In this article, we go over how to track sales, the metrics you should be tracking, and how to use sales data to transform your business into a profit machine.
Imagine this:
You’re the captain of a ship navigating uncharted waters. You’re exploring new environments and trying to steer clear from any obstacles along the way — and you’re doing it blindfolded.
That’s exactly what it’s like to operate a sales team without tracking your sales data.
And just like the blindfolded ship captain, a sales team without data tracking is going to run themselves into disaster sooner or later.
So let’s go over how you can start keeping track of sales for your business so that you can navigate the “dangerous waters of sales” as safely as possible.
We’ll be going over:
- What is sales tracking exactly?
- Why you need to track sales
- Best Practices for Tracking Sales
- The sales metrics you need to track
- How to efficiently track sales using sales tracking software
- What to do with sales data
- How you can start efficiently and effectively tracking sales today
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What Is Sales Tracking Exactly?
To keep it simple, sales tracking means keeping records of all aspects of your sales processes.
When done right, sales tracking provides crystal clear data about your sales progress and how that can influence your sales strategy. It can help you identify the areas that need your attention to improve your sales by converting more leads into customers. It can also help you identify the areas that don’t need more investment.
Why You Should Track Sales To Monitor Efficiency, Effectiveness, Productivity, and Performance
Tracking sales should be a major part of your sales management system.
To show you just how important sales tracking is for your sales team’s productivity, let me ask a couple of questions.
If your business’s goal is scaling, how do you know whether you’re moving toward your goal, away from it, or sitting at a standstill?
And to dive a bit deeper, if you aren’t hitting your goals for scaling, how are you supposed to know why that is and how to fix it?
The answer is simple:
It starts with sales tracking.
When you track the right sales metrics, it gives you a tremendous amount of insights into how efficiently and effectively your team is functioning and where you may have areas for improvement.
Sales Metrics You Should Be Tracking
So to start, let’s cover some of the most critical areas that you need to start keeping track of ASAP.
Sales Team Habits & Productivity Output (Emails, Calls, Meetings, etc.)
Did you know that 80% of sales require five follow-up calls after their initial meeting?
And most sales reps tend to give up after the first follow-up.
This is why it’s crucial to track just how much output each of your teams is doing.
If they aren’t making enough calls, sending enough emails, or setting up as many meetings as they need, you’ve got to know so you can address the issue.
Sales tracking isn’t just about tracking the outside forces, but how your team is operating internally too.
Customer Journey
Strong value ladders and customer journeys are critical for making consistent revenue.
But here’s the thing:
The initial touch points with the customer aren’t going to be perfect; it will need lots of trial and error to continue improving and keeping up with the times.
And the only way to know which areas of the journey need to be changed is via sales tracking. This means tracking a lead’s journey from their first interaction with a rep to a close or lost sale.
Details are crucial.
Efforts, Results & Outcomes
How much of your sales efforts are leading to closed sales, and how many are lost along the way? What is the value won and lost?
What happened or didn't happen during the customer journey that led to those outcomes? Who did the salespeople talk to? Was the buying center created and understood?
These are vital pieces of information for any team to gather if they want to hone the previously mentioned customer journey into a well-oiled sales machine.
If you’re even unsure of your close rate, then this is a very obvious issue in your sales tracking because your sales team might not be closing as many as they think they are.
Customer Data — The Fuel That Keeps Your Sales Machine Going
Did you know that only 13% of customers believe a salesperson can understand their needs?
The reason for this?
In large part, it’s due to bad experiences with sales teams, whether they’ve experienced it personally or heard about it through word of mouth.
Many sales teams don’t even bother to learn what they need to know about their customers and the problems they want to address/capabilities they want to gain during the sales process. This not only comes off as sales-y and disingenuous, but it’s also detrimental to solving the problems your customers need to be solved.
For the B2B sales process, your customers’ data should be tracked from doing research and running a discovery call.
Sales Financial Records — Your Accountant’s Favorite
Trust me:
I’ve seen plenty of sales teams that end up wasting loads of effort and funds purely due to a lack of financial tracking.
Not only will your accountant be pleased, but you’ll also gain additional insights into your most profitable customers.
Seriously:
The more in-depth you track your financials, the more you can optimize for one of the most important things to your business — profitability.
Keeping watch over your business’s financial records isn’t the most flashy way to increase profit/revenue, but it sure can be one of the most effective.
Best Practices for Tracking Sales
Visualize the Sales Process
Create a clear roadmap of your sales journey, from initial contact to closing the deal. This visualization helps in identifying key steps and potential bottlenecks, enabling more strategic planning and execution.
Collect Leads and Respond Promptly
Quickly gather and react to new leads. Immediate engagement increases the likelihood of conversion by keeping your business top-of-mind and demonstrating attentiveness to potential customers' needs.
Score and Nurture those Leads!
Implement a system to evaluate leads based on their likelihood to convert and tailor your follow-up strategies accordingly. This approach ensures that resources are focused on the most promising opportunities.
Keep Accurate Sales Records
Maintain detailed records of sales activities and interactions. This data serves as a foundation for analyzing performance, understanding customer behavior, and making informed decisions.
Be Efficient with Your Tasks
Organize and prioritize sales-related tasks to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks. Efficient task management helps in maintaining momentum in the sales pipeline and reduces the risk of missed opportunities.
Monitor and Measure Everything
Continuously assess your sales processes and outcomes. This ongoing evaluation enables the identification of areas for improvement and the adjustment of strategies to optimize sales performance.
The Problem With “Traditional” Data Management Systems
Don’t get me wrong. Tracking your data in any form is better than not tracking at all.
But there’s a problem with the “traditional” method of data management:
It’s inefficient.
Managing a growing plethora of spreadsheets over various programs only becomes a bigger problem as your business scales, which means a continually decreasing profit margin. (And by the way, this is a continuously compounding factor that’ll increasingly hurt your business the longer you ignore it.)
The more data that has to be manually managed, the less efficient your team becomes. The more time each rep has to spend in Google Sheets, the less time they are making sales calls.
Luckily, there’s a fix to this:
And it’s called CRM.
Introducing A Better Way To Track Your Sales: CRM Software
CRM, or Customer Relationship Management software, are programs that help sales and marketing teams manage customer data, automate sales journeys, and increase profit in various ways.
On the most basic level, CRMs help to manage and consolidate data while streamlining sales funnel.
But many CRMs, like VipeCloud, offer much more than that. Things like marketing automation and complex data reporting suites help to increase your profit further and reduce headaches.
Sales Tracking Software: How CRMs Can Revolutionize The Way You Track Sales
So let’s dive deeper into the details of how CRM software can transform your sales tracking process — and as a result, transform your bottom line too.
Data Management Streamlining
An inside look of VipeCloud CRM to see what your pipeline could look like.
CRMs like VipeCloud take data from practically every area of sales you can think of and streamline them into one package.
This saves the time of cross-referencing sales data and moving it through various programs since it’s all in one spot.
While this may seem like it’s too simple to be any significant change, it makes a world of difference.
Automation
You can’t hire robots as salespeople.
Automation is the secret key to scaling a business effectively and quickly.
See, without automation, every piece of data entry, every admin task, and every tedious action needs to be taken care of by a member of your team.
As your business grows, things like manual data entry will slowly eat away at your productivity — and ultimately, your profit margins.
The more your team has to track manually, the more hours get put into admin over the tasks that make money. This means lower profit as you grow.
Now, there’s a remedy for this:
Letting automation take care of the simple, menial tasks.
Things like data entry don’t need to be taken care of by people. In fact, automated programs are better than sales reps at things like data entry in many ways.
Reporting Suites
Another task that would otherwise be carried out by a member of your team is taking all of that sales data and putting it together to create meaningful reports.
What part of your sales data tracking report could look like with VipeCloud.
Without reports, all of the sales tracking data will be spread and cluttered in various spots.
CRMs allow you to take all of that data, consolidate it, and then create easy-to-digest reports to show you a top-down view of what’s going on in your organization.
What To Do With Sales Data & How To Use Sales Tracking Effectively
Now with all of that out of the way, let’s talk about how you can use all of this data you’re keeping track of to make more sales.
In keeping with our ocean analogy from earlier, imagine your sales team is a ship crew, and the process is the ship you’re all sailing on.
The destination of your crew?
The Island of the Closed Sale.
But there’s a problem.
Your ship (the sales process) is — unfortunately — going to be built imperfectly the first time around, so there are some holes that might pop up during your voyage.
If you don’t plug those holes, the ship’s going to sink. But the only way to uncover them is by setting sail and keeping a good eye on your ship along the way.
That sales data you collect should help you uncover those holes and plug them for smoother sailing as you go.
Take the time to do check-ups on all areas of the sales process regularly. Using the data you collect, it shouldn’t be too difficult to see where you may be losing out on profit.
Don’t Make These Common Sales Tracking Mistakes
Like I just mentioned, some of the issues in your sales tracking process are going to pop up along the way — and that’s fine; sales is all about constantly improving.
But that doesn’t mean you can’t learn from mistakes to start off on a better foot and get things rolling much quicker.
So let’s talk about the things you shouldn’t do when implementing a sales tracking plan.
Overcomplicating The Process
Planning is important, but sales teams tend to go overboard when it comes to implementing many new plans.
The thing is, overcomplicating the process can be just as detrimental to profit as a plan that isn’t developed enough.
When you’re deciding what to track, how to implement your plan, and more broadly — how to implement any new process in sales, don’t make it so complicated that you hamper your team’s efficiency.
Over-Automating The Process
Another problem that sales teams commonly run into is letting the automation factor seep into every area of the sales process.
From sales calls to customer service and more, automation doesn’t belong in every part of the customer journey.
You’d never want a customer to do their discovery call with an automated voice call, for instance. When it comes to tracking, the data collection and reporting are tasks that automated programs can do great, but deciding how to use that data and address team members?
That’s a job for people.
So remember:
Automation = Good
Over-automation = Bad
“Setting And Forgetting”
Another thing that sales teams commonly forget:
Sales isn’t a “set and forget” sort of process. Times are constantly changing, and no sales process is perfect from the start.
It’s all about continually improving, revamping, and keeping track of all the moving parts.
Never let your teams or processes stagnate. Foster a culture of constant improvement within your teams because that’s what’ll keep your ship sailing.
And it all starts with tracking your sales data.
“Doing it Without the Crew”
Do not define a process without keeping the sales team involved, buy-in is needed.
Choosing A CRM That Doesn’t Fit Your Needs
Every business is different, and that means every business’ needs are different too.
A CRM reporting suite that works great for one business might not fit well at all with another. That’s why it’s essential to find a CRM that meets your needs.
Another considerable factor is the support team behind the CRM.
A well-trained support team can teach you how to get the most out of any CRM and keep track of all the different metrics you’d ever need. So before you pull the trigger and decide which CRM to use for your team, make sure that it suits your business specifically.
And that’s where VipeCloud comes in.
VipeCloud: A Better Way To Track Your Sales
VipeCloud is designed to fit various business needs by transforming sales and streamlining the complicated parts of the process.
Why VipeCloud?
Covering every way VipeCloud wins over its fellow CRM platforms would take an article in and of itself, but let’s talk about a few of the reasons it stands apart from the crowd.
(And if your sales team is still living in spreadsheets, please do them a favor and invest in a CRM. It’ll pay for itself with the time you and your entire team save.)
- Top-Tier Support
VipeCloud’s support team does everything in its power to ensure your team gets the most out of the platform.
From free data migration to a knowledge base packed with guides, your sales team shouldn’t have any problem getting things up and rolling without a painful transition period.
- Can Fit Practically Any Sales or Marketing Team’s Needs
VipeCloud's sales tracking software is designed from the ground up to fit most sales teams’ and small businesses’ needs. With a versatile dashboard and plenty of features, there aren’t many teams it won’t help.
- You Can Start Implementing The Sales Tracking Tool For Free — Today.
Did we mention that you can start putting VipeCloud in place today for free?
Get VipeCloud Implemented Today To Track Sales, Increase Profit, And Reduce Headaches
At VipeCloud, we don’t like to brag — we’d rather show you what our sales tracking software can do firsthand.
That’s why we’re offering a free demo to let your team try it out for themselves. Not only that, but we’ll help you implement it for no extra charge.
So if that sounds good to you, request a free demo of VipeCloud today to transform your sales process.
How to Keep Track of Sales for Small Business FAQ
What is the best way to track sales?
While most small business owners start with tracking sales using an Excel spreadsheet, it's best to implement a CRM system after a while. CRM software not only helps to keep track of sales but also helps small business owners with sales pipeline management.
What is a sales tracking system?
Sales tracking software aids in the management, tracking, and guidance of all areas of the sales process. It generally includes predefined process workflows to help salespeople understand where each sales prospect is at any given time and what activities need to be performed next.
How do small businesses keep track of expenses and income?
Small businesses track expenses and income with a bookkeeping system. Popular approaches differ between different businesses. With an understanding of basic bookkeeping and a low volume of sales, an excel spreadsheet can suffice. For retail businesses, modern point of sale systems can sync with cloud-based bookkeeping software to simplify the transfer of daily transactions. Lastly, for non-retail businesses, bookkeeping software can sync with your payment system and bank account to help you in tracking your expenses and income
How do you keep track of items sold?
You don’t need a lot to keep track of your sales. Some small businesses are able to make do, just by using spreadsheets. Generally speaking, it’s not ideal, particularly if you’re really trying to take your business to the next level. This method lacks in efficiency and will only take you so far.
Luckily, there is software dedicated to your sales tracking systems that optimize the process. They’re highly efficient because they minimize data input and provide all sorts of features that go way beyond the limitations of a Google Sheet document
How do you keep track of sales leads?
Customer Relationship Management (“CRM”) systems are dedicated to tracking your contacts, accounts, leads, pipelines, correspondence, tasks and more. The goal of a CRM is to be a one-stop-shop for your customer and client data. It’s important that your CRM has the flexibility to track important custom data for your business, that your CRM vendor provides attentive support and that the CRM is adopted across your team.
