Sales teams need motivation and organization to achieve a company’s sales objectives. What does that look like in real time? Less time wasted on lower revenue leads, for starters. Plus, more time invested in actives leading to bigger results. Achieving this requires the implementation of the right sales process. It needs to track leads and actions of sales reps at each touchpoint so no lead is ignored.
Sales trackers are useful tools that help define and track sales KPIs, enabling a company to reach its business objectives. These sales actions require regular monitoring to be as efficient as possible.
In this article, we explain why and how to build a sales activity tracker correctly for your business.
What is a sales activity tracker?
A sales activity tracker centralizes the information needed to coordinate your sales actions. It allows you to keep an eye on objectives and/or on the objectives set for your sales representatives.
Not only will you easily know the progress of your actions and the opportunities in progress, but also have the follow-up. Sales prospecting will help you to bounce back and make your strategy evolve according to your results. Prioritize your hot prospects, transform your opportunities into customers, maximize your average revenue per customer, etc. These are all concrete actions that must be implemented after an analysis of your tracking spreadsheet in accordance with the objectives set out in the sales activity tracker.
How to create a sales activity tracker?
The sales activity tracker is organized according to your objectives and your company’s ambitions, and must still contain vital information that can be found in any type of business.
What information should be included in a sales activity tracking table?
Here is a non-exhaustive list of data to include in your sales activity tracking table :
Contact information for your prospects and customers
Any information allowing you to identify your customer such as :
- Company Name
- Industry Sector
- Name of your contact person within the company
- Job title and function
- E-mail address
- Phone number,
- Mailing address,
- and any other information that may be necessary for your company to properly qualify and identify a prospect, such as: reported sales, number of employees, etc.
The scoring of an prospect or customer
Not all your customers are equally important to your business based on the sales objectives you have set for yourself. Use a scoring system to show the importance and prioritization of processing certain prospects to adjust your actions and focus your sales efforts more accurately and efficiently.
The potential of the prospect or customer
Is it a hot prospect who has a good chance of becoming a customer? Is it a high-potential customer who could increase your company’s revenue? You need to record the potential of your prospects and customers in your sales tracker so you can focus on the most important ones.
This potential can, for example, be translated into a percentage assigned to a prospect to quantify its importance, its interest in your offer, and its position in the conversion funnel. In simple words: “do you think you have a chance of signing a contract with this prospect? and how much do you estimate this success?”. This will allow your salespeople to focus on the prospects closest to the purchase.
The source through which the lead was generated
There are many lead generation channels: telephone prospecting, emailing, online campaigns, social networks, etc. When filling out your sales prospect tracking table, noting the source through which you generated your prospect is essential.
You will then know if the lead-gen actions you have put in place have been successful and if they are in line with the target you are aiming at. This crucial information for your follow-up of sales prospecting tells you if the strategy implemented is the right one and allows you to bounce back if the actions implemented are not successful.
The status of your prospects and customers
There are three statuses to define your prospect:
- Hot prospects: those who have a well-defined need and who have shown a strong interest in your products and/or services;
- Warm prospects: Those that have shown an interest in your company but have no real needs in the short/medium term ;
- Cold prospects: leads identified during a cold call, they have neither heard about your company nor have any real need, they will need nurturing to make them a warm prospect.
The status of a prospect can evolve throughout your sales prospecting. It is important to keep a note of the status of each of your prospects in your sales activity tracker to easily know the interest of this prospect for your offer and prioritize them accordingly to save sales reps time and effort.
The date on which you plan to take the next action
Helps be clear with your future actions, and saves invaluable time. As a sales representative, it is necessary to always plan and schedule the next action concerning your prospects so that they never “sleep” in your sales activity tracker.
At the end of each call or email interaction, plan the next action to be carried out to advance the deal; whether that is to send a follow-up by email, make an appointment, send a contract, etc. This way, every morning, you can start your day with a clear vision of the tasks to be carried out and you are able to report on the progress of your actions. Also, thanks to this organization, no prospect is forgotten and their sales activity tracker is “clean” and accurate.
Our own lead management software, noCRM, lets you do a similar organization of your task with the help of status loops. A status loop works as a reminder for your upcoming activities, you can use this key feature for your leads to know what action you need to perform next.
Any comments about your prospect /customer
The objective of your sales activity tracker is to gather all the information you are able to obtain on your prospects and customers in order to be as accurate as possible in your sales actions and to lead to a sale.
In addition to all the information that has been previously stated, note all the comments related to the prospect/customer and to your previous conversations. To have a complete follow-up table, do not neglect this “comments” section.
Sales performance indicators
When developing your business development plan, set quantifiable and reasoned objectives that can be reviewed as you go along. Here are the indicators you could use to analyze your performance for the follow-up of your sales prospecting:
Customer Conversion Rate
This ratio allows you to directly evaluate the strategy in place and the performance of your sales representatives. The conversion rate can have two different levels:
- the global conversion rate which directly highlights the number of signed customers compared to the initial prospects;
- the conversion rate between each step in the sales process to analyze the transition from cold leads to warm leads and then to hot leads up to the sale.
Cost per Lead (CPL)
The cost per prospect allows you to evaluate the effectiveness of your sales prospecting actions and your organization. In simplistic terms, a low CPL may prove that your strategy is paying off to gain leads. Total all the costs generated during your sales prospecting and divide this sum by the number of leads acquired, regardless of their status.
The sales ratio by customer type
Generally speaking, winning over a new prospect is more complicated than maintaining your relationships and building loyalty with existing customers. Calculating the sales per customer ratio gives you an idea of the evolution of your acquisition channels. A poor sales ratio for new customers can be improved if you review your sales actions. On the other hand, a decrease in your ratio on existing customers should help find the causes and potential solutions.
To complete this indicator you can also calculate :
- The frequency rate: i.e. the number of orders per unit of time;
- The intensity rate: i.e. the amount of orders per unit of time.
These two additional indicators allow you to keep track of the evolution of your sales to your customers by giving you an analysis over time. You will thus be able to target highlights according to customers and their sectors of activity.
The recommendation rate (Net Promoter Score or NPS)
To analyze the quality of your services and to understand how satisfied your customers are, you must know how many of your customers recommend your product or service to others. From here, you will know if your customers are happy with your products. Plus, if they’d recommend you to their peers. A good NPS builds credibility and gives confidence to others to try your product. It also means you have loyal customers who are happy to be associated with you. Not to mention a good NPS also gives you a competitive edge.
Which tools should you use to track your sales activities?
Example of a Sales Activity Tracker
Your sales activity tracker can be organized in different ways and must correspond to your needs. Here is an example of a dashboard as it is possible to configure it simply on noCRM.io :
Business prospecting software
There are many softwares out there for sales teams to follow up on their sales prospecting. Sales teams may resort to sophisticated CRMs. Yet, they’re complicated and don’t suit the needs of sales representatives who won’t use all the functionalities or may require additional training.
noCRM.io is for sales prospecting: it’s both simple to use and has all the necessary functionalities to carry out a good follow-up of sales actions.
At noCRM.io we offer a free trial to test the software before purchase. The software comes in three different editions, you may choose according to your requirement.
Do more than sales activity tracking with noCRM.io
Opting for a sales prospecting software to gather all your data on a simple and intuitive dashboard is the guarantee of a follow-up that is both efficient and personalized.
At noCRM.io, we provide sales representatives with numerous functionalities specially designed for their needs. From creating opportunities to analysing your data and planning the next actions, noCRM.io accompanies you throughout your sales prospecting actions up to the follow-up. Discover all the functionalities of the software in detail here.
The sales activity tracker is fundamental to the continuity of your sales actions: it needs updating as you go along to guarantee smooth prospecting. Essential to evaluate your actions, it will allow you to develop your strategy or to confirm the choices you have made. Being accompanied by sales prospecting software will save you precious time by automating certain tasks to support you.
