From 179 sales leaders interviewed by The Brooks Group for the Sales Leadership Report 2020, only 31% of sales managers said that they had strong confidence in their sales team’s ability to achieve key business objectives.
That means 69% of managers weren’t sure about their sales team’s performance.
That is a drastic number! But what can you do to change that?
This is where sales performance tracking changes the game.
Our aim for this article is to understand the importance of sales performance tracking and find the right reports that will help you predict the success of your team.
4 primary benefits of tracking sales
1. Discover problems at an early stage
Sales performance tracking keeps you updated on any alterations in the existing process. This helps you to detect problems at an early stage and strategize accordingly.
Ultimately, sales tracking is similar to taking a precaution than a cure.
For example, you have a sales funnel dashboard in your CRM, and you notice a significantly lower percentage of leads moving toward the middle of the funnel from the top of the funnel stage.
In such a scenario, you can take the necessary steps, like focusing more on customer engagement or altering the strategy, etc., to ensure that the problem gets solved.
This way, sales performance tracking can help you prevent future blunders by detecting problems at an early stage.
Here are some more examples of predictions you can make based on sales performance tracking:
You have a healthy demo booking, but the demo completion rate is very low. That shows your prospects are booking the demo but not joining on time. You can solve this problem by automating a simple email prior to the demo time.
The total number of no-show demos is high, but the rescheduling of demos is very low. That means your prospects are missing demos in the first place and not booking the demos again. Maybe you can give a phone call and text message with a calendar link when prospects miss their demo. To increase the chances of reschedules.
If the demo requests per day are declining, you can connect with the marketing team to find out the problem. Maybe there has been a significant impact on the website traffic. Or you simply need to push the demo booking more on your website.
If the demos attended by an individual rep is declining, you need to invest more time in training the rep. Work with them and shadow a few calls to truly understand the problems they are facing.
The report on “Deals in pipeline by sales reps” shows you the true impact of individuals on the bottom line.
2. Works as an alarm clock
Sales is all about timing.
Your sales reps have to reach prospects, communicate, and close – all at the right time.
There’s an obvious chance your reps may miss out on important leads.
And this is where sales performance tracking enters the picture.
It provides real-time updates that work as a reminder for your team’s deadlines.
For example, a report on “Deals in pipeline by stages” will show you where exactly the block is. In order to meet targets, you can get a clear idea of where your team should spend time communicating.
For example, prospects in the ‘Decision’ stage are more likely to convert than the ‘Consideration’ stage.
Hence, sales performance tracking works as an alarm clock that lets you measure the gap between the set goal and the achieved target of the entire sales team.
3. Helps in the decision-making process
It is vital to optimizing your strategy at specific intervals.
This can be done only when you have a reliable progress report of the implemented strategy.
Sales performance tracking allows you to measure the efficiency of each stage.
Further, it helps you avoid useless activities that are not contributing to your success.
For example, reports on sequences show the performance of each email with clear sales metrics. If you find out the last email of your sequence has only a 2% open rate, you can either get rid of it or optimize the subject line a bit.
Of course, this was just a small example, but sales tracking can help you with much bigger decisions – even finalizing your ideal channel of communication.
4. Provides real-time sales insights
Sales tracking can offer the following insights in real-time:
Who is leading the sales leaderboard in your team?
Who has the most contribution in revenue this month?
Who has the highest commission earned?
Which sales rep has the highest assistance rate in deal closing?
Which sales reps are closing deals without any assistance?
What does your revenue donut look like?
What are the top industries from your sales closure?
Who had the greatest number of calls in a day, week, or month?
25 key sales metrics you should be tracking
Here is a list of all the important metrics you should be tracking as a sales manager. In the end, you can find a link to a detailed article for the same 🙂
5 sales performance tracking reports that tell you everything about your team
1. Activity-based sales report
One of the simplest ways to measure the performance of sales teams is to track the different activities and their outcomes.
So this would include sales metrics like the number of calls/texts made, email outreach, follow-ups, scheduled meetings, and much more.
Keeping track of the number of outreaches done by specific sales reps and their progress is also helpful.
It would certainly help you…
Recognize the star performer of the team
Identify the rep who needs a helping hand
Discover the activities that consume the maximum amount of time
These details help you improve your sales process and enhance training programs.
2. Sales goal tracking report
Goals are an inevitable part of sales. Quarterly or yearly goals are decided based on the data of past few years.
This is where Sales Goal Tracking helps. With this metric, you can measure specific sales goals. This tool lets you track the distance between your accomplished and set goals.
You can measure the gap between your weekly, monthly, and quarterly sales and revenue target.
3. Pipeline-based tracking report
Sales pipeline reports help you understand deal movement throughout the sales process.
This report lets you identify the real-time progress of deals.
You can determine…
The percentage of open opportunities moving to the next stage
The sales cycle length
The stage where most of the deals get stuck, and so on.
This is used to understand the deal status and identify a proper deal distribution.
Based on the insights, you can identify the main roadblocks and create strategies to ensure streamlined sales pipeline. This is how a pipeline report could look like:
4. Opportunity win rate reports
The formula is simple if you want to calculate the win rate for a particular time frame.
Win Rate: Opportunities Won / Opportunities Generated
This report helps you analyze various essential factors, like the efficiency of lead nurturing activities, the effectiveness of the sales process, and many more.
By calculating opportunity win rate, you can observe which rep has outperformed and which rep needs more resources and guidance.
5. Deal lost report
This is a crucial report because it shows the top reasons why you’re losing deals.
When a sales rep marks a deal as “Lost”, the CRM asks for a specific reason for failure.
This report intelligently collects the data and turns it into insights for you.
Such reports are likely to give you the following insights:
What is the number one reason for losing deals? Is it related to a product, or is it related to salespeople?
What can you do immediately to make a positive impact? For example, if the number 1 reason for your deal loss is “Lack of Product Education”, the next best thing is training. If the reason is “Picked a competitor”, you can do detailed research on it and find probable benefits of your product again the competition.
Level up your team’s performance with this FREE sales tracking template
This sales tracking template is a perfect fit if you’re just getting started with your business or have a handful of sales deals.
The template has various sales metrics and allows you to calculate sales performance using multiple data. It has a Sales Activity Tracking template, Sales Goals Tracking template and Sales Tracker.
The template is extremely easy to use. All you have to do is enter the relevant details and get your numbers.
Salesmate is a one-stop platform to manage all your sales, marketing, and customer support activities.
While we talk about managing these activities or getting a report of all sales activity, CRM is the best assistant that helps in getting it done.
An advanced CRM like Salesmate provides a centralized database for all your contacts, sales pipeline management, marketing automation, and built-in communication channels.
Moreover, if your business is growing and managing everything in spreadsheets is becoming too complex, Salesmate is the right choice.
Sales Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) measure the performance and effectiveness of sales activities. They help sales teams assess how well they meet their targets and objectives.
From 179 sales leaders interviewed by The Brooks Group for the Sales Leadership Report 2020, only 31% of sales managers said that they had strong confidence in their sales team’s ability to achieve key business objectives.
That means 69% of managers weren’t sure about their sales team’s performance.
That is a drastic number! But what can you do to change that?
This is where sales performance tracking changes the game.
Our aim for this article is to understand the importance of sales performance tracking and find the right reports that will help you predict the success of your team.
4 primary benefits of tracking sales
1. Discover problems at an early stage
Sales performance tracking keeps you updated on any alterations in the existing process. This helps you to detect problems at an early stage and strategize accordingly.
Ultimately, sales tracking is similar to taking a precaution than a cure.
For example, you have a sales funnel dashboard in your CRM, and you notice a significantly lower percentage of leads moving toward the middle of the funnel from the top of the funnel stage.
In such a scenario, you can take the necessary steps, like focusing more on customer engagement or altering the strategy, etc., to ensure that the problem gets solved.
This way, sales performance tracking can help you prevent future blunders by detecting problems at an early stage.
Here are some more examples of predictions you can make based on sales performance tracking:
2. Works as an alarm clock
Sales is all about timing.
Your sales reps have to reach prospects, communicate, and close – all at the right time.
There’s an obvious chance your reps may miss out on important leads.
And this is where sales performance tracking enters the picture.
It provides real-time updates that work as a reminder for your team’s deadlines.
For example, a report on “Deals in pipeline by stages” will show you where exactly the block is. In order to meet targets, you can get a clear idea of where your team should spend time communicating.
For example, prospects in the ‘Decision’ stage are more likely to convert than the ‘Consideration’ stage.
Hence, sales performance tracking works as an alarm clock that lets you measure the gap between the set goal and the achieved target of the entire sales team.
3. Helps in the decision-making process
It is vital to optimizing your strategy at specific intervals.
This can be done only when you have a reliable progress report of the implemented strategy.
Sales performance tracking allows you to measure the efficiency of each stage.
Further, it helps you avoid useless activities that are not contributing to your success.
For example, reports on sequences show the performance of each email with clear sales metrics. If you find out the last email of your sequence has only a 2% open rate, you can either get rid of it or optimize the subject line a bit.
Of course, this was just a small example, but sales tracking can help you with much bigger decisions – even finalizing your ideal channel of communication.
4. Provides real-time sales insights
Sales tracking can offer the following insights in real-time:
25 key sales metrics you should be tracking
Here is a list of all the important metrics you should be tracking as a sales manager. In the end, you can find a link to a detailed article for the same 🙂
Find sales metrics and KPIs by industry
5 sales performance tracking reports that tell you everything about your team
1. Activity-based sales report
One of the simplest ways to measure the performance of sales teams is to track the different activities and their outcomes.
So this would include sales metrics like the number of calls/texts made, email outreach, follow-ups, scheduled meetings, and much more.
Keeping track of the number of outreaches done by specific sales reps and their progress is also helpful.
It would certainly help you…
These details help you improve your sales process and enhance training programs.
2. Sales goal tracking report
Goals are an inevitable part of sales. Quarterly or yearly goals are decided based on the data of past few years.
This is where Sales Goal Tracking helps. With this metric, you can measure specific sales goals. This tool lets you track the distance between your accomplished and set goals.
You can measure the gap between your weekly, monthly, and quarterly sales and revenue target.
3. Pipeline-based tracking report
Sales pipeline reports help you understand deal movement throughout the sales process.
This report lets you identify the real-time progress of deals.
You can determine…
This is used to understand the deal status and identify a proper deal distribution.
Based on the insights, you can identify the main roadblocks and create strategies to ensure streamlined sales pipeline. This is how a pipeline report could look like:
4. Opportunity win rate reports
The formula is simple if you want to calculate the win rate for a particular time frame.
Win Rate: Opportunities Won / Opportunities Generated
This report helps you analyze various essential factors, like the efficiency of lead nurturing activities, the effectiveness of the sales process, and many more.
By calculating opportunity win rate, you can observe which rep has outperformed and which rep needs more resources and guidance.
5. Deal lost report
This is a crucial report because it shows the top reasons why you’re losing deals.
When a sales rep marks a deal as “Lost”, the CRM asks for a specific reason for failure.
This report intelligently collects the data and turns it into insights for you.
Such reports are likely to give you the following insights:
Level up your team’s performance with this FREE sales tracking template
This sales tracking template is a perfect fit if you’re just getting started with your business or have a handful of sales deals.
The template has various sales metrics and allows you to calculate sales performance using multiple data. It has a Sales Activity Tracking template, Sales Goals Tracking template and Sales Tracker.
The template is extremely easy to use. All you have to do is enter the relevant details and get your numbers.
Don’t want templates; Salesmate is here!
Salesmate is a one-stop platform to manage all your sales, marketing, and customer support activities.
While we talk about managing these activities or getting a report of all sales activity, CRM is the best assistant that helps in getting it done.
An advanced CRM like Salesmate provides a centralized database for all your contacts, sales pipeline management, marketing automation, and built-in communication channels.
Moreover, if your business is growing and managing everything in spreadsheets is becoming too complex, Salesmate is the right choice.
Dhanashree Pal