Why should your Sales team use OKRs?

The OKR framework is a great way to navigate through uncertainty and make decisions in complex environments. Objectives and key results help your organization bring its vision, strategies, and business goals into clear alignment. It provides a structured process for making decisions and puts the focus on outcomes rather than output.

Sales teams are often challenged with too many initiatives they could work on at any given time, but OKRs help keep the focus on what's most important. Another benefit of OKRs for sales is the framework's agility, which allows you to quickly adapt to changes from one OKR cycle to the next.

How to set good OKRs for sales teams

Setting OKRs for the sales team can be key to their success, but only if the OKRs are effective and measurable. Each Objective should be both inspirational and achievable, and each Key Result should be quantifiable. The OKRs set for sales should reflect the growth and development of the organization.

Writing OKRs is a process that takes practice and reworking, but once you nail it, you’ll see more alignment, productivity, and progress towards your vision.

It’s very important to know that the objective has to describe the desired state you want by the end of the cycle. It should be answered with a yes or no. It should also be motivating and inspiring, ambitious but realistic.

Objective: The desired future state (outcome-focused).

Key Results: The measurable outputs we want to achieve the objective.

If you want to know more about OKRs, you can read this article: OKR Explained.

Sales OKR examples

Check out the examples below to start setting the sales OKRs for you and your team.

Objective:

We’re a top-notch sales team

KR1: SQL to win rate improves from 20% to 35%

KR2: Response time for all Inbound Leads is within 5 mins

KR3: Increase lead conversion to sales from 20% to 40%

Objective:

Existing accounts are the major revenue generator

KR1: Increase annual renewals from 65% to 80%

KR2: Increase the number of users from existing accounts from 8% to 20%

KR3: Reduce the monthly churn rate from 3.7% to 1%

Objective:

Upsell deals are the best-kept secret for our revenues

KR1: Earn $200,000 in upsell revenue

KR2: Close 400 upsell deals by phonecall

KR3: Increase by 10% upsell deal close via email automation

Introducing OKRs to bridge the gap between strategy and success can be highly beneficial for organizations. They can tailor it to fit their vision. Sales teams are constantly trying to turn their ideas into successful plans, and OKRs are proven success strategies to achieve it.