Benefits Types and Steps of Sales Tracking in Business Sales

BENEFITS TYPES AND STEPS OF SALES TRACKING IN BUSINESS SALES A. Introduction Every company that runs a certain industrial niche will definitely depend on its business processes by marketing products (product marketing) or services (services marketing), then selling them to potential customers (prospects). However, it is not only focused on the business sales process (corporate sales) because the sales team (sales force) also needs to measure the effectiveness of sales management (sales productivity) for each sales method used. One approach to measuring sales performance (sales approach) is conducting sales tracking. Basically, this business sales tracking strategy involves sales data that is relevant to market demand. Where later the data will turn into a collection of information or insights that the sales team can use to increase the average closing sales, sales profit (return on sales), and sales volume. If you want to explore the sales tracking process for your business sales planning needs, then you have come to the right place. Because, inMarketing will explain everything you need to learn about sales tracking. Where by the end of this article, you will know exactly how to track sales more optimally. B. Understanding Sales Tracking Launching from the Pipefy website, sales tracking is the process of collecting, analyzing (sales analysis), and monitoring various sales metrics to find out information or insight about customer personas, customer values, and business conversion rates. These metrics include customer behavior, lead generation, email campaigns, sales calls, social proof, and so on. For more details, the main steps in carrying out sales tracking include: a) Determine the KPIs or sales metrics that need to be tracked. Explain each stage in the sales process (sales pipeline). b) Collecting or combining data from various sources into a single database (data ingestion or data warehousing). c) Turn data into something the sales team can use to support the business sales process. The hope is that the sales team and company managers can adjust their sales strategies so that the customer lifecycle in purchasing company products or services is more effective (customer buying cycle). And can increase the stages of the sales pipeline which influences the increase in the company's opportunities to convert sales leads (lead conversion) into buying customers. Apart from that, this sales tracking process also helps business growth in ways such as: a) Make it easier for the sales team (sales force automation concept) to make business decisions based on recent sales activities, whether online or offline sales (inside sales or outside sales). b) Helping companies achieve all their business goals related to sales (sales goals) more easily and consistently because they know how to map business processes (business process mapping). c) Provide a clear view of what is hampering sales (sales report). So, the sales team has more time to change its sales strategy before the problem becomes critical. d) Knowing the performance of employees from the sales team in reaching or acquiring customers (prospecting) during the sales process. e) Creating more personalized product or service offerings (personal selling or direct marketing) to customers as the business target market (personalized marketing concept). C. Type of Sales Tracking Before starting the sales tracking process, you and/or your sales team need to decide on the type of tracking. Below are six types of sales tracking that you can consider, as well as the main metrics needed for each type of tracking. 1) Sales Performance Quoting from the SalesBlink site, sales performance refers to the sales team's efforts in measuring sales activities (sales pitch) and then comparing the results with business sales targets. In other words, sales performance is a measure of the sales factors that the sales team carries out to achieve the goals in the business sales strategy. Ideally, sales managers can benefit from this type of tracking by looking at key metrics, such as: • Average profit margin value. Sales growth or the amount of increase in sales volume within a certain period of time. • Average revenue per unit (ARPU) based on upselling or cross-selling sales to each customer. • Customer churn rate. • Conversion rate of consumers who want to fulfill their needs (customer needs). • Lead conversion rate through cold calling. • Average order value (AOV). Incremental sales or the number and value of products a company sells during a promotional period that exceeds normal sales. • Customer lifetime value (CLV), which refers to the level of retention of loyal customers who play an active role in business development (customer loyalty). • Level of market penetration. • Duration of sales cycle. • Year-over-year growth (YoY). • Customer acquisition cost (CAC). • Open rate on email marketing content. 2) Sales Lead Tracking Effective sales lead tracking usually involves capturing sales metrics related to customer behavior. Then, the sales team will compare the metric data with the prospect's previous behavior. Then identify which actions have the biggest impact on customers' overall purchasing decisions. Ideally, sales managers need to engage key metrics, such as: • Time of the customer's last contact with the company (lead time). • Prospect behavior such as visits to websites, reach and impressions on social media, etc. • Lead score and lead status. When you track these metrics, you will be able to identify the most valuable prospects within your existing customer base. Refocus your business' best sales practices for effective lead nurturing efforts and close more deals. 3) Sales Goals Achieving business goals in sales activities cannot happen by chance. If you don't track the progress of your business sales, then later you will find it difficult to see each sales success. So, if your sales team is always trying desperately to increase sales at the end of each quarter, then they must implement a special tracking strategy for sales goals. Basically, sales teams need the following four metrics to maximize tracking sales goals. • Total revenue target. • Monthly, weekly, or even daily income targets. • Total daily sales. • Total cumulative sales. Proper sales goals tracking efforts will provide a clear picture of how close the sales team's efforts are to achieving its business goals. As well as knowing the number of leads or sales you need to achieve business goals. 4) Sales Pipeline If your sales team wants to know exactly what is happening with the business sales process (sales mix), then they must carry out the sales tracking stages related to the business sales pipeline. Generally, you need to get real-time data (data mining) about the progress of each sales transaction by tracking the following metrics. • The company's total open opportunities during the sale of the business. • Opportunity for loss (pure risk) or loss of business profitability per day or week or month. • Sales pipeline speed. • Win rate. • Length of sales cycle. • Monthly sales growth. These metrics will tell the sales team how much cash flow is flowing through the sales pipeline at any given time. As well as helping the sales team to estimate future sales more accurately (sales forecasting). 5) Sales Activities To track sales activity, you need to track the same metrics as you do for sales performance. It's just that, instead of separating the tracking process based on the sales teams involved, you need to look at the success rate on the sales activities themselves. For example, how many emails did the audience get a response from? What is the average duration of sales calls that your sales team runs? Or what is the average response rate for SMS marketing? This type of tracking can inform your sales team about which sales methods are most appropriate and effective for reaching customers. 6) Sales Funnel If your sales team feels that there are stages of the sales process that are not going well, then they need to consider tracking the sales funnel aspect. The tip is to implement each sales process that the sales team has previously determined, then analyze the following metrics: • Total inbound leads or prospects that enter the business marketing environment (inbound marketing concept). • Total outbound leads or prospects that come out (outbound marketing concept) • Number of qualified leads per month. • Conversion rate for each stage. By tracking this metric, your sales team can see whether the inbound leads really match the product characteristics and how effective your outbound lead generation is. In addition, the conversion rate tracking process will show the sales team if there are certain stages that cause customer turnover.