How to create an effective sales tracking system in 2024

A career in sales is often romanticized. People picture silver-tongued agents landing multi-million dollar contracts using nothing but gut feeling and an ability to read their prospects. But in reality, the most successful sellers and sales organizations use facts and figures to create and execute their strategies.

According to Gartner, 65% of B2B organizations will transition from intuition-based decision-making to data-driven decision-making by 2026. So how can modern companies collect, organize, and deploy data to increase their sales success rates?

Many tools exist, but few are more important than an effective sales tracking system. Let’s discuss the ins and outs of implementing one for your team.

What is a sales activity tracker?

Every lead interaction offers data — and this data, when it’s well-documented, can help sales leaders double down on what’s working best. Sales trackers enable teams to keep an accurate record at any scale of every prospect interaction throughout the entire sales cycle.

Sales trackers enable managers and individual reps alike to view essential information that keeps everyone moving in the same direction. Managers often use built-in reporting tools to generate graphs and charts.

But sales trackers aren’t purely a tool to review performance.

For example, suppose you track your inside and outside sales processes. You can create a database that’ll suggest actionable next steps for each process to improve the customer experience with individual prospects.

Why does your business need sales tracking?

Any seasoned salesperson knows that tech stacks often grow exponentially, to the point where they feel more harmful than helpful to their day-to-day activities. Although most tools are optional, sales tracking must be viewed as non-negotiable.

So, why are trackers pivotal to today’s sales teams?

Here are four pertinent reasons:

1. They provide an overview of sales performance vs. sales targets

Monitoring sales performance without tracking software is like training to run a five-minute mile without a watch. You don’t know how near you are to that benchmark if you don’t have a means to track every run.

Sales trackers generate hard numbers to compare actual sales performance with monthly, quarterly, and yearly sales targets. With 91% of B2B sales teams failing to hit their quotas in 2023, close tracking has never been more essential.

2. They enable revenue and sales forecasting

Accurate forecasting lets you allocate resources to fuel future growth.

Sales trackers provide insight into the realities of what’s happening on the ground so you can better plan for the future. If your overall trendline for Product A is down, you know it might be time to go all-in on Product B.

Without sales tracking tools, you’re flying blind, relying mainly on hearsay and gut instinct to hit your sales quotas.

3. They evaluate strategy implementation

Planning for the next quarter or year means reviewing existing strategies. Should you continue your current sales strategy, or is it time to pivot?

Strategy implementation requires close monitoring to ensure you get positive, lasting results. Sales trackers tell you whether or not your strategy is actually paying dividends.

4. They offer progress insights for informed decision-making

Lastly, sales trackers make it easier to make smart decisions. Entering sales targets into a sales tracker is like inputting a destination in Google Maps and trusting that it will monitor your progress along that route until you reach (or pass!) the final destination.

Sales trackers provide the numbers and usable intelligence reps and sales leaders need to make wise deal decisions and explore the most profitable avenues.

What to look for in the right sales tracking tool

There’s no one right sales tracking tool; the right solution is the one that enables you to meet your business goals. Thousands of sales tracking solutions exist, but we recommend searching for sales trackers that focus on these key areas:

Platform usability

State-of-the-art tools often revolutionize businesses, but the gains are marginal if the tools are finicky and come with a steep learning curve.

The best sales trackers are simple for new and seasoned reps to deploy and use.

Useful features

Some sales trackers offer only a basic selection of tools, whereas others offer hundreds of possibilities. Before you ever buy a sales tracking solution, document what you expect from that software and compare it against a short list of brands.

 Here are some examples of useful features to have:

• Real-time data visibility
• Integration capabilities
• Custom reporting
• Built-in forecasting
• On-the-go data access

Quality customer service

Every software solution can (and likely will) have technical issues at one point or another. What matters is that you have the support you need to get back online as quickly as possible.

Ensure the solution you choose has a robust customer service department. Ideally, you should have multiple contact channels and an around-the-clock team available for support.

Ease of integration with your sales CRM

You need a connected tech stack to prevent any of your data and operations from becoming siloed.

With this in mind, your sales tracker should integrate directly into your CRM to bring everything together. Be sure to check out the native and out-of-the-box integrations of each sales tracker you consider to make sure they’re compatible with your current stack.

Flexibility

The right sales tracking tool will stay with your business for much of its story. Ensure your tool has the flexibility to grow with you.

Plus, added flexibility leads to better customization. Your sales tracker should mold to your needs, not vice versa.

Budget

Cost always matters.

Look at your finances and decide how much you can and want to spend. Spending tens of thousands of dollars makes little sense for a small sales team. Any investment should provide a clear, relatively short roadmap to a positive return.

Customer reviews

Investigate what others are saying. Don’t just rely on prominent sales blogs and review platforms. Examine forums and chat rooms, including Reddit and Slack communities, to get information directly from other reps.

How to implement an effective sales tracking system

Every new tool needs an implementation plan, and sales trackers are no exception. To see a return on your investment, start by developing a process for integrating your new tracker and analyzing its outputs.

Follow these four steps to implement an impactful sales tracking system:

1. Identify what key metrics and performance indicators to track

Not all metrics are created equal. Some sales metrics are critical to measure, and some are just “nice to haves.”

Start by outlining the metrics that define success and failure for your business. Focus on these three metric categories:

Key performance indicators (KPIs)

KPIs concentrate on your sales team as a whole. These are the higher-level numbers telling you how everything is coming together. Some examples of KPIs to follow include:

• Net revenue
• Net revenue retention (NRR)
• Repeat customer rate
• Average customer lifetime value (CLV)
• Overall conversion rate
• Market penetration rate

Sales performance metrics

Performance metrics illustrate how effective your sales activities are. Here are some examples of sales performance metrics:

• Email click-through rate (CTR)
• Email response rate
• Percentage of calls resulting in a meeting
• Number of LinkedIn connection requests accepted
• LinkedIn conversations started 

Lead generation metrics

Lead generation metrics hone in on how effectively you’re able to turn leads into real revenue once they’re in your sales pipeline. Here are some examples of lead generation metrics you could monitor:

• Number of opportunities created
• Percentage of sales qualified leads
• Lead conversion rate
• Win rate
• Deal size
• Cross-sells
• Upsells

2. Identify the right sales tracker tool

Once you know what you want to track, begin researching sales tracking tools using the must-have features your business has prioritized. Don’t just opt for the most well-known brand. Look for a brand that aligns with your business’s needs.

Take advantage of any free trials, and don’t be afraid to spend a few weeks test-driving different tools before settling on the most suitable one.

A quick caveat: A sales tracking spreadsheet isn't good enough

Let’s address the elephant in the room: Sales tracking spreadsheets are not fit to monitor sales activity in 2024. But despite the obvious drawbacks of low scalability, manual entry, and inflexibility, sales teams still use them today.

In short, unless you’re running a small Etsy shop, it’s time to move beyond your sales tracking spreadsheet and opt for something savvier.

3. Integrate your new system within your organization

After choosing a solution, it’s time to integrate the system with your current processes. During the planning stage, the goal is to establish a uniform process with straightforward workflows. These should reflect how your sales team operates, so collecting, storing, and using the data should be a breeze.

Don’t forget: Communicate the changes to your sales team

Be sure you don’t make changes in a vacuum. Get your sales team together and discuss their new sales tracking tool. Take the time to answer questions like: 

• What is it?
• How does it work?
• Why are you implementing it?
• How will it benefit them?
• When will they be able to start using it?

Give your team a chance to ask any questions about your sales tracker. Great communication increases the odds of gaining their buy-in.

Also important: Provide training to facilitate an easier transition

Invest in proper training for your reps. Instead of installing the tool and telling them to work it out as they go, gather everyone together and show how it works.

Some larger providers may even offer virtual or in-person training for larger companies. If not, assign some veteran agents to learn the tool and then train others.

4. Analyze and act on the data

Once the tool is up and running and everyone’s adopted it, you can begin using that precious data. Be sure to set aside some time to review and extract the insights from your sales tracker app on a regular cadence. 

But remember this: Reviewing data is only half of the battle. Sales tracking data is only valuable when it leads to process improvement. Don’t forget to implement actual changes and experiments based on the data you gather.

Optimize your sales pipeline management with Streak

Sales data lives in inboxes, social media, phone calls, and every other channel you can think of — and Streak can help you make sense of it all by presenting it in an easy-to-view format, right in Gmail. 

With Streak, there’s finally a way to track all of your deals and KPIs in the same place to make sure you’re working toward both your own quota and your organization’s top priorities.

Take advantage of features like saved views, pipelines, funnel reports, customizable columns, and more. 

Think Streak is worth a shot? Request a free 14-day trial today, and we’ll have you streamlining your sales pipeline management in no time.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What features should you look for in sales tracker software?

Every business has different expectations. However, to extract insights more simply, you should search for real-time reporting capabilities, strong integrations, and custom reporting options.

What are the best sales trackers?

Some of the best sales trackers on the market include HubSpot, Salesforce, and Zoho. However, the best sales tracker is the one that meets your goals. For example, integrating your sales process with an existing CRM, like Streak, will allow you to manage everything in one place without any extra complexities.

How does a sales activity tracker assist in making better-informed decisions?

Sales activity tracking provides data for companies, teams, and individual reps. These platforms collect and present data to make it easy for decision-makers to spot trends and patterns in their sales operations and performance.

What is the best way to keep track of sales team performance?

The best way to track and report on sales team performance is with a dedicated sales tracking tool. These platforms integrate into your existing setup and collect data in the background. They can generate custom reports using dozens of different metrics to help you and your teammates improve sales performance.