Sales Metrics Literacy Quiz

Purpose: 10 scenarios, each with a dashboard number (or two) and a question about what to actually do next. This tests judgment, not vocabulary — you can define "win rate" perfectly and still misread what a live dashboard is telling you.

Take it in one sitting, no looking anything up. Answers and explanations are at the end.

1. Your pipeline coverage is 5.2x against a 3.5x target. Your manager is happy. What should you actually check before agreeing this is good news? A) Nothing, coverage above target is always good B) Whether that pipeline is aged/stale rather than healthy C) Your commission rate D) Whether marketing spend increased

2. Your win rate this quarter is 35%, up from 28% last quarter. Which additional number do you need before calling this an improvement? A) Total number of deals in each quarter's sample B) The CEO's opinion C) Your CAC D) Nothing else needed

3. Your funnel shows: Lead→MQL 32%, MQL→SQL 58%, SQL→Proposal 40%, Proposal→Close 65%. Benchmarks for your business are 25–35%, 50–65%, 55–70%, 55–70% respectively. Which stage should you fix first? A) Lead→MQL, because 32% is the lowest raw number B) SQL→Proposal, because it's furthest below its benchmark range C) Proposal→Close, because it's closest to the deal D) All stages equally

4. Your NRR is 108%. Your logo churn rate is 18% annually. What does this combination most likely tell you? A) You're losing a number of small accounts but expanding the accounts you keep B) The business is shrinking C) Both numbers are contradictory and one must be wrong D) Nothing, they measure the same thing

5. A rep has 90% quota attainment and an Activity-to-Meeting ratio twice as high as the team average. What's the most useful next coaching question? A) "Why are you underperforming?" B) "Your conversion from activity to meetings looks inefficient — is your targeting or messaging off?" C) Nothing, 90% attainment is good enough D) "Can you do more calls?"

6. CAC is £5,000. LTV is £8,000. Payback period is 22 months. Your leadership is celebrating a "healthy" 1.6:1 LTV:CAC ratio. What's wrong with this read? A) Nothing, above 1:1 is always fine B) The ratio is actually below the healthy 3:1+ range, and the payback period confirms a cash-flow risk C) LTV should always be higher than CAC by definition D) CAC should include customer success costs

7. Your CRM shows 3 reps forecasting a combined £900K as "Commit" this month. Historically, this team's Commit category has only converted at 70%. What should the company forecast actually be? A) £900K B) £630K (£900K × 70%), with the gap flagged to leadership, not hidden C) Whatever the CEO wants to hear D) £900K, because "Commit" means committed

8. A stale-opportunity report shows 40% of your open pipeline has had no activity in 21+ days. Your total pipeline coverage still looks healthy at 4x target. What's the correct read? A) Coverage is fine, ignore the stale flag B) Real, working coverage is closer to 2.4x once stale deals are excluded — closer to a red flag than a green one C) Stale deals should be deleted immediately D) This has no effect on forecasting

9. Two lead sources: Source A has 500 leads/month at 8% opportunity conversion. Source B has 80 leads/month at 35% opportunity conversion. Marketing wants to cut Source B's budget because its volume is low. What should you check before agreeing? A) Nothing, volume is what matters B) The actual number of opportunities each source produces, and win rate/deal size once those opportunities are created C) Whether Source B is cheaper per lead D) Whether Source A is newer

10. Your dashboard shows Sales Velocity increased 15% quarter over quarter. Which of these, alone, could fully explain that increase without the funnel actually getting healthier? A) Average deal size increased because of one large outlier deal B) Sales cycle length decreased C) Win rate improved D) More opportunities were created

Answer Key & Explanations

1. B — Coverage above target can hide a stale-pipeline problem. Always cross-check coverage against the stale-opportunity rate before treating it as healthy (see the CRM Hygiene Audit Checklist).

2. A — Win rate moving from 3 wins to 3.5 wins out of 10 deals looks dramatic and means almost nothing. Always check sample size before trusting a rate-based metric's trend.

3. B — Compare against the healthy range for that specific stage type, not the raw percentage across stages (see the Sales Funnel Conversion Rate Calculator).

4. A — High NRR with high logo churn is common and not contradictory: you're losing a number of smaller accounts while the accounts that stay are expanding revenue enough to offset it. Worth tracking logo churn separately even when NRR looks great.

5. B — High activity volume with average results is an efficiency problem, not an effort problem. Coach the conversion, not the volume.

6. B — 1.6:1 is below the 3:1 healthy threshold (see the CAC & LTV Calculator), and a 22-month payback is a cash-flow risk, not a win. A ratio above 1:1 only means you're not actively losing money per customer — not that the economics are healthy.

7. B — Historical conversion rate on a forecast category should be applied to any raw Commit total before it's presented as company forecast — the core discipline in the Sales Forecast Accuracy Scorecard.

8. B — "Working pipeline" excludes stale deals. Coverage calculated on the full pipeline overstates real coverage; always net out stale opportunities before trusting a coverage number.

9. B — Raw lead volume and conversion rate alone don't tell you value. Source B at 80 × 35% = 28 opportunities; Source A at 500 × 8% = 40 opportunities — closer than the headline volume suggests, and if Source B's deals are larger or win at a higher rate, cutting it could be the wrong call.

10. A — Sales Velocity = (Opportunities × Win Rate × Avg Deal Size) ÷ Cycle Length. Any one input moving can move the whole number — a single large outlier deal inflating average deal size can produce a velocity increase that has nothing to do with the funnel actually getting healthier. Always check which input moved before celebrating the composite metric.

Scoring

If you missed...

• Q1, Q3, Q8 → study pipeline health and stage benchmarks (Sales Funnel Conversion Rate Calculator, CRM Hygiene Audit Checklist)
• Q2, Q9 → study sample-size and segment-level thinking — don't trust a blended or small-sample average
• Q4, Q6 → study retention and unit-economics metrics (CAC & LTV Calculator)
• Q5, Q7, Q10 → study forecasting discipline and composite-metric literacy (Sales Forecast Accuracy Scorecard, Sales KPI Dictionary)