Which KPIs matter
Distributor KPIs fall into two groups. Business KPIs, such as revenue, order volume or stock levels, describe the distributor as a whole. Lead KPIs describe how the distributor handles the demand you send them. For a manufacturer that generates leads, the second group is the one you can measure directly and act on:
- Win rate on assigned leads: won deals as a share of leads received in a period.
- Response time: time from assignment to first contact with the customer.
- Time in stage: how long deals stay at each step, which shows where they stall.
- Leads without activity: how many assigned leads have had no update for a set number of days.
- Loss reasons: the share of lost deals with a recorded reason, and what those reasons are.
How to use them
Agree on the definitions with distributors before publishing results. Compare distributors on the same period and on similar leads, and look at cohorts by month assigned when sales cycles are long. Share each distributor's own numbers with them, and let the results inform how future leads are allocated.
Common mistakes
- Judging distributors only on total revenue, which mixes your leads with their own customers.
- Data collected through monthly spreadsheets, which arrives late and incomplete.
- Comparing a dense urban region with a rural one without adjusting for the type of leads.
How Kumulator relates
Kumulator has ready-made reports for dealer performance by win rate, response time from Assigned to Contacted, stalled deals and bottlenecks by stage, filtered by period, region, pipeline and source. See distributor performance and reports and dashboards.