The Minimalist Guide To Sales Tracking

Let’s face it: sales tracking gets tedious, fast. From riding reps to keeping their accounts up to date to endless pipeline update calls, who has time to track all of that activity at the end of the day? For most sales managers, the answer is often “not me.”

We hear from sales managers who spend a lot of time trying to figure out sales tracking tools that just don’t seem to gel with their business and what they’re trying to accomplish. Many CRM platforms boast a wide range of capabilities – but figuring out how to get a tool to display the pipeline in a way that makes sense to your sales team can be quite the undertaking. And we all know how difficult it can be to drive adoption, especially when the tool that’s supposed to save you time is difficult to use.

So how could sales tracking possibly be easy? Well, I’m here to tell you that it actually can be. Here are a few tips to get you started:

Keep it simple

How many stages are in your current sales cycle? Five, six, or even more than that? Keeping your sales tracking system simple encourages your reps to use the tool to the extent they should, because it’s easy for them to do so. The more complicated your processes are, the less likely it is that your reps will adhere to the standards.

Your sales tracking tool should help you keep it simple. Features like a drag and drop interface make it easy for reps to move deals through the pipeline. Make sure the CRM platform also offers a way for sales management to check in (and, you guessed it, this feature should be simple to access and understand, too!)

Make sure you match

So you’ve trimmed your sales stages to the bare necessities in your best effort to keep it simple (or made it really clear what each one means). Does your sales tracking tool match? Making sure that there are an equal number of stages that are labeled the same is a very important connection to increase ease of use for the reps on your team. Not having to take that extra time to decipher what a stage really means to your business helps keep sales tracking simple.

In addition to increasing ease of use for field reps, making sure your tool matches your process helps sales managers understand the status of each and every deal, so they can coach quickly and effectively.

Create report templates

The easiest way to get a quick snapshot of your sales team’s activities is by running a few reports. The best CRM tools will allow you to build reports the way you like them, with the data that matters, in a layout that makes sense to you. If you haven’t already, head to your sales tracking tool and set up some default templates that you look at weekly. These sales reports will allow you to understand your team’s pipeline, recent sales, upcoming sales and where your team may need help in minutes.

If you’re looking for an easy-to-use, minimal sales tracking app that makes it simple to keep a pulse on your team, check out Base’s free trial. Base will help you set up your tool to match your sales process and includes prebuilt visual reports – so you can see what you team is up to at any time.

via Business 2 Community http://www.business2community.com/sales-management/minimalist-guide-sales-tracking-0596957?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=minimalist-guide-sales-tracking