the examples.

Building Relationships

Objective: Improve the way we nurture relationships with potential customers at an early stage 

Potential customers seem to make it to our doorstep but they tend to drop off somewhere early in the sales process. Those who move on to later stages in the funnel, tend to buy. It means we are doing something wrong in the early stages. We know that our relationship with potential customers is crucial for their buying decision but we need to be better at building trust.  

KR1: Increase the number of second meetings booked from 10% to 40% on average

Better relationship means more communication. Currently, we do not push enough for a second meeting and we need to work on that. This way we can get to know the customer better and vice versa. 

KR2: Improve the email response rate from 5% to 10%

We have many email templates that we use to communicate with potential customers. The response rate is really low. We need to work on having better email communication that engages customers. 

KR3: At least 50% of lost deals reply to the “why not us” survey

We don’t really know what we are doing wrong at an early stage. Collecting feedback from lost deals will help us find new improvement areas and possible solutions. 

Besides setting the OKR, the sales team should also think about the main things they can do to achieve the results above. Those ideas, projects, or plans are called Initiatives. 

Example Initiatives:

• Develop a communication plan and introduce the structure to customers during the first meeting
• A/B test different messaging to see what works for our customers
• Set up “why not us” survey

Improving Sales Process

Objective: Increase the quality of our sales approach

We have a team with great potential but our sales pitch and how it’s presented by salespeople is not at its best. We need to make sure we bring up our game by learning from others and complementing our skills. 

KR1: Have all (10) salespeople listen in to at least 3 product demos of other team members

We all do things a bit differently and we all have things to learn from others. Listening to others’ demos and discussing them afterward helps us put our heads together and develop a stronger and more concise sales pitch. 

KR2: All (10) salespeople complete best practices sales process training with an 80% test score

Besides learning from each other, we should learn from the best in the field. 80% success rate on test completion would indicate that a person truly understands ins and outs of the business. If someone performs lower, they should review study materials and try again to really master the new knowledge. 

KR3: SQL to Win rate improves from 35% to 45%

We are learning to impact our performance. The best way to see if we are putting the new knowledge into practice is by focusing on closing more sales-qualified leads. 

Initiatives: 

• Set up a weekly report where we can see everybody’s booked demos
• Everybody writes a summary of the learnings from listening to the demos
• 10 sales people participate in the best practices sales training

Driving Acquisition

Objective: Grow sales through our channel partners 

We don’t have the capacity to sell as much as we can produce. We have tried co-branding and it works well so we have decided to focus on channel partners. This way we can cover more markets in less time and with fewer resources. 

KR1: Recruit 30 new channel partners in Eastern, Central, and Western geographies

We are starting with those 3 areas for this quarter. We have calculated that we need around 25 well-performing channel partners to achieve our growth goals. We are aiming to recruit 30 as a stretch goal. 

KR2: Onboard channel partners with 25 scoring > 80% on the final test

To bring us results, channel partners need to have a good knowledge of our brand. Every partner needs to score at least 80% on the test after the training and onboarding process. If they score lower, they have little or no understanding of our brand which can hurt our image.  

KR3: Each partner closes deals in the total value of at least 50,000$

Every channel partner should be able to sell at least 50,000$ in their first 1-2 months. We are taking into consideration that the first month or two goes into recruiting and training which leaves them 1-2 months to sell. Anything below that target would mean we are doing something wrong. 

Initiatives:

• Brainstorm ideas around how to find and recruit channel-partners
• Set up training and onboarding program
• Assign responsive sales person to every reseller and have weekly review and improvement meetings

Customer Success OKR Examples

Customer service teams are the frontline of the business. They are the face your clients see when first getting to know the company and evaluating whether to take further action. 

Considering the importance of the first impressions, customer service agents need to be knowledgeable about the business and prepared to anticipate some questions even before they come in. This level of expertise takes training, knowledge sharing and continuous improvement. Which is why customer service teams are big fans of the OKR methodology that helps to focus on the most important improvement priorities.

If your company has a B2B model, your customer service team is probably called customer success. Apart from the frontline communication, customer success representatives are responsible for onboarding new clients, developing internal knowledge base and communicating customer feedback to the product and marketing teams. This calls for cross-functional workflows and figuring out the most effective way to organize information flow in the company. 

Customer service and customer success teams are usually embracing the principles of the OKR methodology much faster than other teams. Through continuous communication with customers, well-trained CS teams can spot improvement opportunities really well. Moreover, writing measurable outcomes (Key Results) that focus on real observable customer behavior comes rather naturally to these teams. 

If you want to set improvement goals for your customer service and customer success team, take a look at these OKR examples for customer service teams to get some ideas and figure out your own priorities.

Customer Experience & Value

Objective: Research and improve customer satisfaction

• Get 1000 survey responses to annual satisfaction survey
• Conduct 50 phone interviews with top customers
• Conduct 15 phone interviews with recently churned customers
• Present an action plan of 10 improvement for next quarter

Objective: Improve satisfaction with the customer support team

• Increase good and great ratings from 40 to 60
• Develop 15 full answers to common questions
• Improve first time response rate from 60 to 30 minutes average

Objective: Improve satisfaction with support team’s work

• Decrease number of complaints and negative feedback per quarter from 15 to 5
• Increase positive feedback items and praise from 5 to 15 per quarter
• Increase end-user satisfaction rating from 4.0 to 4.5

Product Implementation & Onboarding

Objective: Increase engagement with new paying customers

• Increase open rate of our in-product communications from 4% to 15%
• Increase the number of follow-up meetings booked from 7 to 21 per week
• Achieve service quality rating 9 out of 10 based on the after meeting anonymous poll
• Reduce average response time from 5h to 1h

Objective: Research customer satisfaction improvements

• Get 1000 survey responses to annual satisfaction survey
• Conduct 50 phone interviews with top customers
• Conduct 15 phone interviews with recently churned customers
• Present an action plan of 10 improvements for next quarter

Objective: Research and understand why our churned customers didn’t see value

• Get 30% response to survey on churn reasons
• Interviews with 10% of respondents to get detailed reasons
• Analyze responses and choose 3 issues to improve

Training and development of customer success team

Objective: Improve internal expertise to create an outstanding CS team 

• Organize 12 case study discussions and document insights 
• 4 team members to present their personal growth plans 
• Create 15 articles for the internal wiki

Objective: Promote our world-class Customer Success team to stand out from the competition 

• Get our experts into 5 podcast interviews 
• Achieve 10,000 views on the video promoting our expertise 
• Increase the number of unique weekly visitors to the landing page promoting our expertise from 1,000 to 15,000

Step-by-step example

Let’s say your Customer Success team used to have a KPI target of 100 meetings per quarter. And now they realize that to onboard more customers and increase customer lifetime value, they need to have more meetings.

So they decide to pursue a much higher KPI target of 300 meetings per quarter. This is an explosive KPI growth target. 

What exactly do they need to focus on to deliver on this KPI target? 

• Will they focus on new customers or the ones who subscribed in the past 6 months?
• When are the customers more likely to book a meeting? What has to be true for them to have interest?
• How will the Team approach this: through email communication, in-product notifications, or a landing page?
• Where in the sales funnel the changes should happen: early on when potential customers are still learning about the service or somewhere in the middle when they discover its value hands-on?
• Would it be more impactful to focus on long-term customers and engage them more often?
• How many meetings per customer is enough to make sure continuous usage and engagement?
• If customers are not booking follow-ups, is it because of the bad first impression? Should the Team consider improving the sales pitch and demo approach?

So… what does it mean exactly “to increase the number of meetings” and why is that important? 

In the reasoning process and in team discussions, it will become clear that some areas are more impactful than others, and you have more faith and confidence in some ideas for delivering actual change. 

Place your bid on the highest impact idea and define how you will measure the success of achieving this Objective. These measurable outcomes will be your Key Results.

Some OKRs might be impossible to deliver in the current quarter, so you can always mark them for the next one. That is if they are still relevant by then. 

So we’ve established that Key Results should be narrowly focused to pinpoint what outcomes you need to achieve to reach the Objective. 

To continue with our example, let’s imagine that the Customer Success team decided to focus on the customers who subscribed in the past 3 months and increase engagement with them. The team will apply different tactics to deliver on the desirable outcomes. But which outcomes are desirable here?

Usually, companies think that the KPI should be one of the Key Results under the Objective, but this isn’t the best practice. 

Instead of writing “increase the number of meetings from 100 to 300” (which is just reiterating the KPI target), try to identify an outcome that the team can influence on an ongoing basis. Something that they can track every week and take action when the progress is at risk, for example: “increase the number of follow-up meetings booked [a specific type of a meeting] from 7 to 21 per week [measurable on a weekly basis]”. 

Remember, you should have at least 2-3 and no more than 5 Key Results per Objective.

So what other outcomes will the team try to deliver? Take a look at this OKR example below.

Objective: Increase engagement with new paying customers

• KR1: Increase open rate of our in-product communication from 4% to 15%
• KR2: Increase the number of follow-up meetings booked from 7 to 21 per week
• KR3: Achieve service quality rating 9 out of 10 based on the after meeting anonymous poll
• KR4: Reduce average response time from 5h to 1h

For OKRs to work, you need to define the Objective so clearly that it would shape the thought process and prioritization framework for the entire quarter.

Measurable outcomes defined in the Key Results help the team to choose the right tasks to work on, and not to waste their time on pursuing everything that comes to mind. Everyone should stay focused.  

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Learn more about writing good Objectives and Key Results, or browse more examples in our OKR examples database.