Doing so will help you identify the way your reps spend their time. You can then use this information to suggest more productive tasks or even adjust your entire sales strategy.

In this article, we’ll explain what sales activity tracking is, why it’s important, the challenges you might face when tracking sales activity for your sales team, tools you can use to make the process easier, and more. We have a lot to get to so let’s get started!

What Is Sales Activity Tracking?

Sales activity tracking is exactly what it sounds like: the process of identifying, recording, and analyzing the specific actions your sales reps take while they close deals.

You know what your reps should do every day—drum up leads, make calls, send emails, visit prospects in person, etc. But are they actually doing these things? Just as important, are the things they do actually working? You need to know the answers to these questions!

Fortunately, sales activity tracking will give you the answers you need. Just make sure you track qualitative and quantitative data. Here’s the difference between the two:

• Qualitative Data: Information about the way your target audience views your company. Data points like customer objections and brand awareness fall into this category.
• Quantitative Data: Information that can be represented numerically. Number of new contacts, lead time, sales by territory, and win rate fall into this category.

When tracking sales activities, pay attention to both qualitative and quantitative data. This will give you a well-rounded view of your target market and your department’s sales strategy.

The Importance of Sales Activity Tracking

Now that we know what sales activity tracking is, let’s talk about why it’s important.

There are many reasons to track sales activities for your reps, but the most important ones revolve around visibility, coaching opportunities to improve processes, better team productivity, and higher revenue wins:

Maximize Sales Rep Productivity

When you know how your reps spend their time, you can help them eliminate unproductive tasks from their daily workflows. (Or add in tasks that will help them achieve better results.)

For example, you might find that your reps input prospect information to your department’s CRM by hand when a tool like SPOTIO will do it for them automatically. Or they only follow up with potential customers three times when they should follow up at least five times.

Optimize the Sales Process

Your team’s sales process will benefit from sales activity tracking, too.

A quick look at the data might tell you that Territory A is way more receptive to your reps’ sales pitches than Territory B. So, what if you asked your reps to contact prospects in Territory A before other prospects? This one simple change will probably lead to more sales.

Boost Pipeline Visibility

Tracking sales activity will also give you deeper insights into your company’s sales pipeline.

It makes sense when you think about it. When you know how your reps spend their on-the-clock hours, you can better predict the number of sales they’ll make, revenue they’ll produce, etc.

Also worth mentioning, sales activity tracking will help you identify each of your reps’ strengths and weaknesses. You can then put them in positions to succeed.

Enhance Sales Rep Coaching

Research shows that sales coaching leads to an 8% bump in annual revenue and a 28% bump in win rate. In other words, it’s essential to the success of your sales team.

Sales activity tracking will make you a more effective sales coach. How so? You’ll be able to see where your reps fall short; then you can help them improve their skill sets.

Achieve Higher Revenue

We’ve alluded to this benefit, but now we’re just going to come out and say it: sales activity tracking will help your sales team achieve higher revenue.

You’ll see what your reps do on a daily basis. You can then use this information to coach your reps more effectively and design better sales strategies. The result? More sales.

Common Challenges of Tracking Sales Activity

Sales activity tracking is obviously beneficial. But getting started can be a challenge.

Fortunately, many of these challenges can be avoided with proper tools. We’ll get to that in a minute. First, let’s talk about a few of the pitfalls you need to watch out for:

• Internal Pushback: When you ask your reps to start tracking sales activity they’re going to complain. Maybe not to you, but definitely to each other. That’s because to them, “sales activity tracking” probably means “spend all day manually updating Salesforce.” We’d complain too. Nobody wants to spend their time doing that.
• Manual Data Entry: Want to know why your sales reps think “sales activity tracking” means “spend all day manually updating Salesforce”? Because for most sales reps, it does. To be clear, sales activity tracking would still be worthwhile if your reps had to manually enter everything into your CRM. Luckily, they won’t have to do that.
• Data Inaccuracies: Manual data entry breeds data inaccuracies. Think about it: your reps return to the office after a long day in the field. They’re tired and want to go home. So they quickly fire up your department’s CRM and enter the “data” from their day as fast as they can. Errors are bound to happen—errors that could affect future deals.

How Sales Tracking Tools Can Help

Did the challenges above make you break out in a cold sweat? Sure, tracking sales activity sounds good in theory, but it might be a bit much in practice. Better skip this one, right?

Don’t worry. The right sales tracking tool will make all of the challenges above disappear.

Take SPOTIO, for example. Our platform will automatically log sales activities for your reps. This will minimize the pushback you receive from them. It will also eliminate the need for manual data entry, which will help your team keep departmental records clean and usable.

Just as important, SPOTIO makes it easy to visualize and analyze the data you collect. That way you can coach reps, adjust sales strategies, and forecast sales more effectively.

Oh, one more thing: SPOTIO includes a leaderboards feature, so that you can gamify the sales activity tracking process. Tap into your reps’ competitive natures and motivate them to achieve more. You can even offer prizes to the top performer of the week, month, or quarter.

Types of Sales Activity Tracking Tools

So, what kind of sales activity tracking tool should you get for your sales team? There are three different kinds you need to know about. Let’s take a look at each of them:

Sales Engagement Tools

Sales engagement tools like SPOTIO will help you track sales activities for your sales team. They’ll help you do a bunch of other things too, like generate leads, cut and map territories, plan routes between leads, communicate with prospects, and analyze important sales metrics. Overall, sales engagement software is a stellar investment for most sales departments.

Add-On Tools

When we say “add-on tools” we’re talking about the apps that connect to your CRM software. Some of them analyze email inboxes. Others help users forecast future sales. The point is, add-on tools can help reduce data entry tasks for reps. Unfortunately, they’re often less configurable than other solutions. Therefore, they might not fit your sales process very well.

Standalone Trackers

Last but not least, we have standalone trackers. These tools are specifically designed to help you track your reps’ sales activities—and many of them do it well. There’s one downside: you have to add another app to your company’s tech stack. More robust tools, like sales engagement software for example, will allow you to do multiple things inside one system. This prevents software overwhelm and is usually a more cost-effective option for sales teams.

Choosing a Sales Activity Tracking Tool

Now, you may think you want a certain sales activity tracking tool. But how do you know it’s the right one for your team? These four tips will help you choose the right app:

Consider Your Reps

What do your reps need?

Do they want a supercharged tool that will help them streamline many of their daily tasks? Or would they rather have a small, contained app that’s built for one specific purpose?

Always consider your reps before buying them software. After all, they’re the ones that will have to use it. If you buy them a tool that doesn’t fit their needs and preferences—even if said tool is the greatest thing since sliced bread—you’re going to have issues. Best avoid that scenario.

Know Your Budget

Keep your budget in mind as well. How much can you afford to pay to track sales activities? The answer to that question will help you narrow down your list of potential purchases.

Remember, something is better than nothing. And you can always upgrade in the future, when you have more money to spend on software. Get the best tool you can afford right now. Then reassess in six months or a year when you have more cash to burn.

Get Proof of Concept

Have you found a sales activity tracking tool that fits your reps’ needs and your current budget constraints? Great, make sure the app can actually do what it claims it can!

Most providers will give you a free trial or product demonstration of some kind. Take advantage of these offers. That way you can how the tool operates in real-world scenarios.

Ensure Integration

Finally, invest in a sales activity tracking tool that will integrate with the rest of your tech stack.

Life is so much easier when your software talks to each other—especially since the average high-performing sales team uses at least four sales tools/systems to close deals.

When your tools integrate, your reps will spend less time on data entry tasks to ensure each of your company’s apps is up to date. Instead, they’ll spend more time selling to prospects. The result? Your team can optimize the investment in its tools and make more sales. Win!

Sales Activity Tracking Made Easy

Want to close more deals and drive more revenue? Start tracking sales activity. Just don’t do it manually. Instead, purchase a tool that will make the tracking process more convenient.

For field sales teams, we recommend SPOTIO. Our platform will automatically log rep activities, produce easy-to-read reports based on activity data, and even generate leaderboards to inspire your sellers. Oh, and SPOTIO integrates with all major CRMs too, like Salesforce and HubSpot.

Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to see its sales activity tracking features in action!

As a sales manager, you need to know the answer to these questions. If you don’t, you’ll never build an effective sales strategy that achieves real results for your organization.

How do we know this? The statistics make it clear. 51% of salespeople give up on prospects after one conversation. 78% of salespeople who use social media outsell their peers. Companies that nurture leads make 50% more sales than those that don’t.

You need to invest in sales tracking to make sure your reps follow up with leads effectively, use social media channels to convert prospects and do the work required to nurture leads.

Thankfully, there are plenty of sales tracking apps you can use to make this happen. We share 10 of them in this article. But before we get to them, let’s cover a few basics…

What Are Sales Tracking Apps?

Sales tracking apps are specific pieces of software that help sales managers monitor, log, and evaluate the sales activities their reps complete on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis.

Once you have access to this information, you’ll be able to determine why your reps achieve the results they do. Their poor performance may be due to a lack of effort. They may be using the wrong channels. They may need better training.

When you know how your reps spend their time, you can better coach them to success. You can also adjust your sales strategy to accommodate the real-world results you see.

At the end of the day, the best sales tracking apps will give you access to data, which you can use to empower your team, close more deals, and generate more success for your company.

Why You Should Invest In Sales Tracking Software

We’ve already alluded to some of the benefits of sales tracking software. But this kind of tool can totally supercharge your sales department, so we want to make sure we do the topic justice. Here are three reasons why your sales team should invest in a sales tracking app:

• Productivity: You could track sales activities via a spreadsheet. But that would require a mountain of work, which you don’t have time for. Sales tracking software will do it for you automatically, drastically reducing the amount of time you spend on this task.
• Visibility: You know the saying, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Sales tracking apps will give you visibility into your sales pipeline. You can use this visibility to monitor progress, identify roadblocks, and otherwise manage your team effectively.
• More Sales: Ultimately, sales tracking software will help you and your team close more deals. How so? It’s simple: you’ll know which activities produce positive results and which don’t. You can then do more of the former and less of the latter.

What To Look For In A Sales Tracking App

You know that you need to invest in sales tracking software. But a quick Google search will turn up a ton of options. Which one should you choose? We’ll cover specific solutions in the next section of this article. First, let’s talk about key features your app of choice should have:

Sales Prospecting

You can’t make sales without leads. Meeting potential buyers can take time and effort. In fact, more than 40% of salespeople say prospecting is the hardest part of their jobs. The best sales tracking apps will help your reps generate leads. That way, they always have quality buyers to pitch products to. When that happens, your team’s close rate will skyrocket—guaranteed.

Pipeline Management

As mentioned earlier, sales tracking software will give you visibility into your department’s pipeline, which is a HUGE advantage. When you know how many leads your team has and where each of them is in the sales process, you can help your reps prioritize the right prospects, pinpoint potential issues, and forecast future sales more accurately.

Location Tracking

Do you manage a field sales team? Then, your reps spend the majority of their time outside the office. This can make your job tough—unless your sales tracking app includes geolocation features, of course. Invest in an app with location tracking so that you always know where your reps are and can evaluate their performance with greater clarity.

Activity Tracking

Your sales tracking app should tell you exactly what your reps do to make sales. Who do they contact? How do they contact them? And how often do they send these people messages? It’s way easier to build winning sales strategies and predict results when you know how your reps spend their time and how likely these efforts are to close deals in the future.

Task Automation

Any sales tracking software worth its salt will include automation features. Pick a tool that will automatically track mileage for your reps. Or log the prospect interactions they have in real-time. Or send email and text messages to potential customers at predetermined times. The best sales tracking apps eliminate menial tasks and help reps close more deals. Win!

Performance Reporting

Do yourself a favor and invest in sales tracking software that will simplify the performance reporting process for you. Your tool of choice should allow you to select the KPIs you care about and build custom reports that only include these metrics. It should also allow you to save reports so that you can generate them again in the future with the click of a button.

10 Best Sales Tracking Apps For Field Sales Teams

1. SPOTIO

G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Best for: Field sales tracking

SPOTIO is a one-stop shop for field sales teams. Want to generate leads? Build multi-channel sales sequences? Automate menial tasks? Create custom reports that only include the specific metrics you care about. You can do all of these things and more with our platform.

Key features:

• Generate qualified leads with a few clicks of your mouse (or taps of your thumb)
• Get a complete view of your sales pipeline and forecast future sales with accuracy
• Cut territories based on geographical boundaries or by drawing on a digital map
• Know where your reps are and which sales activities they complete at all times
• Receive call and visit reminders and send email and text messages on autopilot
• Automate data capture and tasks and boost rep productivity by as much as 46%
• Gamify the sales process with leaderboards that motivate your reps to achieve more
• Build custom reports that include any KPI you want—and none of the ones you don’t
• Access all of SPOTIO’s top features on a desktop computer, tablet, or smartphone
• Integrate SPOTIO with every other sales tool you use, either natively or via Zapier
• AI and automation sales tools to increase your team’s productivity levels and close rates.

What customers are saying:

“I like the way I can track my employee’s time in the field and see real-time results. Additionally, I like the ease of use for my in-the-field agents. Quick and simple training time turnarounds. Easy enough that some of my older, non-technical employees quickly understood how to use the software.” – Troy D. | G2 Reviewer

“I absolutely love how easily you can access information that has been entered into the application. We can always rely on the program to make sure the lead information we have on file is accurate.” – Dan B. | Capterra Reviewer

2. HubSpot

G2 rating: 4.4 out of 5 stars
Best for: SaaS companies

The HubSpot platform is extremely popular in sales, marketing, and customer success circles. Why? Because this software is easy to use and powerful. Just know that the premium addition carries a hefty price tag, so it’s generally best for established companies rather than startups.

Key features:

• Store all of your company’s leads, prospects, and current customers in one place
• Help your reps connect with buyers via the phone or automated email sequences
• Know which of your leads is closest to a sale with comprehensive pipeline views
• Automate tasks, like updating properties and sending emails, to boost productivity
• Access deep analytics that help you understand and improve team performance
• Integrate HubSpot with a host of popular sales applications, such as SPOTIO

What customers are saying:

“HubSpot Sales Hub helps us manage all of our sales operations and automate workflows, which helps us do more with less. It’s easy to use, the deployment is quick, and the results are powerful.” – Simon L. | G2 Reviewer

“Hubspot keeps all of our customers and leads organized in a way the whole company can understand. Super easy to go in and see who still needs an appointment, who isn’t interested anymore, who has signed a contract, etc.” – Amber M. | Capterra Reviewer

3. Salesforce Sales Cloud

G2 rating: 4.3 out of 5 stars
Best for: Enterprise organizations

Salesforce Sales Cloud is another top sales tracking app. With it, users can manage contacts, visualize pipelines, automate tasks, and generate detailed reports. But like the HubSpot solution we discussed, Salesforce might be too expensive for some small businesses.

Key features:

• Store all of the contact information you collect in one convenient location
• Connect with buyers via multiple channels and create an integrated experience
• Enjoy automatic lead scoring to ensure your reps connect with the right leads
• Completely automate and/or simplify everyday tasks to boost team productivity
• Access deep analytics to evaluate sales performance and forecast future sales
• Integrate Salesforce Sales Cloud with SPOTIO and many other top sales tools

What customers are saying:

“It provides a wide range of features and functionality for Sales Teams for lead and opportunity management, sales automation, analytics and allows organizations to manage their entire sales process in one platform.” – G2 Reviewer

“I like that it can help us get our sales department more organized, that it’s easy to use, and that I can save all of my leads in one place. Furthermore, because of Salesforce’s popularity and scale, virtually every other tool or piece of software exists or is in the process of developing integration with Salesforce.” – Catherine | SoftwareAdvice Reviewer

4. Nutshell

G2 rating: 4.2 out of 5 stars
Best for: Tech-averse sales teams

Nutshell wants to minimize the stress your sales team feels on a daily basis. How does it attempt to do this? It is a simple software program that you can use to manage contacts, track pipelines, automate tasks, report on individual and team performance, and more.

Key features:

• Build custom web forms to collect new leads for your sales department
• Choose one of four views to manage prospects: list, map, chart, or board
• Create automated email sequences to connect with leads more consistently
• Reduce non-selling activities with automation and boost reps’ productivity
• Track sales activities for each of your reps to properly assess performance
• Generate a host of different sales reports to evaluate your sales strategy

What customers are saying:

“The system is easy to navigate… I’m able to know which customers I have already reached out to this season and which customers have purchased our product in previous years and adjust my sales approach accordingly. The automated email sequence is also great for continuing contact with minimum effort on my part!” – Allie G. | G2 Reviewer

“Easy and simple to set up and maintain. Very powerful and effective in turning our chaotic spreadsheets and inconsistent behaviors into a well-oiled machine.” – Andrew B. | Capterra Reviewer

5. LeadSquared

G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Best for: Automation capabilities

LeadSquared helps sales teams manage contacts, communicate with prospects, and report on rep performance. And because it includes a functional mobile app, it’s a viable option for field sales teams—something that many other sales tracking tools on this list can’t claim.

Key features:

• Manage your sales team’s contact information from one central location
• Boost productivity by automating tedious tasks, like sending follow-up emails
• Allow field sales reps to access important prospect information via the mobile app
• Track check-ins and check-outs and otherwise keep tabs on your reps in the field
• Understand which leads are closest to conversion so your reps can prioritize them
• Build a variety of different reports to streamline your sales performance evaluations

What customers are saying:

“I can schedule reminders, automate emails and follow-ups, and I can track all the stages of my leads, which is very efficient, as it takes literally not even a minute. It has helped me get maximum output with optimized efforts.” – Yogesh H. | G2 Reviewer

“Leadsquared helps to capture leads very effectively from different sources, and lead distribution is also very useful. We could clearly track the call report of the telesales team very effectively and could monitor them. We could analyze the lead stages also.” – Preetha P. | Capterra Reviewer

6. Zoho CRM

G2 rating: 4.0 out of 5 stars
Best for: Zoho enthusiasts

Zoho is a powerful software suite that gives businesses the tools they need to connect with potential buyers, sell products and services, and succeed with customer success initiatives. One such tool is Zoho CRM, which includes many features your sales tracking app needs. It’s especially beneficial for folks who already use Zoho products on a regular basis.

Key features:

• Build web forms and capture leads on your website—no coding required
• Communicate with your contacts across all channels from one platform
• Easily automate sales routines, email sequences, and individual tasks
• Track individual and team sales performance using 40+ pre-built reports
• Reward reps with digital badges and trophies to help keep them motivated
• Integrate Zoho CRM with many different sales tools, including SPOTIO

What customers are saying:

“It provides an easy-to-use, comprehensive solution for organizing all our leads and tracking performance over time. The Opportunities section allows me to organize my tasks at a glance with its Kanban view, while the reporting function provides real insights that allow us to prepare effectively for upcoming periods.” – Gerald “G” J. | G2 Reviewer

“What I liked most about Zoho CRM was its intuitive and easy-to-use interface. It allows you to manage contacts, accounts, and opportunities in a very simple way. Its clean and minimalist design makes it very efficient to navigate between the different functionalities.” – Cristian | SoftwareAdvice Reviewer

7. Ringy

G2 rating: 4.6 out of 5 stars
Best for: Digital communication

Next up, Ringy, formerly known as iSales. This sales tracking software is chock full of handy features, which you can use to quickly score leads, track rep activities, manage your department’s pipeline, communicate with prospects, and even automate menial tasks.

Key features:

• Organize your leads and gain complete visibility into your sales opportunities
• Call prospects on the phone or send them automated emails and text messages
• View communication histories with each prospect to help increase conversions
• Eliminate many repetitive tasks from your workflow and improve rep productivity
• Track sales performance by generating easy-to-read reports on all sales activities
• Hit the road with the Ringy mobile app and communicate with prospects from afar

What customers are saying:

“The follow-up process and the pipeline feature. I’m able to call more leads with the pipeline feature and connect with more leads. Also, adding a vendor to Ringy is very simple.” – Andrew S. | G2 Reviewer

“I utilize [Ringy] daily to capture and qualify leads. I like the drip marketing feature and the fact that it allows me to work smarter, not harder. [Ringy] is like having another set of eyes and ears on my leads so that none fall through the cracks.” – Alicia C. | Capterra Reviewer

8. SalesRabbit

G2 rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Best for: Cash-strapped field sellers

The SalesRabbit platform was built with field sales teams in mind. As such, this sales tracking app includes lead generation, pipeline management, and analytics features that field sellers can use to close more deals. While it might not be as powerful as a tool like SPOTIO, it sports an entry-level price point, which makes it a solid option for field sales teams on a tight budget.

Key features:

• Use artificial intelligence to help your reps pinpoint quality leads in less time
• Store and organize leads via mobile app so reps can access them in the field
• Map sales territories, assign them to reps, and monitor the performance of each
• Quickly create winning proposals that help reps close more deals in less time
• Track rep locations, key metrics, and individual performance inside the platform

What customers are saying:

“I love the ability to see clients that have been talked to, have declined, have been inspected, are under contract, or just hate solicitors.” – Shawn W. | G2 Reviewer

“I can see our field representatives’ current location in real-time thanks to the GPS tracking feature. This has been very helpful in making sure that our representatives are going to the right places and using their time in the field to the fullest.” – Letlet G. | Capterra Reviewer

9. Daily Sales Record

G2 rating: N/A
Best for: Small businesses

Daily Sales Record is one of the simplest sales tracking apps on the market, which makes it ideal for small businesses that don’t have the funds for large, expensive pieces of software—or the desire to learn how to use them. It offers basic features for a stellar price.

Key features:

• Keep your customer data in one place and access it from any of your devices
• Watch all of your products to understand which sell the best and which lag behind
• Create, send, and monitor your invoices so that you always know your cash flow
• Generate sales reports to track progress, then export them to PDF, Text, or Excel

What customers are saying:

“Easy to track sales, track inventories, and view reports & analytics. I can also add multiple stores, which is a game-changer for me.” – Mohammed E. | Capterra Reviewer

10. Gong.io

G2 rating: 4.7 out of 5 stars
Best for: Detailed sales data

Gong will give you strategic insights you can use to understand conversion data and make more sales. It does this by recording the interactions your sales team has with customers across a wide array of platforms and then analyzing said interactions with AI to draw conclusions.

Key features:

• Track every sales interaction your reps have, from phone calls to emails and more
• Use AI to quickly analyze your reps’ interactions and discover what drives conversion
• Deliver personalized guidance to your reps and help them close more deals faster
• Take the guesswork out of forecasting and predict future sales with greater accuracy
• Build data-backed reports that automatically sync with and update your CRM of choice
• Integrate Gong with all of your team’s tools, from CRM solutions to calendar apps

What customers are saying:

“Their dashboard is much easier to read and collaborate on than any report in Salesforce. Gong gives both our sales reps and our sales leaders more immediate visibility into our sales pipeline and instantly helps find gaps, so you can manage deals more efficiently and effectively.” – Kristi F. | G2 Reviewer

“I love that Gong automatically records, transcribes, and coaches each call. It is super intuitive and is great for self-review, peer review, and coaching. I love that it’s super easy to share segments of calls for review, collaboration, and feedback. The mobile app is super user friendly and makes it easy to record in-person meetings as well.” – Capterra Reviewer

Master Field Sales Management With SPOTIO’s Sales Tracking App

Your field sales team needs a quality sales tracking app.

Fortunately, after reading this article, you have a bunch of good options. You just need to research each one in more depth then pick the tool that fits your team’s unique workflows.

Or you could just get SPOTIO! Our platform was specifically designed for field sales purposes. Because of that, it has every feature you need to generate leads, manage pipelines, and track sales. Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today for more information.

Sales leaderboards will help you keep your reps accountable, boost their productivity levels, and most importantly, help them close more deals than they ever have before.

In this comprehensive article, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about sales leaderboards, from what they are to which apps you should use to set them up.

What is a Sales Leaderboard?

A sales leaderboard is a tool that your sales team can use to visualize sales performance.

You simply choose the KPIs you want to track, then let your leaderboard rank your reps based on their abilities to achieve their sales targets, and display the results for all to see.

Let’s pretend that you manage a small sales team and metrics like “number of leads contacted” and “lead to opportunity conversion rate” and “total revenue” are important to you.

So, you set up your sales leaderboard to track these three KPIs. In the first month Jack contacts 100 leads, Jill contacts 85, and Bob contacts 80. Jill doesn’t like “losing” to Jack, so she works extra hard in month two and contacts 120 leads, compared to Jack’s 110.

Bob, on the other hand, always lags behind in the “number of leads contacted” metric. But he outpaces his colleagues in the other two, earning higher conversion rates and driving more revenue for your company. Jack and Jill will need to catch up to him in these areas.

As you can see, sales leaderboards will make it easier to evaluate rep performance. They also create friendly competition within your sales team that pushes reps to achieve more.

7 Best Sales Leaderboards

A sales team leaderboard will benefit your organization. The question is, which software should you use for this purpose? Here are the top seven options available to you:

SPOTIO Leaderboards

Best for: Field sales teams
G2 rating: 4.4 stars / 274 reviews

SPOTIO is the number one sales engagement platform for field sales teams, allowing users to easily generate leads, set appointments, communicate with prospects, automate tasks, run custom reports, and yes, build top-level sales leaderboards that motivate reps.

• Track any metric, including knocks, leads, meetings, opportunities, wins, and revenue
• Help your reps understand how they stack up against the other members of your team
• Send leaderboard notifications to each rep via the SPOTIO mobile and desktop apps
• Use leaderboards to run competitions, award prizes, and facilitate better performance

Ambition

Best for: Enterprise-level companies
G2 rating: 4.6 stars / 540 reviews

Ambition is a sales coaching platform designed for enterprise organizations. With it, users can access important sales performance metrics, build intuitive training programs, and even gamify the sales process with user-friendly leaderboards and recognition features.

• Track activity and objective metrics for each sales rep on your team
• Trigger alerts that fire off every time a rep reaches a major milestone
• Access leaderboards on a computer, mobile app, Slack, or Salesforce
• Integrate Ambition with Slack, Gong, Outreach, Salesloft, and Salesforce

Salesforce

Best for: Existing Salesforce users
G2 rating: 4.3 stars / 15,615 reviews

If you’re in sales, you’ve heard of Salesforce. This CRM is used by thousands upon thousands of organizations to improve their marketing, sales, and customer service workflows. Its leaderboards feature can be found in the “Salesforce Command Center” and used to display important sales metrics for up to 100 salespeople at one time.

• Quickly see and evaluate team performance over a given time period
• Track a variety of metrics that pertain to your unique sales department
• Integrate with SPOTIO to access all of the field sales tools in our platform

Zoho CRM

Best for: Budget-conscious sales teams
G2 rating: 4 stars / 2,459 reviews

Zoho CRM is another popular CRM option—especially for budget-conscious sales teams. Its “Motivator” feature gives users the ability to gamify the sales process, which often leads to improved performance. Top reps can even receive points and digital trophies for their efforts.

• Choose KPIs that affect team performance, then track them on a leaderboard
• View metrics on an easy-to-understand dashboard to help reps reach targets
• Award top performers with points, trophies, etc. inside the Zoho CRM platform
• Integrate with SPOTIO to access the many field sales tools in our solution

SalesCompete

Best for: Slack-oriented workflows
G2 rating: 4.9 stars / 11 reviews

If your sales team uses Slack, you might consider SalesComplete. This sales tool helps sales teams generate sales reports, build sales leaderboards, and receive real-time sales notifications—all inside their department’s pre-existing Slack channel.

• Build sales leaderboards directly inside your Slack account
• Track any activity metric, such as calls, emails, and meetings
• Include charts and graphs to illustrate your chosen KPIs
• Integrate SalesComplete with Outreach, HubSpot, or Salesloft

Spinify

Best for: Artificial intelligence
G2 rating: 4.5 stars / 530 reviews

Spinify combines AI-powered insights and gamification to create a unique employee engagement app. One of the platform’s key features is “Leaderboards” which sales managers can use to create friendly competition between reps and boost motivation levels.

• Track all of your sales team’s essential KPIs in one dashboard
• Allow reps to challenge each other in head-to-head competitions
• Create custom games to keep your reps interested and motivated
• Receive coaching tips to help your reps reach their full potential

LevelEleven

Best for: Coaching sales reps to success
G2 rating: 4.4 stars / 274 reviews

Finally, we have LevelEleven, an intuitive platform that sales managers can use to motivate, engage, and coach their reps. The “motivate” module includes leaderboards and other gamification features, which help encourage professional sellers to achieve more.

• Track any behavior, metric, or KPI for your sales team
• Create custom contests to incentive specific behaviors
• Display real-time leaderboards so reps know where they stand
• Integrate with Salesforce and motivate reps inside your CRM

Benefits of Sales Leaderboards

The tools above will help you create sales leaderboards. But maybe you’re wondering, “Why do I need to do this? There are plenty of other ways to boost team performance…”

You’re right. But sales leaderboards have a few specific benefits. Here are four of them:

Sales leaderboards motivate reps

72% of employees say that gamification motivates them to work harder.

This is important because harder working reps make more visits and calls. They send more emails and texts, too. When these things happen, your company will close more deals.

Sales leaderboards promote accountability

Gamification tactics like leaderboards encourage salespeople to take ownership of their sales careers as well. How so? No rep wants to rank last in key metrics.

To avoid this scenario, most reps will attend training, put in extra hours, etc. to move higher in the standings. In other words, sales leaderboards promote accountability, which means sales managers like you won’t have to ride their reps so hard to meet their sales targets.

Sales leaderboards boost productivity

What about productivity levels? Yes, sales leaderboards can help in this area as well. In fact, studies show that gamification can increase productivity by a whopping 50%.

Reps that get more done almost always make more sales. It makes sense when you think about it: more visits, calls, emails, etc. give reps more opportunities to close.

Sales leaderboards accelerate sales performance

Motivated, accountable, and productive reps will only benefit your company if they produce more than their unmotivated, unaccountable, and unproductive counterparts.

We’re not just saying that, either. Studies show that effective sales gamification can lead to a 45% bump in bottom line sales margin. That’s a massive improvement—and all you have to do is invest in one of the sales leaderboard apps above and use it to motivate your team!

How to Get the Most From Your Sales Leaderboard

You can’t just buy leaderboard software and expect it to solve your problems. You need to use the tool the right way. With that in mind, here are nine sales leaderboard ideas for you to try:

Regularly Update Your Leaderboard: Your sales leaderboard won’t motivate your team if it contains outdated information. Your reps need to see real-time data to mark their progress and compare their performance to their colleagues. It’s the only way to engage them. Luckily, the right leaderboard will automatically update standings when it receives new data.

Make the Leaderboard Visible to All Team Members: In a similar vein, your sales leaderboards need to be visible and accessible to your entire sales team. This will keep it top of mind for your reps. When this happens, your reps will work harder. Why wouldn’t they? If they don’t put in peak effort, they’ll fall behind and look bad in front of their peers.

Aim to Encourage Healthy Competition: Sales is a team sport, and positive company culture is a worthy goal. But there’s nothing wrong with friendly competition. In fact, you should encourage competition between reps—as long as it doesn’t get out of hand. This will help you build a more fun and engaging workplace, and help the reps under your command achieve more. One of the easiest ways to create healthy competition is to use a leaderboard.

Celebrate Achievements and Successes: Your reps will want to work harder and close more deals when you invest in a sales leaderboard. But their fire will burn out if they don’t feel like their manager appreciates their efforts. That’s why you need to celebrate the wins your team achieves. What can you award to top performers? What can you give to your entire team when group goals are accomplished? You need to come up with good answers.

Use Leaderboards to Identify Training Opportunities: Sales leaderboards will tell you what your reps do well and where they can improve. Some reps may kill it in activity-related KPIs, but lag behind in revenue-related metrics, for example. If so, you can train them to close more of the prospects they speak to, thus improving their revenue generation abilities.

Avoid Negative Competition and Burnout: As mentioned above, healthy competition is a good thing. But if your reps begin competing against each other in toxic ways you’ll need to intervene. Negative competition will breed discord throughout your entire company. Look for burnout, too. You don’t want reps to work so hard one month that they crash the next.

Integrate Leaderboards with Other Sales Tools: Sales leaderboards by themselves are nice. Sales leaderboards that integrate with the other sales tools you already use are transformative. This is especially true in regards to CRM software. Connect your leaderboard to your CRM so that your reps always have the latest performance data, and can use it.

Provide Incentives for Top Performers: What do reps get when they reach the top of your leaderboard? Bragging rights? A trophy? A cash prize? Extra PTO? The incentives you offer are completely up to you. Just make sure that you offer something.

Foster a Culture of Continuous Improvement: Finally, make sure your reps know that you aren’t interested in one-time victories. You want to develop a sales department that strives for more. Always. Your sales leaderboards should inspire reps to work hard and improve their skills on a daily basis. If they do, your company will make more sales than ever.

Use Leaderboards to Motive Reps and Drive Performance

A good sales leaderboard will help you motivate your sales team. It will also make your reps more productive and help them achieve more for your organization.

But the best sales leaderboards will also give you insights you can use to develop more effective sales strategies and improve your sales coaching efforts. When these things happen, your entire company will benefit because your team will regularly close more deals.

SPOTIO’s leaderboards feature was designed to give you the deep insights you need. Sign up for a free demo of your platform today to see if it’s the right tool for your sales team!

If your answer is anything short of, “Like the back of my hand,” your team probably doesn’t close many deals. After all, your pipeline knowledge directly affects your ability to plan field sales strategies, make real-time decisions, and grow revenue.

Thankfully, pipeline reporting will give you all of the information you need to properly coach your reps, boost sales, and achieve more success for your company.

In this article, we’ll explain what sales pipeline reports are, why they’re beneficial to field sales managers like yourself, what your reports should include, and more.

What is a sales pipeline report?

A sales pipeline report will tell you how many deals are in your sales funnel, the stage each deal is in, and the value these deals represent to your company.

These days, most field sales teams use software to generate sales pipeline reports, which is advantageous because most software applications can visualize your sales process, making it easier to analyze, understand, and ultimately, optimize.

Once you have a sales pipeline report in hand, you’ll be able to better identify the holes in your sales process, evaluate rep and team performance, and forecast future results for your sales team. Let’s take a closer look at each of these benefits…

Why is pipeline reporting important for field sales managers?

As mentioned above, pipeline reporting will benefit your field sales department in multiple ways. Here are the most important ones you can look forward to:

Identify what is (and isn’t) working in the sales process

At the end of the day, your team’s sales process determines your level of success. Implement a solid process and deals will get made. Implement a bad one and… Well, let’s just say that your company might have trouble keeping the lights on.

A sales pipeline report will dig deep into the health of your sales process, helping you pinpoint the good, the bad, and the ugly. You can then use this information to eliminate subpar strategies, while doubling down on top performing ones.

For example, you might find that few deals progress beyond the initial stages of your funnel. As such, you might determine your team has a lead quality issue.

Evaluate rep and team performance

Pipeline reporting will also help you keep an eye on your sales reps.

Is each rep meeting your performance standards? If not, which ones are lagging behind? And what do they do differently than your top performers?

If you can identify the tactics, strategies, email scripts, etc. that your best sellers use to move prospects through your sales process, you can coach the rest of your team to do the same. Doing so will help your entire sales team achieve more.

Tools like SPOTIO make it super easy to analyze individual rep performance. For example, you can use our platform to view each rep’s pool of leads, where said leads are in the sales funnel, and how long it will likely take them to close.

Deliver more accurate sales forecasts to execs

Lastly, sales pipeline reports simplify the forecasting process.

This is important because company execs rarely care how sales are made. They just want to see more revenue flowing into your company than flowing out.

Sales forecast reports give them this kind of information. And guess what—sales pipeline reports make it way easier to generate sales forecasts.

What to cover in a sales pipeline report

Sales pipeline reports are obviously beneficial. The question is, what metrics and KPIs should your reports include? Here’s what we recommend:

Total number of leads

What is it? The total number of leads in your company’s sales pipeline. This includes brand new leads, legitimate prospects whom your reps have begun negotiating with, and almost-customers who have been made offers. Basically, if the lead hasn’t signed a contract with your company yet, they should be included.

What does it tell you? The “total number of leads” metric will tell you how healthy your sales pipeline is. It will also shed light on how effective your lead generation strategies are, and whether or not your current sales targets need to be adjusted.

How do you calculate this KPI? It’s pretty simple: just add up the total number of leads in each stage of your sales funnel. Then put that figure in your report.

Total number of opportunities by stage

What is it? The total number of opportunities in each stage of your company sales funnel. In a perfect world, each stage will have a similar amount of opportunities and revenue potential. If not, you may have a bottleneck in your sales process.

What does it tell you? The “total number of opportunities by stage” metric will tell you the number of leads your company has in each stage of the buying process. It will also help you pinpoint leaks in your funnel, because you’ll be able to clearly see where potential customers get stuck and drop out of your sales pipeline.

How do you calculate this KPI? Again, this metric is easy to calculate: simply tally up the leads in each stage of your sales pipeline (prospecting, outreach, etc.)

Lead-opportunity conversion rate

What is it? The percentage of leads that convert into opportunities within a specific time frame. To clarify, a lead is an unqualified buyer. An opportunity is a qualified prospect. The difference? Opportunities close way more often than leads.

What does it tell you? The “lead-opportunity conversion rate” metric will tell you how effective your lead generation efforts are. Quality leads turn into prospects at a higher rate. It will also tell you how effective your sales strategy is, and/or how skilled your individual reps are. If your team has a hard time converting leads to opportunities, something inside your sales process is broken and needs to be fixed.

How do you calculate this KPI? Divide the number of leads your sales team has successfully converted into opportunities by the total number of leads your team has generated. Then multiply the resulting figure by 100.

Pipeline value by stage

What is it? The monetary value of leads in each stage of your company’s sales funnel. Remember, pipeline value is hypothetical. Your field sales team has to actually close deals to realize the potential that this KPI represents.

What does it tell you? The “pipeline value by stage” metric will tell you how much money you could make if you close every deal in each stage of your sales funnel.

How do you calculate this KPI? Pick a funnel stage, such as “meetings booked.” Then add up the revenue your sales team will generate if it closes every deal in it.

Pipeline coverage per rep

What is it? Each individual rep’s pipeline value, as compared to their target revenue. For example, if a rep hopes to close $100,000 of new business in a month, and their own pipeline opportunities add up to $100,000, they have 1x coverage.

What does it tell you? The “pipeline coverage per rep” metric will tell you which of your sales reps will miss, hit, or exceed their sales quotas.

How do you calculate this KPI? Add up each rep’s individual pipeline value. Then compare it to the sales quota you’ve set for them.

Average sales cycle per rep

What is it? The average amount of time it takes one of your sales reps to move a lead through your sales pipeline, from initial contact to closed deal.

What does it tell you? The “average sales cycle per rep” metric will tell you how long it usually takes your reps to make sales. When you have this information, you can better coach your sales team. You can, for instance, look at what top performing reps, i.e. reps with shorter sales cycles, do to close faster; then share these secrets with low-performing reps, i.e. reps with longer sales cycles. You can also help reps pinpoint stagnate deals, then provide next steps.

How do you calculate this KPI? Divide the amount of time you’re viewing by the number of deals closed within that time frame for each of the reps on your team. For example, if Rep A closes 30 deals in 90 days, his average sales cycle is 3 days.

Close rate

What is it? The percentage of prospects that your sales team successfully converts into paying customers. This KPI is sometimes referred to as “win rate”.

What does it tell you? The “close rate” metric can tell you a lot of things, such as how effective your sales strategy is, how skilled your sales reps are, whether your sales team is performing above or below industry standards, and how much revenue you can expect to generate for your company in the coming months.

How do you calculate this KPI? Divide the total number of deals your sales team has closed within a specific time frame by the total number of prospects in your sales pipeline during that time frame. Then multiply the resulting figure by 100.

Pipeline velocity

What is it? The speed at which your team’s prospects move through your sales pipeline, expressed as a dollar amount, such as $7,500.

What does it tell you? The “pipeline velocity” metric will tell you how much potential money flows through your sales pipeline on a daily basis, as well as the success of your current sales strategy. If you notice a significant change in your pipeline velocity, good or bad, you need to investigate. That way you can help your sales team change or double down on specific tactics as needed.

How do you calculate this KPI? Multiply the number of opportunities in your sales pipeline by the dollar figure these opportunities represent and your team’s average close rate. Then divide the result by your team’s average sales cycle length.

Let’s pretend that you have 100 opportunities in your sales pipeline, which represent $100,000 in potential revenue. Furthermore, your team’s close rate is 35% and it takes an average of 60 days to make a sale. Your pipeline velocity is 58,333.33 in deals a day because (100 deals) x ($100,000) x 0.35 / 60 = 58,333.33.

Sales pipeline reporting best practices

Knowing which metrics to include in your sales pipeline reports is one thing. Creating useful reports that you and others actually want to study is another.

To make your pipeline reports as effective as possible use these best practices:

Keep your audience in mind

Who are you creating a sales pipeline report for?

The pipeline reports you generate for company executives will look different than the ones you generate for yourself and/or the rest of your sales department.

So, before you start adding random metrics and KPIs to your next report, think about your target audience. Then only add relevant data points.

For example, if you want to assess individual rep performance, you might run a pipeline report that includes “lead-opportunity conversion rate” and “pipeline coverage per rep” metrics. But if you need to update company leaders on team goals, you might include KPIs like “total number of leads” and “pipeline value.”

Use visuals

Every pipeline report you generate will include important numbers and data points. The thing is, numbers and data points by themselves are often hard to understand—especially for people who aren’t saturated in them every day.

Visual elements—think bar graphs and pie charts—make dense data more digestible. As such, visuals will make your reports more relatable and user-friendly.

Review pipeline reports regularly

Pipeline reporting isn’t something you do once a year—or even once a quarter.

It needs to happen more frequently than that. Why? Because regular pipeline reports will help you keep your sales team on track and achieving its goals.

Once you make pipeline reporting a habit, you’ll have greater control over your sales process, which you can adjust as needed to help your team close more deals.

Keep your pipeline reports clean

Pipeline reports should make your job as a field sales manager easier. To ensure this is the case, keep your reports clean, i.e. free of extraneous information.

How do you do this? It’s pretty simple: only include the metrics and KPIs that you need in each of your reports. This is another reason why knowing your audience (see above) is critical to effective sales pipeline reporting.

Act on the insights

We’ll be honest with you, sales pipeline reports are useless if you don’t actually use the information they help you uncover. Don’t make this mistake!

Run reports on a regular basis. Study the reports you generate. Then act on the insights your reports give you so that you can lead your sales team effectively.

Simplify pipeline reporting with SPOTIO

Pipeline reporting is essential to the success of your field sales team.

Once you commit to and master this practice, you’ll be able to properly evaluate your sales process, assess each of your reps’ individual performance, and deliver more accurate sales forecasts to your company’s executive team.

Of course, mastering the art of pipeline reporting is a lot easier with tools like SPOTIO. Our platform was specifically designed for field sales teams and will help you generate data-drive, visual, and highly actionable reports. Sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO today to see it in action and decide if it’s right for your team.

To build a consistent pipeline that fuels ongoing results, sales reps and sales managers need to know that they’re executing the right activities every single day. With the help of intelligent technology and data-driven insights, reps and managers can understand where and how they can allocate their time, energy, and resources for the highest return.

In this post, we’ll look at 11 data-backed sales activities that build pipeline and drive predictable sales results. We’ll also cover how to use technology to analyze and improve your sales processes.

What are sales activities? 

Sales activities are the day-to-day actions, tactics, or practices that reps and sales managers execute. These activities usually focus on results, like winning a big opportunity or exceeding a sales quota. However, without the right processes and technology, reps may spend a lot of time on tasks that don’t move the needle.

Sales activities can be divided into two categories: qualitative and quantitative

Qualitative Sales Activities

Although qualitative activities can’t be measured by data, they do provide insight into how your sales team is doing, provide a way to motivate, give insight into customer satisfaction, and illustrate the overall picture of sales performance.

Examples of qualitative sales activities include:

• Contacting new prospects or existing customers
• Presenting your product or service
• Nurturing strong client relationships
• Following up diligently
• Ensuring customer satisfaction
• Fostering brand awareness

Quantitative Sales Activities

Quantitative activities give you raw numbers that help you understand the efficiency of your sales team. You’re able to see the number of new opportunities, new leads, amount of revenue last quarter, etc. These insights help you assess your sales team, coach reps who need help in a certain area of the sales cycle, and model future growth based on past performance data.

Examples of quantitative sales activities include:

First Stage to Won:

Visits to Next Stage (Average Number of Visits):

Visits to Next Stage (Total Efforts):

Leads Created by User:

Pipeline Status:

Value of Pipeline:

Leads Created by Territories:

Loss Reasons:

By understanding which sales activities yield the strongest results, sales teams can make the most of their time.

11 Sales Activities That Will Move The Needle In 2023

Monitoring and tracking key sales activities lets you know where the sales team is at as a whole — you can identify what’s working, what’s not working, who needs coaching, and so on and so forth.

Having a grasp on the following 11 activities will set your organization up to increase sales.

1. Manage your daily sales activities with a CRM

Lack of tracking is a problem sales managers face when trying to identify the most important sales activities. CRMs fill this gap by helping a sales team keep track of contacts, accounts, deals and activities.

CRMs fill this gap by helping sales teams keep track of contacts, accounts, deals and activities.

SPOTIO’s Field Sales CRM gives sales leaders visibility into how top outside reps are making it happen and where leads are falling off in the sales process, with features like:

• Sales pipeline visibility
• Next best action to take
• Simplified and automated prospecting
• Reporting and KPIs
• Leads won and win rate

SPOTIO also lets reps access sales material and contracts from their mobile devices, with support for:

• PDF
• MP4
• Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• PNG, JPG, GIF

That means reps don’t have to return to the office to access critical files and can keep conversations moving forward.

2. Strategically assign sales territories

Sales territory management is the process of using data to segment customers and prospects to better track sales, streamline prospecting, map visits, and enhance productivity in the field.

In addition to cutting out the noise of low-return accounts, thoughtful sales territory management aligns salespeople with the most appropriate customer base — whether that’s by geography, vertical, expertise, or past relationship. It allows a sales team to focus on viable accounts and spend more time in the field making face-to-face contact.

SPOTIO’s territory management software enables managers to create custom maps of different territories for assignment to sales reps. The user-friendly mobile app lets reps see and manage their territories, add notes about each lead, and share information with other reps.

3. Close more deals in less time with smart routing 

Sales reps have the potential to waste hours of valuable time wandering aimlessly without a strategic plan for how they’ll structure their day. Smart route planning is an essential activity to ensure each member of your sales team is making the best use of their time.

Route planning software, such as SPOTIO Routing enables reps to see exactly where to go, what to do, and the most efficient way to get there. Sales professionals can set up meetings, update notes in real-time, and prospect new accounts in between meetings.

4. Examine your sales data for insights 

These days, there’s copious amounts of data available to sales teams for tracking the activities that produce the best results. Most organizations have data at their fingertips, but only the best teams put motions in place to use that data to augment activity and improve results.

Some useful activities to measure include the volume and timing of email, sales calls, meetings, marketing campaigns, and phone calls. By monitoring your data, you’ll be able to track the activities that lead up to a sale.

Some examples of tracking data:

• Pipeline activity inside territories
• Historical prospect, contact, and opportunity data
• Real-time insights of rep activity and performance
• Performance tracking
• GPS-verified location tracking
• Colorized data views
• Real-time rep visibility

Smart CRM solutions like SPOTIO field CRM go beyond aiding the sales team by tracking and organizing data so sales leadership can easily analyze it.

5. Automate Follow-Up Activities

Sales reps are almost always juggling tasks and priorities. Between prospecting, nurturing, working a deal, or closing there’s a lot to be done. To ensure the pipeline flows smoothly, sales reps can automate important tasks to make sure nothing falls off the radar.

SPOTIO’s appointment setting functionality syncs with Google and Outlook calendars and lets users create appointments for themselves and other team members. It gives users the ability to see busy and available times for anyone on the team and book appointments accordingly.

6. Focus on the best prospects

One way to optimize time in sales is to focus on the most qualified prospects in your pipeline. Specifically, you want to focus on those prospects who have shown interest in your product or solution — the ones who just need a little push.

When you’ve identified your best prospects, your role is to keep them engaged. One example of a sales activity you can perform is sending an email with a link to an article your prospect would find useful. Another thing you can do is stay active on social media where prospects can see the way you interact with happy customers.

7. Pursue Cold Leads

Sales managers may want to assign someone the task of checking in with cold leads. Situations change, and a cold lead that wasn’t ready to buy six months ago might now be working with a bigger budget or encountering a new pain point they need to solve.

This sales strategy is a good one for the end of the year, when businesses are firming up the next year’s budget.

8. Segment Lead Management Activities

One way to make your lead management activities more efficient is to segment your leads. For example, you could segment leads by where they are in the sales process, their annual revenue, or other attributes.

With SPOTIO Lead Machine, you get instant access to lead demographics and can filter leads by more than 200 data points. You can also color-code leads in a map view, for quick reference when in the field.

By segmenting your leads and lead management activities, you can organize your time to focus on certain types of activities in bulk. You can use templates and repeatable behavior to be efficient and stay focused

9. Use a sales tracker to pinpoint bottlenecks

Instead of monitoring every move a sales rep makes outside the office, you can use SPOTIO sales tracking technology to see sales data. A sales activity tracker will help your team identify which activities are driving results, as well as which ones are not, so you can improve the sales process.

If performance is down, you can go straight to the source of the problem and correct it. Likewise, if you notice certain activities are driving a lot of sales, you can dedicate more resources to them and scale. Tracking and acting on sales activity data is one of the few ways sales teams can control their outcomes.

Sales management should be tracking both quantitative and qualitative data. Qualitative data helps you paint a bigger picture of how customers view your company. Quantitative data can be used for more concrete things.

For example, you can create clear sales goals like increasing your lead generation by a certain percentage over the next quarter. After the quarter is up, you’ll have some data on what part of your sales funnel is generating the most leads, and what parts need work.

10. Nurture customer relationships

The most successful teams focus on nurturing their customer relationships to fuel repeat and ongoing sales. In fact, a Bain study cites that repeat customers are known to spend more than 60% more than new customers.

The best way to nurture customer relationships is to learn about their business, understand their biggest challenges and goals, and focus on how your product or service can help them reach their potential. You can do this by ensuring you celebrate their successes, either via social media or with an acknowledgment phone call.

You can also keep them engaged by ensuring they’re the first to know about any new product releases, services or company news.

11. Communicate with your team

All great relationships hinge on the quality and consistency of your communication habits. Great communication ensures that everyone involved is clear on expectations, marching toward the same outcome, and familiar with where they stand. Poor communication, on the other hand, often leads to mismatched expectations and disappointment.

Clear communication defines desired outcomes, maximizes productivity, minimizes churn, and perhaps most importantly, prevents frustration and failure. For sales teams that spend the bulk of their time on the road, clear communication is critical.

To get the best results, effective sales managers use a mix of communication tools — in-app chat, email, team meetings, dashboards, and one-to-one conversations — to keep the lines of communication active.

Some sales enablement solutions like SPOTIO include a team chat feature that encourages sales rep engagement and creates an open feedback loop with managers. With the ability to talk with individuals 1-on-1 or chat with a specific group, these tools improve communication across the team.

Which Sales Activities Add Value For You?

Successful sales organizations know that the secret to success is to work smarter, not harder.

Nobody has more than 24 hours in a day, so the key is to find ways to make the most out of your time with a focus on the sales activities that add value and accelerate sales.

With CRM capabilities designed for reps in the field, territory management functionality, route planning, scheduling, sales tracking and more, SPOTIO is the perfect tool for improving the efficiency and visibility of all sales activities.

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Questions or comments? Contact SPOTIO at info@spotio.com or comment below.

SPOTIO is the #1 field sales acceleration platform designed specifically for outside sales managers and reps to squeeze every drop out of their field sales efforts.

Want to see a product demonstration? Click here to see how SPOTIO can take your sales game to the next level.

Fortunately, there are a few things you can do to remedy the situation. First and foremost, you can learn how to measure sales productivity. Doing so will help you identify where your reps waste the most time and substitute those activities for more effective ones.

So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. Keep reading to learn about the 14 sales productivity metrics you should monitor and the benefits of doing so. But first…

The Challenge Of Measuring Sales Productivity

Measuring sales productivity is essential, but it can be challenging.

This is because there’s so much data available to sales managers like yourself. To measure sales productivity effectively, you have to decide which data points matter and which don’t based on your company’s unique sales process. It takes a bit of trial and error.

The good news is you’ll eventually figure out which metrics deserve your attention. You just have to track them each long enough to judge their importance to your efforts.

With that in mind, let’s look at the most important sales productivity metrics out there right now. That way, you can decide which one you want to experiment with first.

How To Measure Sales Productivity: 14 Metrics To Track

Ready to measure your sales team’s productivity levels? Then track and evaluate these 14 metrics. Each will give you deeper insight into the efficiency of your department.

1. Number Of Completed Sales Activities

The only way to hit your department’s sales goals is to ensure every team member completes a predetermined number of sales activities. Said sales activities may include in-person visits, follow-up sales calls, emails and texts sent to existing customers, etc.

Track this metric to make sure your reps are putting in the effort to achieve success. Then evaluate it regularly to see how productive your reps are or are not.

Tools like SPOTIO, which includes a performance reporting suite, make this a breeze.

2. Number Of Leads Created

The sales activities your reps complete should produce tangible results. One such result will (hopefully!) be a stack of red-hot leads that your team can contact and sell to.

Generally speaking, the more leads your reps create daily, the more productive they’ll be. Just make sure they generate quality leads. A bunch of contacts that will never buy won’t benefit your company—even if your reps produce them incredibly efficiently.

Image: Leads created report in SPOTIO.

3. Number Of Opportunities Created

What’s the difference between a lead and an opportunity? A lead is a person or company that could buy from you. An opportunity is a person or company that actually might.

It’s important to generate leads, of course. But if they don’t eventually turn into bonafide opportunities, it doesn’t really matter because you won’t make any sales.

To track the number of opportunities your reps create and how quickly they create them. This will help you understand how productive your lead-generation strategies are.

4. Opportunity Losses

It takes time to generate leads and turn them into opportunities. If these potential buyers don’t turn into paying customers, your reps will have spent a lot of effort for nothing. To boost sales productivity metrics, your reps need to minimize the number of times this happens.

To calculate the opportunity losses metric without a piece of software, simply divide your team’s total lost opportunities by the number of total opportunities generated, and multiply the result by 100. The figure you end up with should be expressed as a percentage.

For example, if you generate 100 opportunities and lose 20 of them, your opportunities lost rate would be 20% [(20 / 100) x 100 = 20)].

5. Opportunity Wins

Opportunity wins are the opposite of opportunity losses, which we just covered.

This metric helps sales teams understand how many opportunities become paying customers. It’s also expressed as a percentage. To calculate it, use a similar formula to the one above: divide your deals won by the number of opportunities pursued, then multiply the result by 100.

For example, if your team pursues 200 unique opportunities and converts 40 of them into paying customers, your opportunity win rate would be 20% [(40 / 200) x 100 = 20)].

The higher your opportunity win rate is, the more productive your sales team is likely to be.

6. Sales Close Rate

The close sales rate metric may seem like the same thing as the opportunity wins metric that we talked about above. But they’re actually a little different.

Whereas the opportunity wins metric measures the percentage of opportunities that your team converts into sales, the close sales rate measures the percentage of total leads that your team converts into closed deals. It’s another important KPI for sales productivity purposes.

Tracking sales close rates will help you understand why your reps perform the way they do. If they have a high opportunity win rate but an abysmal sales close rate, for example, you can probably assume that their lack of productivity has to do with poor quality leads. You can then adjust your buyer personas, lead gen strategy, etc., to fix this issue for your team.

Calculate your team’s sales close rate by dividing your total number of conversions by your total number of leads. Then multiply the resulting figure by 100.

For example, if your team generates 1,000 leads and converts 100 of them into paying customers, your sales close rate would be 10% [(100 / 1,000) x 100 = 10)].

7. Average Deal Size

Sometimes the easiest way to boost sales rep productivity is to chase bigger, better deals. That’s where the average deal size metric comes into play.

To calculate this KPI, divide the total value of deals won by the total number of deals won. For example, if your sales team generates $100,000 from 250 completed sales, your average deal size would be $400 (100,000 / 250 = 400).

Don’t let your reps waste time on tiny deals that don’t move the needle. Coach them to pursue more profitable ones that do. Any extra effort they expend will more than likely be worth it.

Just make sure that the big deals they pursue actually have a chance at closing. If they don’t, your team will become even more unproductive than it already is.

8. Sales Growth Rate

Growth can be measured over a variety of timeframes—week-over-week, month-over-month, year-over-year, etc. Annual growth is popular because it helps sales leaders understand how effective their sales strategies are. But the specific metric you track and measure is up to you.

To calculate the sales growth rate for your team, subtract your previous sales from your current sales. Then divide the result by your previous sales and multiply the figure by 100.

For example, if you made $8,000,000 last year and $10,000,000 this year, you’d have experienced 25% YOY growth because [(10,000,000 – 8,000,000) / 8,000,000] x 100 = 25.

Generally speaking, positive YOY growth is a good sign. It means your sales department is more productive than it was previously. Always aim for positive growth in this area.

9. Total Revenue

Hopefully, your sales team drives more revenue now than it did last month, last quarter, and last year. If it does, you and your reps might be more productive than you realize.

Of course, revenue and profit aren’t the same things. Make sure your company doesn’t spend more than it generates. This will make measuring sales productivity a real challenge.

For SaaS brands, total revenue is often expressed as annual recurring revenue (ARR) or monthly recurring revenue (MRR). Calculate these two metrics for your company by dividing total contract value by contract duration (in either months or years.)

10. Revenue By Territory

Overall revenue numbers are important. But if you manage a field sales team, a more detailed metric, such as revenue by territory, might be more useful to you. Why? Because it will help you determine which territories and/or reps are most productive and successful.

Image: Tracking leads created by territory in SPOTIO.

If you discover that Territory A produces 10 sales a week, for example, while Territory B only produces 5, you can dig deeper. What are your reps doing in Territory A to achieve better results? Can the same techniques be applied in Territory B to boost performance?

The revenue by territory metrics will help you determine sales team productivity levels—especially if you break it down by new customers, repeat business, etc.

11. Sales Cycle Length

How long does it take your team to close deals?

If you sell in the B2B space, the answer is probably, “Way longer than I want it to.” So, anytime you can cut back on sales cycle length, you should probably do it.

The most productive sales teams close deals quicker than average. This usually leads to more sales on a weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. More revenue, too.

Unproductive sales teams need help closing. Deals drag on and on, which is both tedious and resource-taxing. You need to find out why your team can’t close deals in a timely manner. Then implement new tactics and/or strategies to remedy this problem.

12. Sales Rep Quota Attainment

Do your sales reps meet quota?

If the answer is yes, dig deeper and find out how long it takes them. If the answer is no, dig even deeper and find out the percentage of quota they usually meet. Then ask why.

Why do your reps miss quota on a regular basis? Have you set unrealistic expectations for them? Is your sales strategy underperforming? Do your reps need more training? Perhaps they don’t understand how to connect with and sell to qualified prospects.

If you want to learn how to measure sales productivity, quota attainment is an important KPI.

13. Handle Time

The handle time metric refers to the amount of time it takes a rep to handle sales interactions.

How long does it take your sellers to respond to leads? To conduct sales calls? To follow up with potential customers via email? In general, the faster they do these things, the better.

Cutting handle time will allow your sales reps to become more efficient and deal with more prospects every day. This typically leads to more sales, revenue, and success.

14. Lead Response Time

Finally, we have the lead response time metric.

How long does it take your reps to follow up with new leads? Research shows that the faster your reps follow up, the more sales they’ll make. In fact, conversion rates are 8x higher when reps respond to new leads within five minutes, as opposed to just one minute later.

If you feel that your sales team is unproductive, coach them to respond to prospects as quickly as possible. This one thing could completely revolutionize your sales process.

What Are The Benefits Of Measuring Sales Productivity?

Now that we know which metrics to measure let’s talk about why you should.

There are five main reasons related to revenue, financial loss, employee satisfaction, performance issues, and company growth. Let’s take a closer look at each of them:

Increase Revenue

This is one of the most obvious reasons why you should measure sales productivity. The more your reps get done on a daily basis, the more revenue they’re likely to drive for your company. Think about it: if your reps generate $40 per sales call, for example, and make 25 sales calls a day, they’ll generate an average of $1,000. If they’re able to make 50 calls a day without changing their process, though, they’ll make $2,000. It’s simple math.

Prevent Financial Loss

Boosting company revenue is important. So is minimizing financial loss. The right sales productivity metrics can help you accomplish this, too. For example, you may find that your reps aren’t using your CRM software productively. Maybe they’re only using half of its features. This means that your company is losing half of the money it spends on this tool.

Enhance Employee Satisfaction

Your sales reps want to do well. If they feel like they’re a burden to your company, they won’t enjoy coming to work every day, and their job satisfaction levels will plummet. By helping them get more done in less time, you’ll enable them to feel like essential cogs in your company’s overall success. This will give them a sense of purpose and increase their happiness. Don’t be surprised if your retention numbers go up when you measure sales productivity.

Identify Performance Issues

Tracking sales productivity metrics will also help you pinpoint issues. Have you properly trained your reps? Have you given them the resources they need to close deals at a consistent clip? Measuring sales productivity will help you answer these questions. How? You’ll know if poor performance is due to a lack of time, poor training, or something else.

Plan For Growth

Once you have a grip on your sales reps’ performance, you can plan for the future. How many new employees should you hire to meet company goals? And how much revenue should each of them bring in once they’re familiar with your sales strategy? You need to know. If you learn how to measure sales productivity effectively, the answers will become clear.

Ready To Boost Sales Productivity With SPOTIO?

Congratulations, you know which sales productivity metrics to track. Now, you’re probably wondering, “How do I improve my reps’ performance in these specific areas?”

One of the easiest ways to do it is to invest in the right software solutions.

If you manage a field sales team, the right solution is probably SPOTIO. Why? Because our platform was specifically designed to streamline your processes and make them more effective. In fact, teams that use our solution boost productivity by an incredible 46%.

Become a SPOTIO user and get instant access to lead generation, task automation, route planning, territory management, multichannel communication, workflow sequencing, and custom reporting tools your reps can use to get more done in less time.

Sign up for a free demo to glimpse our industry-leading platform in action. We’re confident you’ll love the productivity-boosting features you’ll see!

But without a sales tracking system — and without quality data — you’re just guessing at what’s happening in the field.

So, if you want to track your figures efficiently, you need to choose the right sales tracking tool for your team.

In this guide, we’ll show you what to look for in sales tracking software and then highlight the top sales tracking software for both inside and outside sales teams.

What To Look For In Sales Tracking Software

Before we check out the best sales tracking platforms to consider in 2023, let’s highlight what functionality to look for in a sales tracker.

Sales pipeline visibility

Sales tracking software should give sales teams a complete real-time view of their company’s pipeline.

Sales managers can examine the pipeline to see where leads are sticking. For example, if the pipeline shows a lot of leads reaching the quoting stage, but advancing no further, that could indicate a problem with the product pricing structure.

If the pipeline reveals a sales‌ rep ‌is ‌failing to close deals, then you can review their sales process to find out whether they’re missing an important step or need additional training.

Sales activity reporting across multiple channels

The best sales tracking tools should also ensure that reps perform the “controllable” sales activities each day, week, and month to keep the sales funnel full.

For example, you’ll want to measure sales activity metrics like the number of calls, emails, follow-ups, visits, social media connections, discovery calls, meeting requests, and completed proposals.

Look for software that allows you to automatically captures sales activities as reps perform them, to reduce the amount of manual data entry.

Sales performance tracking (rep, territory, and organization levels)

The best sales tracking software lets a sales manager review sales performance at the rep and organizational level, and also by territory (for outside sales teams).

Managers and execs want to track top-level KPIs, such as the number of leads, number of opportunities, lead-to-opportunity, number of sales, net new revenue, and pipeline value at each level.

For example, here you can see leads created by Territories:

It’s essential that sales managers can see the top-level performance and can evaluate how individual reps, teams, and territories are performing.

Sales win-loss analysis

The best sales tracking software shows managers their team’s win-loss ratio. While it’s great to record wins, it’s also important to keep a record of potential deals that fell through.

If you know the reasons you’re losing sales, or even which competitor you’re losing out to, you can take action to improve your sales process and ensure your win ratio improves.

Analyzing your losses also allows you to forecast your sales numbers accurately for a given month, quarter, or year.

Sales process insights

If you can’t look at your sales pipeline, pinpoint a spot, and say, “That’s where we’re losing sales,” you won’t be able to immediately resolve the problem. The right sales tracking software helps you pinpoint any bottleneck in your sales process.

For example, your sales reps might make:

• X amount of cold calls, but none of them get returned.
• X amount of introductions, but book no follow-up appointments.
• X amount of sales appointments, but lack enough quotes.
• X amount of quotes, but only get a few sales.
• X amount of closed sales, but have high customer churn.

Sales tracking tools give you the metrics you need to fine-tune your sales processes.

Sales forecasting

Companies use sales forecasts to make monthly, quarterly, and annual revenue predictions and allocate resources accordingly. However, not all sales forecasts are that accurate.

If you want to help your organization, make sure your sales tracking software lets you see previous and current sales data for your team so that you can confidently forecast future sales based on those numbers.

Forecasting is only 100% successful when sales activities are tracked through the pipeline, from prospecting to demo to how long it took to sign the deal. The best way to keep track of everything is to capture data in your sales tracking software.

Sales managers can then access the data quickly at the end of every month, quarter, or year, to produce accurate sales forecasts.

Sales leaderboards

Sales leaderboards let managers see which reps are completing their assigned activities and generating the most pipeline and sales volume. With these insights, managers can help underperforming sales reps get back on track. Managers can also use leaderboards to encourage healthy competition and motivate reps to work harder.

The best sales tracking systems include a leaderboard that managers can use to track metrics and help refocus a sales rep’s efforts.

You can also use leaderboards to encourage healthy competition and motivate reps to work harder when there is so much transparency.

Customizable Reporting Dashboards

Sales reps, managers, and administrators may need to review different KPIs, so look for sales tracking platforms with customizable reporting dashboards. Leading sales tracking platforms like SPOTIO let you customize report parameters and save them, so you can easily repopulate reports with new data anytime (even when you’re in the field).

Managers can use custom reports to quickly troubleshoot underperforming reps and territories. And you can also share reports with the touch of a button.

8 Best Sales Tracking Tools For 2023

Now that you know what to look for in sales tracking software, it’s time to share the best solutions for both inside and outside sales teams.

We’ve included a brief overview of each sales tracking tool and highlighted some of its most valuable features.

SPOTIO

SPOTIO is the #1 outside sales software for sales reps and managers that boosts productivity levels, increases sales revenue by 23%, and shortens sales cycles.

Best for: Field sales teams. SPOTIO is ranked #1 in the Field Sales category, and was a 2023 G2 Best Software Winner.

Key sales tracking features:

Multi-channel activity-level reporting: 

• Make sure reps are working hard in the field. With SPOTIO GPS tracking, managers can see where reps are, the routes they follow, and the exact time they “check in” at any location. SPOTIO automatically logs each visit to create an audit-ready log for each sales rep.
• Activity reporting features sync to your CRM and show you the number of touches required to turn a lead into a customer.
• SPOTIO offers field sales teams the only multichannel communication platform for capturing customer engagement through visits, calls, SMS, and email.

Performance reporting at the rep, territory, and organization levels: 

• SPOTIO lets you track top-line metrics such as leads created, opportunities created, sales volume, close rate, and revenue across each level of the company, all the way down to the rep, channel, and territory levels.

Pipeline tracking:

• With SPOTIO, you can quickly spot bottlenecks at different stages in your pipeline. For example, do your reps make plenty of sales calls but only book follow-up appointments for 25% of those contacts?

Sales leaderboards:

• You can create transparency and encourage a healthy level of competition among reps with SPOTIO’s leaderboards. See which reps contribute the most sales and which ones may need additional coaching.

Sales forecasting:

• SPOTIO’s sales tracking lets you capture, visualize, and measure specific data so that you can provide accurate sales forecasts and insights to your executive team.

Email notifications:

• You can keep your managers up-to-date with SPOTIO’s email notifications. Choose to receive daily or weekly updates on team performance and activities so that you can intervene when things are off track.

Fully customizable reports:

• One of SPOTIO’s features — called “My Reports” — lets users configure sales reports based on date ranges, employee type, sales activities, pipeline stage, and other factors. Just use the simple drag-and-drop interface to set up a report, then give it a title and save it — you can duplicate it and change the report parameters at any time.

View pricing plans.

Salesforce CRM

Salesforce makes a variety of cloud-based products that sales and marketing teams can use to work more efficiently.

Key sales tracking features:

Sales activity and lead management:

• Automate administrative tasks to free up more time for sales teams.
• Easily log customer activity, such as phone calls, emails, and visits.
• Set a cadence for follow-ups and get alerts when it’s time to check in with a lead or customer.

Analytics and forecasting:

• Support forecasting decisions with Salesforce CRM’s detailed data.
• Analyze performance by rep, territory, or customer stage.
• Identify opportunities for improvement.

Personalized experiences:

• Trigger personalized messages based on customer actions.
• Integrate customer data from different platforms, so reps can always see a complete history of customer interactions.
• Improve response quality and timing for customer inquiries.
• Transfer customers between agents, or from chat to call.

Multichannel integration:

• Integrate Salesforce CRM with HubSpot and other key platforms.
• Use bi-directional real-time SPOTIO integration to turn SPOTIO activities into Salesforce tasks. You can also decide which fields should sync between platforms, and reps can push important information to Salesforce while using SPOTIO’s sales tracking apps in the field.

Pipedrive

Pipedrive is a popular inside sales CRM and pipeline tool that helps you get more qualified leads and grow your business.

Key sales tracking features:

Pipeline management:

• Pipedrive’s visual sales pipeline encourages you to take action and remain organized.
• Use the “deal rotting” tool to see when a potential deal idles for too long.

Sales automation:

• Leads feed directly into your sales pipelines 24/7 via your custom web forms and chatbot.
• Automate repetitive admin tasks, so you can focus on selling.

Track communications:

• Track calls and emails with your contacts so that you have all the history at your fingertips.

Performance reporting:

• Using Pipedrive’s reporting, you can:
  • See all won and lost deals at a glance.
  • Find out which deals aren’t closing.
  • Understand when and why you are losing deals.
  • Learn what activities bring you the best conversion rate.
  • Uncover opportunities for improvement. ‌
  • Forecast‌ ‌results.

SPOTIO API integration:

• SPOTIO’s Pipedrive integration extracts valuable customer information and data from Pipedrive, so reps can access that information via SPOTIO’s mobile sales tracking app.

Copper

Copper is a popular CRM tool specifically for G-Suite users. Inside sales reps can add leads, update deals, look up past interactions, create Google Calendar events, and follow up on tasks — right from their Gmail inbox.

Key sales tracking features:

Pipeline analysis:

• Track, measure, and analyze key sales pipeline metrics so you can boost sales performance, stay on target, and hit your goals.
• Get a complete view of your inside sales pipeline by tracking sales data of any kind, over any timeframe, so you can estimate the close date of each deal and know whether you met‌ ‌your sales‌ ‌quota.

Automatic data capture:

• Copper finds new leads and populates full contact details.

Sales leaderboards:

• Motivate your sales team by creating sales leaderboards that show who’s performing best‌ ‌by‌ ‌revenue,‌ ‌meetings‌ ‌set,‌ ‌calls‌ ‌made,‌ ‌and‌ ‌emails‌ ‌sent.

Sales forecasting:

• Automate sales forecast reports to see potential revenue by expected close date.

Sales dashboards:

• Gather critical sales insights using a set of dashboards about‌ ‌sales‌ ‌opportunities.

Zoho CRM

Zoho CRM is a highly rated inside sales tracking tool that includes contact management, sales funnel charts, sales forecasting, detailed analytics, and customizable dashboards.

Key sales tracking features:

Pipeline management:

• Analyze every sales activity, and track the numbers at every stage of your sales pipeline.
• Create funnels for important metrics, and know whenever there is a significant drop or rise in your sales pipeline. For example, you can check your conversion rates, identify where you have the most churn, and measure the overall efficiency of your sales process.

Omnichannel communication:

• Zoho CRM lets you reach customers across all channels: phone, email, live chat, and social media. And you get real-time notifications when customers interact with your business. Plus, you can measure the effectiveness of your customer relationship management.

Anomaly Detector:

• The AI-powered “Anomaly Detector” widget compares your actual sales performance with the predicted trend. It notifies you if there are any deviations from the projected sales pattern, such as the number of leads created per month or the number of deals closed daily.

Performance reporting:

• Zoho CRM helps you manage and measure your team’s territory-wide sales performance, and break quotas down into achievable targets with ‌reports,‌ ‌analytics,‌ ‌and‌ ‌forecasts.
• Real-time reporting allows you to analyze all sales activity, trends, campaigns, and sales team performance.

Gamification:

• Zoho CRM’s KPIs give you a clear picture of the key sales figures so that you can focus on the areas where you need to improve.
• You can incentivize your team to exceed sales quotas by awarding badges and trophies for achieving successful goals.

Freshsales

Freshsales by Freshworks is a top-rated inside sales tracking solution powered by its  “Freddy AI.” The software helps you discover the best leads, visually manage pipelines,  forecast revenue, drive deals to closure, and nurture existing customers.

Key sales tracking features:

Personalized engagement:

• Discover the best leads, communicate with customers via their preferred channel, ‌and‌ ‌personalize‌ ‌messages‌ ‌based‌ ‌on‌ ‌ behavior.
• Freddy AI helps you score, filter, prioritize, and engage contextually with intelligent prompts.

Pipeline management:

• Freddy AI analyzes your pipeline and helps you prioritize deals.
• Review and act on deals you need to close as they move through stages.
• Identify bottlenecks in pipeline reports.

AI-powered insights:

• Freddy AI analyzes every deal, providing insights and suggesting the next best steps.
• Create an accurate AI-powered forecast, improve revenue predictability, and help the sales team take action.

Sales automation:

• Streamline your sales processes, eliminate time-consuming tasks, automate follow-ups, and save time so you can sell more.

Performance reporting:

• Interpret data effortlessly with visual analytics and make data-backed decisions to drive revenue.
• Identify the campaigns, territory, and teams that are leading sales and bringing in the most revenue.
• Identify the top performers on your team with the sales cycle and velocity reports.
• Pinpoint which campaigns work and which ones don’t.

Close

Close CRM helps inside sales teams close more deals through its actionable insights. You can track individual sales rep and team performance, get high-level pipeline overviews, and analyze call, email, and SMS success rates.

Key sales tracking features:

Customizable leaderboards:

• Encourage healthy competition with leaderboards based on the metrics that matter most ‌to‌ ‌your‌ sales ‌team.
• Analyze team performance for any given period, benchmark individual rep performance against it, and compare periods.
• Measure and support each team member based on sales activity, such as emails sent, open and response rates, the number of calls made, minutes spent talking to prospects, and more.

Performance reporting:

• Compare time-based reports – for example, how did you perform in Q1 this year versus Q4 last year?
• Act on priority metrics, such as the time spent on the phone and the value of closed deals.
• Export your data to external reporting solutions without losing critical insights.

Pipeline management:

• Get a consolidated view of your pipeline with a simple drag-and-drop interface, easy ‌customization,‌ ‌and‌ ‌actionable‌ ‌revenue‌ ‌insights.
• Automate your workflow with “Pipeline View” and get clear insights into your actual and expected revenue.
• Make accurate predictions on open deals.

Hubspot CRM

HubSpot CRM has an easy-to-use interface with everything that inside sales teams need to organize, track, and build better relationships with leads and customers.

Key sales tracking features:

Pipeline management:

• Get a real-time view of your entire pipeline on a clean, visual dashboard.
• Identify blocks in your pipeline where potential revenue is accumulating, so you can rally your team to close the right deals.
• Use your sales dashboard to monitor key sales activities, sales quota progress, and the overall value and health of your pipeline.
• View detailed reports on sales activity, productivity, and individual and team performance.

Contact management:

• Add company and contact information, log sales activities automatically, and keep records up to date quickly.
• View every interaction you’ve had with contacts, and use this data to build campaigns that close more deals.
• Get notified the second a prospect or lead opens your email, clicks a link, or downloads an attachment – and follow up flawlessly.
• Give prospects the option to connect when convenient with a scheduling link that syncs with your calendar.

Sales automation:

• Save time on manual data entry so you can send more emails, make more phone calls, and hit your sales targets.
• Use workflows to automate manual, time-consuming tasks so that you can rotate leads, create deals, and more.

Which Sales Tracking Software is Right for Your Organization?

All of these tools are great options for tracking key sales metrics, but most are geared towards inside sales teams.

If you’re running an outside sales team, then sign up for a free demo of SPOTIO to see how we can help your team hit its sales targets.

Manage your pipeline correctly and your reps will connect with more prospects and close more deals. Mismanage your pipeline and… Well, the results won’t be nearly as favorable.

But here’s the thing: managing one’s pipeline is anything but easy. That’s why we’ve put together this guide! Keep reading to learn what sales pipeline management is, why it’s important, and how to do it effectively in 2023 and beyond. Let’s dive in!

What is a sales pipeline?

Your sales pipeline is a visual representation of your company’s sales process.

It should show every prospect your sales team is in contact with, and how close said prospects are to making a purchase. It should also give you, the sales manager, an idea of when new deals will close and how much each deal will be worth to your organization.

If, for example, you have $100k worth of deals in your sales pipeline and know that your team’s average close rate is 20%, you can reasonably expect to generate $20k of revenue.

The next step is to estimate when that money will hit company coffers, which you can do by analyzing past deals and the specific pipeline stage your prospects are currently in.

When you begin to do this kind of analysis, you engage in sales pipeline management.

Why is Sales Pipeline Management Important?

As stated above, sales pipeline management is critical to your company’s success.

If you don’t manage your pipeline effectively, you won’t be able to connect with quality leads, build meaningful relationships with them, or close deals on a regular basis.

Numerous studies back this up. According to the Harvard Business Review, effective pipeline management produces an average growth rate of 5.3%. Moreover, companies that master a few sales pipeline management best practices produce 28% more revenue.

There are other benefits to pipeline management in sales, too…

Once you learn to manage your sales pipeline the right way, you’ll be able to forecast future results with greater accuracy. You’ll also know when and where to allocate resources. And you’ll have the information you need to increase deal velocity, volume, and size. Win!

12 Sales Pipeline Management Best Practices

We’ve answered the question, “What is sales pipeline management?” and explained why it’s so important. Now, we’ll cover 12 sales pipeline best practices you can use to supercharge your efforts in this area.

1. Follow up

If your reps don’t follow up they won’t make sales. Plain and simple.

How many times should they follow up with each prospect? Well, 80% of sales require 5+ follow ups. Unfortunately, most reps give up after sending a single follow-up message.

So, the first thing you can do to improve your sales pipeline management skills is to ask reps to contact leads multiple times. Then ask them to contact said leads in multiple ways.

They might not find success emailing prospects five times in a row. But what if they email them one day, call them the next, send them a text on the third, connect with them via Linkedin on the fourth, and send another email on the fifth? Success is more likely.

2. Focus on Quality Leads

Not every lead is created equal.

Some will take a look at your products and think, “Eh, it’s kinda cool, I guess.” Others will see them and think, “I must have it. NOW!” Your reps should focus on the latter folks.

The easiest way to boost sales is to focus your reps’ efforts on the prospects who already want to buy from them. To figure out who these people are, analyze your sales pipeline.

Which prospects have expressed extreme interest in your products/services? Which ones have visited your site, downloaded your ebooks, and opened your emails. Which ones are in the final stages of the buying process? These folks should be your reps’ top targets.

3. Filter Low Quality Leads

Your reps need to focus on quality leads. They also need to abandon bad-fit prospects. Why hold on to someone if you know, deep down, that they’ll never buy from you?

It can be hard to let go of leads—especially when reps have spent weeks or months building relationships with them. But it’s the right thing. Bad fit prospects will only drag your reps down.

This begs the question: what’s a bad-fit prospect? It’s simple, a bad fit prospect is any prospect that’s said they won’t buy from you, or can’t be moved to a later stage of your sales pipeline. When you learn to identify these people and cut them, your pipeline will be healthier.

4. Monitor Key Sales Pipeline Metrics

Your reps are focusing their efforts on quality prospects, eliminating bad-fit leads from your pipeline, and following up these folks on a consistent basis.

Congratulations, your sales pipeline management efforts are bearing fruit! Now what?

It’s time to start monitoring key sales pipeline metrics. The ones you pay attention to will depend on your specific goals. But in general, we suggest monitoring the number of deals in your pipeline, the average size of each deal, and your team’s close rate.

If possible, monitor these metrics (and any others you deem important) on a weekly basis. Then compare your team’s results over time to see if you’re headed in the right direction.

5. Review and Improve Pipeline Processes

Monitoring sales metrics will help you determine which sales techniques work and which don’t. You can then use this information to optimize your sales strategy for greater success.

Remember, just because a specific sales technique killed it last year doesn’t mean it will prove effective this year. The opposite is also true. Lackluster techniques in years past may work like gangbusters in the present. You won’t know until you test your approach.

Challenge every aspect of your pipeline processes, from your reps’ first emails to their closing pitches. Then look for ways to improve them—especially if they’re producing subpar results.

6. Regularly Update Pipeline

Your sales pipeline is a living thing.

To succeed at sales pipeline management, you need to treat it as such and update it on a regular basis. That way it doesn’t become disorganized and useless to your team.

Make sure new leads are added correctly, old leads are updated when necessary, and every bit of information is accurate. It will take time to do these things, but it will be worth it.

7. Keep Sales Cycles Short

According to one recent study, it takes 4+ months to close 75% of B2B deals.

There are many reasons for this, chief among them being the general price of B2B products and the number of decision-makers involved in the buying process.

As a sales manager, you need to help your reps shrink their sales cycles. Why? Because the longer it takes them to close a deal, the more likely it is that said deal will fall through.

Ask your reps to shorten the amount of time between follow-up calls. Or to give prospects more information in their initial emails. Or to push for a product demo sooner. You’ll need to experiment with different strategies to figure out what works for your team.

8. Standardize Sales Processes

The best sales teams have standardized sales processes. That doesn’t mean they treat every prospect the same. But it does mean they lead every prospect down a similar path to sale.

It makes sense when you think about it. Your company’s ideal customers will have a lot in common. As such, they’ll have many of the same pain points and objections. A standardized sales process will allow your reps to address these things in a confident and logical way.

Your sales pipeline management duties should include sales process analysis and enforcement. Make sure the process works. Then ensure your reps follow it to a T.

9. Provide Prospects In-depth Info

Your company’s prospects need detailed information before they agree to make a purchase. It’s your reps’ job to give it to them. You can help them out with this by providing content.

Yes, your reps can talk about product features via phone and email. They can explain why said features matter, too. But this might not be enough. Your prospects might want to dig deep—something they might only be able to do with a blog post, ebook, or white paper.

So, connect with your company’s marketing team and ask them to create these kinds of in-depth materials. Then, once they’ve been made, give them to your sales reps. Encourage them to send the content to prospects when appropriate. It will help.

10. Manage Sales with a CRM

Customer relationship management software, CRM software for short, is a sales team’s best friend. If you haven’t already invested in this kind of solution, what are you waiting for?

Sure, that old Excel spreadsheet worked at first. But now that you have dozens of leads in your sales pipeline, you need to upgrade to a new tool. You need a quality CRM platform.

Here’s the good news: there are tons of them out there! Each is designed to help you manage your leads effectively, increase rep productivity, and ultimately, boost sales.

We don’t have time to debate the best CRMs in this article. Here are a few options to start researching: Salesforce, HubSpot, Zoho CRM, Pipedrive, and Close. (Note: one of the best things about these tools is that they each integrate seamlessly with SPOTIO!)

11. Forecasting

What’s next in our pipeline sales management list? Forecasting, the act of predicting future sales and the revenue each of these transactions will generate.

When you know how many deals you’ll close next month, you can make better decisions regarding the direction of your department. Consequently, your company’s leadership team can make better decisions about the direction of your entire organization, too.

There are a variety of tools you can use to help you generate accurate sales forecasts. We talk about seven of the best ones in this blog post. Study up!

12. Reporting

Last but certainly not least, your sales pipeline management efforts need to include reporting. If they don’t, you’ll never really know what’s working and what’s not.

Produce reports that focus on the specific KPIs we mentioned earlier: the number of deals in your pipeline, the average size of each deal, and your team’s close rate. Then feel free to add the other metrics you feel are important to the success of your sales team.

For example, you may want to report on the revenue generated per territory, the specific activities your reps perform, and/or which reps are currently performing best.

5 Best Sales Pipeline Management Software

As you might expect, there is software available to help you with sales pipeline management. The question is, which tool should you invest in? We suggest one of the following”

SPOTIO: If you manage an outside sales team, take a serious look at SPOTIO, which you can use to track pipeline, evaluate rep performance, generate custom reports, forecast future sales, and more. Doing so has been proven to boost revenue by 23%.

Pipedrive: With Pipedrive, users get a visual representation of their sales pipeline. They can also easily track communications, individual rep performance, and more.

Copper: Spend your day in the Google ecosystem? Consider Copper, a popular sales pipeline management tool that features sales analysis and forecasting features.

Zoho CRM: With Zoho CRM, users can manage their pipelines effectively, thanks to rep performance tracking, anomaly detection, and gamification capabilities.

Freshworks: Those managing inside sales teams might enjoy using Freshworks. With this tool, users can analyze their pipelines and extract deep insights using AI.

For more information on the best sales pipeline management software—and how to actually choose the right tool for your sales department—read this blog post.

See How SPOTIO Helps You Manage Your Sales Pipeline and Hit Your Sales Numbers

SPOTIO is the ultimate tool for sales pipeline management.

Once you invest in our industry-leading solution, you’ll have access to rep performance metrics, the ability to create custom reports, and cutting-edge forecasting tools.

Your reps will benefit from SPOTIO, too, as it’s equipped with task automation capabilities, route planning software, multichannel communications tools, and digital business cards.

You don’t have to just take our word for it, though, when we say SPOTIO is ideal for outside sales teams. Request a free demo today and experience the power of SPOTIO for yourself.

Between prospecting and cold outreach, data entry, disorganization, and getting stuck in the inbox, sales productivity is hard to come by.

The struggle isn’t just in our heads, either–reps lose countless hours to activities with little connection to actual selling.

Here are a few grim statistics that back this up:

• Reps spend just 35% of their time selling. The rest of that time is spent on email and other administrative tasks.
• Sellers lose 30 hours a month, on average, searching for sales collateral and creating their own when they can’t find what they’re looking for. That’s 15 full days every year.
• 81% of reps believe that it’s important to have a connected view of the entire buyer’s journey. In fact, high-performing teams are more than twice as likely to have a connected view of all customer data than underperformers. Yet, less than half of businesses report having fully-integrated systems. (Source)

The point is that salespeople waste a lot of time clicking around aimlessly, performing fruitless search missions, or failing to meet buyer expectations.

But–technology can help.

In this article, we’ll look at the top sales productivity tools to streamline the sales stack and help reps spend more time where they’re needed.

How Can Tools Help Maximize Sales Productivity?

Organizations can boost sales productivity by focusing on two main categories: efficiency and effectiveness. At a basic level, productivity boils down to spending more time on sales activities with the greatest impact on the top line.

Here’s a quick look at what each term means within the context of sales productivity.

• Efficiency. Sales efficiency refers to how well you maximize your resources–be it time or money. You might use technology that can eliminate low-value activities like data entry, double work, or time-spent in the CRM or your Gmail account to improve efficiency. Here, things like integration, automation, and a single view of all data help reps move faster and focus on what counts.
• Effectiveness. While efficiency is about how you allocate resources, effectiveness is about how well you use those resources to reach your goals–often, that means the application of skills. So, for example, if you’ve improved efficiency by making 40 more calls each week. An effective seller might convert 15 of those prospects, while a less effective seller might only close five.

Increasing effectiveness with technology starts with great reporting tools and a connected view of employee performance, communication records, engagement, and revenue metrics.

In this next section, we’ll look at 14 sales productivity tools that cover both efficiency and effectiveness.

14 Best Sales Productivity Tools

SPOTIO

SPOTIO is a multichannel sales engagement platform designed for field sales teams. Our app helps reps stay organized and connected on-the-go, and includes the following features that have helped 1,500+ outside sales teams boost productivity.

How SPOTIO helps increase sales productivity:

Advanced Prospecting: There’s no shortage of prospecting tools on the market, but most are built specifically for inside teams. Our sales intelligence feature brings next-level prospecting to the field.

Users can tap businesses on a map and pull up contact info from Google Places, search by business type, and use 50+ data points and 200+ filters to quickly qualify the best prospects in their territory.

Route Planning: SPOTIO’s built-in route planning software eliminates the need for sellers to map out their own stops and automatically optimizes routes to maximize efficiency. Sellers can plan their day and route all stops in a single tap.

Additionally, we’re adding an automated mileage tracking feature that stands to save even more time by integrating with other expense tools —easier reimbursements with less data entry.

Automated Sales Sequences: Managers can quickly build automated multi-channel sales sequences that ensure leads don’t slip through the cracks, and help generate new pipeline 24/7.

Territory Management. Our platform’s territory management feature makes it easy for sales managers to assign territories, establish clarity around who is working which areas, and prevent rep overlap. This also makes it easier to ensure the top reps are working the highest value territories.

Customer Mapping: Visualize prospects, leads, opportunities and customers on a map to ensure reps are spotting all opportunities and performing the tasks needed to maintain pipeline velocity.

Reporting Tools: Reporting offers visibility into rep performance and activities by territory, allowing sales leaders to make strategic decisions about where to allocate resources and identify opportunities for improvement. SPOTIO’s My Reports feature enables sales reps and managers to build custom reports that capture only the most important metrics.

Rep Tracking. Rep tracking allows sales leaders to improve accountability in the field. Use it to review travel paths, find reps in real-time, and gather performance insights—which can be used to optimize routes, deliver training content, map territories, and track performance.

You can also sync data to your CRM, learning management system (LMS), ERP, and other tools.

Activity Tracking. Our activity tracking feature saves reps from data entry and email, while allowing sales managers and operations to gain real-time visibility into reps’ activities. Users can capture the data that matters most and intervene before it’s too late.

Additionally, managers can create leaderboards that motivate reps through competition and performance incentives.

View pricing plans.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator

LinkedIn Sales Navigator is one of the best prospecting and social selling tools around. According to LinkedIn, this tool is designed to help reps ID the right prospects and companies faster, track key sales triggers, and engage prospects in one place.

The platform allows users to identify perfect-fit leads using its advanced search feature and provides a wealth of information reps can use to understand prospects and warm up cold outreach efforts.

Key capabilities:

• Lead recommendations. LinkedIn surfaces prospects that match your ideal customer profile as well as other decision-makers from your target accounts.
• Smart Links. Smart Links allows users to share and present content to prospects who can access multimedia files without downloading.
• TeamLink. The TeamLink feature is designed to help reps leverage their company network to find the best way to reach prospects–for instance, if one of your colleagues is a mutual connection, you might ask for an introduction.
• Notes & tags. This feature allows you to organize leads via LinkedIn with custom tags and notes that sync to your CRM.

SellHack 

SellHack is a prospecting tool designed to help teams build lead lists, find & verify emails, and sync contact emails to your SalesForce account.
For sales teams, SellHack eliminates manual data entry associated with prospecting. It offers a Chrome extension that allows you to build customized prospect lists as you browse the web automatically.

At the same time, the platform’s comprehensive verification algorithm ensures you have the right email before syncing data to the CRM.

SellHack supports lead generation, paid search & social campaigns, and content marketing, too.

Marketing teams can use the tool to create Custom Audiences on Google, Twitter, and Facebook using email addresses from sales’ top prospects to increase the effectiveness of retargeting campaign conversion rates.

Zoominfo

Zoominfo is a sales intelligence tool/comprehensive business database that serves up actionable insights and provides a 360-degree view of your existing customers, prospects, and opportunities.

This platform supports a whole host of data-driven use cases–from warming up cold emails to targeting the right leads and improving lead qualification criteria.

Users can:

• Quickly find up-to-date contact details for prospects
• Identify decision-makers
• Receive detailed org charts that breakdown internal hierarchy within a company

DataFox

(Source)

DataFox is another intelligence platform that makes business data accessible to sales organizations. However, while Zoominfo is more about uncovering contact info, DataFox aims to help you narrow in on the data you need to create accurate ideal customer profiles (ICPs), personalize outreach, and verify critical sales data.

Key capabilities:

• Data enrichment. The platform allows users to enrich prospect & customer records with firmographics and sales triggers–allowing for improved personalization & persona segmentation.
• Intelligent anomaly detection. DataFox also offers machine learning anomaly detection and human validation–which together, ensure data accuracy and integrity no matter how many opportunities are in your pipeline.
• Real-time signal data. DataFox allows users to track real-time signal data on your target companies across 68 data points–this way, you can use news items and company milestones for more relevant outreach.
• CRM data cleanup. DataFox’s CRM cleanup makes it easy for users to spot inconsistencies, get rid of duplicates, map org charts, and update your CRM with accurate insights.

Right Inbox

Right Inbox is a free Chrome extension that aims to help users get more from their Gmail account by adding some of the features Google didn’t think of. The platform introduces several time-saving upgrades like the ability to schedule emails (and follow-ups)  in advance, create situational email signatures, save reusable templates, and add contextual notes only you can see.

Additionally, you can sync conversations to the CRM, track opens & clicks, and scale your cold outreach with mail merge.

AirCall

Aircall allows reps to manage all communication workflows from the CRM, eliminating manual call logging, streamlining dialing, recording, and automating post-call follow-up activities that don’t generate revenue.

Aircall is packed with features that tackle broad categories like phone system management, collaboration, and productivity.

Notable features include:

• Shared call inbox. Accounts come with a complete historic record of all calls requiring follow-ups or some other action–users can quickly archive old calls and revisit outstanding tasks.
• Call commenting & assignment. Assign calls to reps and leave a comment to provide context–from there, they’ll see the task in their to-do list.
• Call whispering. Managers can listen in on reps’ calls and secretly speak to them during live calls–offering advice and coaching in real-time.
• Call analytics. Track missed calls, outgoing calls, wait time, and other key metrics that impact your bottom line.

Dooly

Dooly is an AI platform designed to speed up your workflow and eliminate admin tasks. No more ad hoc content that puts your brand at risk, no more time-sucking searches through your company’s shared files, and most importantly–no more deals lost due to slow response times.

Dooly’s main selling points include:

• Automated data entry. It automatically syncs all notes, tasks, activities, and opportunities back to Salesforce without human intervention.
• AI surfaces relevant content. Dooly automatically serves up sales and marketing content to reps based on context.
• Guided selling. Dooly analyzes call logs and notes, then surfaces real-time insights from customer records, helping reps navigate questions, share insights, and overcome objections.

Zoom

Okay, Zoom more or less runs our lives right now–we use it for happy hours, workouts, and the K-12 education system.
Still, Zoom is an essential sales tool–one that deserves a place on this list for its versatility and quality conferencing experience.

More than a video conferencing app, Zoom allows sellers to connect with prospects and customers in multiple ways–whether that means offering a guided demo via screen share, answering questions through the chat window, or hosting a virtual event.

• Collaboration tools. Zoom offers several tools that enhance remote prospect interactions including live screen sharing, call recording, and in-app messaging & content sharing.
• Syncs with existing tools. Zoom integrates with Gmail and Outlook calendars as well as Salesforce, Slack, and the entire G Suite–along with many others. Install the Zoom Scheduler Extension for faster scheduling.
• Waiting room. Zoom’s Waiting Room feature gives hosts control over when participants can join a meeting. You can send all participants to the Waiting Room ahead of the meeting or set permissions that allow certain users to bypass the Waiting Room and enter the meeting.
• Reporting tools. Additionally, Zoom comes with detailed reporting tools that can be used on any device. Sync data back to the CRM, your email, and whatever else you use each day.

Quickvoice

We featured Quickvoice on our “best apps for sales reps” roundup but it’s worth mentioning this gem again. This iOS app allows you to capture ideas, reminders, and even record meetings or presentations you’d like to revisit later.

Additionally, voice memos can sync with iTunes–so whatever you capture in the field can be found on your laptop when needed.

Proposify

Proposify is proposal software that makes it easy for sellers to quickly put together proposals, send them to prospects, and track how prospects interact with documents.
You can set alerts to let you know when a prospect opens or reads your proposal, signs, or shares with another decision-maker. Additionally, you can schedule automated reminders when prospects don’t open your doc.

Proposify’s key features include:

• Branded templates. Design and save on-brand templates sellers can reuse and customize with buyer data.
• Legally-binding contracts. Electronic signatures make it easier for prospects to sign off on a proposal and get other stakeholders to approve this decision. Once signed, Proposify docs are legally binding and eliminate the need for hard-copies and the extra work they create.
• Interactive documents. Embed video, live chat, and interactive pricing into proposal documents.
• Cloud storage. Proposify stores all proposal materials in a central location, allowing reps to find & send custom proposals in minutes.
• Interaction data. Proposify also includes reporting tools that help you understand how prospects interact with the docs you’re sending them. This helps reps identify the best time to reach out or find & fix the areas where prospects lose interest.

Calendly

Another simple tool that can make a big difference for reps, Calendly is all about–you guessed it–managing your calendar.
From discovery calls and demos to follow-ups, Calendly makes it easy to manage multiple calendars, meetings, and events without all of the time-consuming work that comes with the territory.

It’s easy to use–all you need to do is set your availability, share your calendar link with anyone you might meet with, and leads can select a time that works for them based on your pre-defined availability.

Process.st

Process Street is a workflow management platform that allows users to quickly create and distribute checklists and process documents to guide the sales training process and ensure consistency across all reps & locations.

Users can:

• Use Process Street’s pre-made templates–there’s one for just about everything from office cleaning and podcasting to onboarding new reps.
• Build dynamic checklists with if/then logic.
• Streamline approval flows. Create multi-stage or sequential approvals and automatically route them to the right person.
• Use forms to collect structured data from checklists–trainers might leave comments, new hires might leave questions, and reps might incorporate feedback from the field. Later, these insights can be used to improve internal processes.

Zapier

Zapier is an integration and automation platform designed to maximize productivity by connecting disparate applications and services to automate repetitive tasks with “Zaps.”

Zaps are automated workflows that consist of a trigger event and a series of actions that carry out pre-defined steps when a trigger event occurs. The platform offers out-of-the-box integrations for upwards of 2000 web apps–allowing users to move info between them to build custom processes.

Things to Consider When Choosing Sales Productivity Software

Before committing to a whole new sales stack, you’ll need to consider a few things to ensure you get the most out of your investment.

1. Identify your process gaps. Before you do anything, you’ll want to evaluate all processes–prospecting, lead qualification, proposal generation, managing appointments, and so on–for bottlenecks holding sellers back.Where are you losing the most time? Where are reps getting frustrated or side-tracked?
2. Tackle data silos and organization issues. Once you’ve identified the process gaps slowing down your team, you’ll want to find any data silos or organization issues that make it difficult for reps to find and use the information they need.Do you have a centralized content repository? Do communications records include all channels? Is data consistent across all connected platforms?
3. Integrations are critical. Finally, you’ll want to make sure that whatever sales productivity platform you choose, that they all work together as one cohesive system. The tools outlined above (and many more we didn’t mention) deliver the most value when they connect–seamlessly–with the rest of the tools in your stack.
4. Sign up for free trial or demo. Finally, it’s important to note that you’ll want to try before you buy. Most SaaS providers offer a free trial or demo–allowing potential customers to get a feel for the platform. In some cases, a tool might check all the boxes but it feels clunky or your reps find it overly complex.

Which Sales Productivity Tools Are You Going to Try?

The sales productivity tools outlined above barely scratches the surface. From sales enablement software and engagement platforms to handy Chrome extensions, AI-driven sales support, and a whole host of prospect intelligence tools–technology changes the game for productivity–if you choose wisely.

Not every tool makes sense for every sales team. For example, an organization focused primarily on inside sales might not get the full value offered by SPOTIO’s field sales tools, but may see big improvements by adopting Aircall.

Ultimately, it’s about understanding your inefficiencies and finding the tools that help best overcome them.
________

We want to help! In this article, we’ll explain what a sales report is, the 10 sales reports you should run for your field sales team, how to craft a dynamite report, a specific tool you can use to report on sales faster than ever before, and more.

We have a lot of information to share. Time to get this show on the road!

What is a sales analysis report?

A sales report, sometimes referred to as a “sales analysis report,” is a document that tracks specific sales activities and their results over time.

Every sales report is different. That said, most contain information about leads, new accounts won, and revenue generated. Sales leaders and other management professionals can use this information to evaluate sales performance.

The truth is, a proper sales performance report may be the difference between success and failure for your department.

Why? Because this kind of tool will help you determine which sales strategies work best for your sales team. You can then double down on winning tactics, while removing ones that don’t produce favorable results for your company.

10 important reports for field sales teams

There are many different kinds of sales management reports. Here are ten that your field sales team should be running on a regular basis.

Sales activity report

True to its name, the sales activity report tracks the various sales activities that sales reps perform on a daily, weekly, monthly, and even annual basis. With this information, you’ll learn why your reps achieve the results they do.

Why this report is important: Sales activity reports are all about effort. Are your reps making enough visits and calls? Do they send enough emails and texts? Are they updating your CRM software of choice to make future sales easier?

If the answer to these questions is “no” then you need to motivate your reps to work harder. If the answer is “yes,” invest in better training to improve results.

Sales pipeline report

The sales pipeline report is a visual representation of your sales process, depicting important information like the number of leads, opportunities, and deals your reps have won. These details make it easy to adjust sales strategies when needed.

Why this report is important: This report will help you gauge the overall health of your department. Healthy sales teams generate plenty of leads, opportunities, and deals. Unhealthy sales teams do not.

We recommend analyzing conversion metrics at every stage of your sales funnel. Doing so will help you pinpoint potential problems.

If, for example, your reps produce a ton of leads, but few opportunities, you probably need to reconsider your target audience. You may be going after the wrong people, which is why your lead-to-opportunity ratio is subpar.

Total sales performance report

A total sales performance report will tell you (surprise!) about the total number of sales your team has generated within a specific time period, i.e. one month.

Why this report is important: Are you bringing in enough sales? Take a look at your total sales performance report to see. Your answer will determine your actions.

If you need to produce more sales, for instance, you probably need to invest in new sales strategies and tactics. The ones you’ve deployed in the past aren’t working. If, on the other hand, you’re happy with your sales numbers, keep the status quo.

Win-loss analysis reports

The win-loss analysis report will show you how many sales opportunities your reps turned into actual sales for your company. Hopefully, your win-rate is sky high!

Why this report is important: Win-loss reports analyze the effectiveness of sales tactics. If the call and meeting scripts, email templates, etc. that your reps use are working, you should have a favorable win-rate. If they aren’t, well…

Take an honest look at your win-loss report. If you like what you see, double down on your current tactics. If you need to see better results, try different approaches.

Average deal size report

The average deal size report tracks the revenue your company generates per sale. For some sales departments it will be $10. For others, $10k. It really just depends.

Why this report is important: When you know how much each deal is worth to your company, you’ll know how many deals your reps need to close to hit your revenue targets. You can then set appropriate sales goals for your team.

If, for instance, your team’s average deal size is $10,000 and you want to generate $100,000 of revenue in the next 30 days, you know you need to close 10 deals.

Revenue by sales reps report

The revenue by sales rep report makes it easy to see the amount of revenue that each of your reps generates for your sales department.

Why this report is important: This report will tell you who your best sellers are. Armed with this information, you can assign the right leads to the right reps at the right times, generating more revenue in the process.

Let’s say that your company just landed a meeting with a top prospect—one you’ve been trying to get in touch with for months. Are you going to assign that lead to the guy you just hired or your star rep who’s most likely to close the deal? Exactly.

Revenue by territory report

The revenue by territory report is similar to the revenue by sales rep report we just discussed. The difference? Revenue by territory reports track territory performance, rather than individual sales rep performance, which is important because….

Why this report is important: When you know how much revenue a specific territory generates, you can make smarter sales decisions.

If, for example, you run this report and see that a specific territory is producing a ton of sales, you can assign multiple reps to it. Doing so will allow your company to cover more ground and (hopefully!) generate more sales in less time.

Upsell and cross-sell reports

Upsell and cross sell reports track two things: the number of upsells and cross sells that your reps have made, and the value of each transaction.

Why this report is important: Access to the upsell and cross sell information in these reports  is critical. With it, you can pinpoint the best upsell and cross sell opportunities and train your reps to identify and take advantage of them.

You’ll also be able to determine which products and/or services are easiest to upsell and/or cross sell. Once you share these details with your reps, revenue will rise.

Sales leaderboards

A sales leaderboard report will track the performance of every rep in your department, then rank them from first to last on a virtual scoreboard.

Why this report is important: While not a traditional field sales report, leaderboards can be extremely useful. Sales managers can use them to stimulate friendly competition and motivate their reps to work harder and achieve more.

Running leaderboard reports on a regular basis will also tell you which of your reps are driven, ambitious professionals and which aren’t.

Sales forecast reports

Sales forecast reports use current sales data to predict future results. Want to know how many deals you’re likely to close next quarter? Run one of these reports ASAP.

Why this report is important: If you know that your field sales team will probably close 10 deals next month, resulting in $50,000 in revenue, you can:

• Plan Ahead: Knowing how much money your department will generate is vital information, which company leaders can use to make better decisions.
• Make Adjustments: What if you need to make more than $50k in revenue next month? You can adjust your sales strategy to try and close more deals.

Daily, weekly, monthly and annual sales reports

The report you want to run, as well as the information you want to reveal, will help you determine the time frame that your reporting efforts cover.

Let’s dive into that a bit more…

Daily: Daily sales reports are great for granular information, like the number of visits a rep makes on a daily basis and the number of leads said visits produce.

Weekly: Weekly sales reports are best for tracking team-oriented goals, like the number of deals closed and revenue generated by an entire sales department.

Monthly: Monthly sales reporting gives sales managers a birds-eye view of the metrics in daily and weekly sales reports, providing a longer-term perspective.

Annual: Finally, annual sales reports are big-picture tools. They can be used to plan sales quotas for each of your reps, identify sales trends, pinpoint Marketing’s impact on your department, and otherwise help you become a better manager.

PRO TIP: If you can set up some of these reports to run and send to stakeholders automatically (especially the daily and weekly ones) that will save you a lot of time down the road. Depending on the system you use, this may or may not take a lot of time to accomplish, but it’s well worth the effort.

How to make a sales report

We’ve covered the different sales reports that you can run for your field sales team. Now, let’s talk about how to write a sales report in the most effective way.

Here are a few tips to make sure your sales reports add value to your company.

Identify your audience

The person you plan to give your sales report to will largely determine the information your report includes. Reports for sales reps will contain information specific to each rep’s performance. Reports for executives should summarize your entire team’s performance in a succinct and easy-to-understand way. Identify your audience and keep them in mind when crafting your sales reports.

Start with the end goal in mind

What message do you want to convey with your sales report? When you know the answer to this question, you can include KPIs and metrics that support your goal. If, for example, you want to show upper management that you’ve increased sales by 10% this quarter, you can highlight team figures related to close rate and revenue. Always start with your goal so that you end up where you want to be.

Choose the desired reporting cadence

As described above, daily, weekly, monthly, and annual sales reports can be used to more accurately convey specific bits of information. Now that you know who your audience is and the data you want to share with them, choose a reporting cadence that fits. Then compare your most current metrics to the same metrics of the previous year (i.e. August 2022 to August 2021) in your report. Like we mentioned earlier, if it’s possible to set some of these reports to run and send out automatically, we highly recommend doing so. It may require a bit more effort up front, but the time you’ll save in the future will be monumental.

Select only the most relevant KPIs

You don’t want to overload people with information. Give them the most relevant data, then cut the rest. How do you know which KPIs are relevant and which aren’t? This is why you start with the end in mind. The goal of your sales reporting efforts will determine relevance. Scan through your sales data and find the KPIs and metrics that matter to your audience and support your narrative.

Visualize sales data points

Now that you’ve collected your sales data, do your best to visualize it. Doing so will make your sales reports much easier to understand. This is especially important when reporting to executives and other people who aren’t in sales. They probably don’t understand what all of your metrics mean. They don’t have time to learn either. Add graphs, charts, etc. to make your reports easy to digest.

Provide an analysis of the data

Finally, tell your audience what the numbers mean—especially if the numbers tell a less-than-awesome story. Maybe sales declined last quarter. A graph that shows negative growth is generally cause for concern. But what if sales declined because of supply chain issues, not because of poor performance? Making this clear in your reports is important. Always give your reports context by providing data analysis.

Reports on only the metrics that matter most

As a sales manager, you need sales reports.

Yes, crafting them can be a pain. But sales reports are essential tools that will help you gauge the health of your department, plan better sales strategies, and communicate with company leadership in more meaningful ways.

Looking for the easiest, best way to create sales performance reports for your company? Give SPOTIO a try. Our My Reports feature makes it easy to craft reports in seconds, using only the data that matter to you and/or your audience.

Sign up for a free demo to see SPOTIO in action and decide if it’s right for you.