Sales Tracking – 7 Best Practices for Small Businesses

The central goal of all salespeople is to close more deals and acquire more profitable business. To that end, it is essential to manage your sales opportunities in the best way to achieve the desired result.

Tracking your sales efforts is a necessary step in the overall process. What are some sales tracking techniques that represent best practices for small businesses? Here are seven essential tips for sales tracking:

1) Visualize Your Sales Process

In order to optimize your chances of sales success, your sales process must operate as a well-oiled machine. Clearly defining the individual steps that must be taken to close a deal is essential. Visualize your sales funnel and understand how each lead moves through that funnel by means of the efforts your sales staff exerts every day.

2) Collect Leads

This means more than simply maintaining a spreadsheet. Today’s sales environment calls for a more robust solution. Use your CRM solution to capture and maintain information about every lead. For best results, make it a practice to utilize all the tools available in your CRM to keep leads from falling through the cracks.

3) Be Quick on the Draw

According to insidesales.com’s “2014 Lead Response Report”, 50 percent of buyers choose the vendor that responds first. Research indicates that companies that respond by phone to an online lead submissions within 5 minutes are 100 times more likely to make actual contact with a lead than companies that wait for 30 minutes or more.

4) Utilize Lead Scoring and Nurturing

Companies that consistently have the best sales results utilize lead scoring to help their sales staff make the most of every sales opportunity. The hand-off between marketing and sales must be seamless if it is to be most effective. Clearly defining what constitutes a qualified lead for your organization will help you score leads correctly.

Once you have identified qualified leads, it is imperative to hand them over to sales for timely follow-up. Arming your sales staff with all pertinent information at this juncture is a best practice. Your CRM solution will greatly support this process if you use all its available options to keep up with your leads.

Concerning the matter of lead nurturing, your CRM is invaluable to this process as well. Because CRM software provides you with information specific to each lead, you can easily see exactly where in your sales funnel the lead is at any given moment. Once you have established that, you can take appropriate nurturing actions uniquely tailored to that particular lead.

5) Keep Good Records

If you want your leads to feel truly valued at every touch point, it is necessary to maintain adequate records of your communication. For instance, there are few things as annoying to a customer as receiving a sales pitch for a product he or she has already purchased from your company.

Making good use of your CRM will prevent snafus like this from happening. How? Properly used, your CRM will capture the details of each customer interaction, providing you with a centralized place to quickly find exactly what has happened already and adjust your current interactions accordingly.

6) Manage Your Task Flow

Similarly, your CRM can be configured to alert you of needed actions on your part. With calendar features as well as continual updates in task flow management, you can easily access information that will help you prioritize your daily and hourly activities in the most productive way.

7) Monitor and Measure Your Activity

The last essential best practice for sales tracking is monitoring and measuring your activity over time. Why is this so essential?

Using your CRM to capture important analytic data helps you discern trends and patterns in your sales process. Are there some marketing campaigns that consistently yield better results in terms of quality leads? Are there areas where leads seem to drop out of your sales funnel? What customer behaviors indicate a need for a change in your process?

The answers to these questions will inform your future sales strategies. Use the information available to you to discern who your most valuable leads and customers are clearly. Play to your strengths while bolstering your efforts in areas of weakness.

Sales Tracking for Success

Following these basic steps will result in higher quality leads, more closed deals, and more brand advocates for your business. If you would welcome a demonstration of how our CRM solution can support your sales tracking efforts, please contact us today to begin your 15-day free trial.

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