There hasn’t been a time that demanded sustainable revenue growth more than now. Economic headwinds of the last few months have forced businesses to rethink their revenue growth strategies and focus on efficiency. This means getting away with anything that does not make a positive dent in revenue or causes revenue to leak across the sales funnel.
But cutting deep costs is not the only way to increase profits. It’s about doubling down on what’s working. And investing time and resources in strategies that help the whole company march towards the same objective – increased revenue.
And there is one sure shot way of achieving this. By knowing exactly what’s happening with your deals. And how can you do that? Activity tracking.
Let’s dive deep.
What is Activity Tracking?
Activity tracking in sales refers to monitoring and recording the various actions and behaviors undertaken by sales professionals as they engage in their sales activities. It involves tracking and measuring the specific activities performed during the sales process, such as the number of calls made, emails sent, meetings scheduled, demos conducted, and deals closed.
The purpose of activity tracking in sales is to gain insights into the sales process, assess individual and team performance, and make data-driven decisions to improve sales effectiveness.
What is an Activity Tracking Software?
An activity tracking software is designed to monitor and record the various activities performed by sales representatives or teams. These activities typically include interactions with leads and prospects, customer communication, follow-ups, and other sales-related tasks. The primary purpose of activity tracking software is to help sales managers and team leaders assess and improve the productivity and effectiveness of their sales teams.
Why Do We Need Activity Tracking?
Accurately and comprehensively capturing activity data poses a significant challenge. Despite 67% of businesses utilizing 4 to 10 digital tools, they need to track the activity data generated by these tools completely and precisely. Additionally, 79% of opportunity-related data sales representatives collect never enters the CRM.
Moreover, the data recorded in systems like CRM could be more reliable, plagued by issues like outdated, missing, or incomplete entries. This lack of data accuracy is a concern for as many as 70% of revenue leaders, leading to substantial financial losses averaging around $15 million per year for organizations.
The presence of accurate and complete activity data in systems like CRM creates misalignment among teams in terms of their technological tools and objectives. When sales teams grapple with questions about updated prospect contact information or the correctness of email IDs in the CRM, their efficiency could improve, positively impacting both businesses and customers.
Due to lacking confidence in the data, sales, and marketing teams work in the dark, unable to leverage the full potential of significant investments like CRMs. This situation results in poor returns on investment for such resources.
How Does Poor Activity Data Affect Revenue?
Poor data and a lack of activity data in the CRM can harm gaining accurate insights and lead to revenue leakage throughout the customer journey. Here are some key points to consider:
1. Inaccurate or incomplete data
When data quality is compromised, it becomes challenging to extract meaningful insights. Only complete or updated information can lead to correct assumptions and flawed decision-making.
2. Missed opportunities
Important customer interactions and touchpoints may go undocumented without comprehensive activity data. This lack of visibility can result in missed opportunities to engage prospects, address their needs, and nurture relationships, leading to potential revenue leakage.
3. Ineffective sales strategies
The absence of activity data hinders the ability to analyze and optimize sales strategies. Without a clear understanding of which activities drive results, aligning sales efforts with customer preferences and needs becomes difficult, resulting in suboptimal outcomes.
4. Inefficient resource allocation
With activity data, it’s easier to assess the productivity and effectiveness of sales teams. This can lead to misallocation of resources, including time, effort, and budget, resulting in revenue leakage and diminished returns on investment.
Clean data is essential for Activity Tracking Software as it ensures accurate and error-free information, leading to reliable insights into sales team activities and facilitating better decision-making and performance analysis. With clean data, the software can provide a comprehensive view of sales interactions, prospect engagement, and customer behavior, enabling businesses to identify opportunities, optimize processes, and enhance overall sales efficiency.
Moreover, clean data minimizes the risk of misinterpretation or skewed reporting, fostering greater trust in the software’s output and empowering sales managers and teams to take data-driven actions to achieve their goals.
Benefits of Activity Tracking Software
Here’s a look at the various advantages of an activity tracking software:
1. Clear visibility into deals
Increased visibility into deals serves as a prerequisite for enhancing productivity. When you have comprehensive activity data, you better understand each deal’s status, identify areas that require improvement, and prioritize values that need immediate attention.
Consider the importance of deal reviews in a successful sales process. By utilizing insights derived from unified activity data, deal reviews can evolve from impromptu events to impactful sessions, where sales managers gain clear visibility into the intricacies of every deal.
As activities related to each deal are automatically captured and updated, managers no longer need to remind sales representatives to input data into the CRM constantly. Instead, both reps and managers can access a comprehensive view of contacts and deal specifics within the pipeline, allowing them to focus on urgent matters.
2. Identification of winning rep behaviours
Activity data enables you to correlate the productivity of your sales representatives with their performance. For instance, you can obtain crucial insights to answer important questions such as:
- Activity data helps map sales reps’ productivity to their performance
- It provides answers to critical questions such as time allocation, engagement with high-value customers, decision-maker involvement, adherence to best practices, sales target progress, account engagement, and lead follow-up
- Insights from activity data serve as leading indicators for real-time coaching and decision-making
- Managers gain visibility into sales reps’ activities and can make data-driven decisions based on activity data insights
- The insights derived from activity data help drive progress and success in sales
3. Predictable revenue generation
A reliable and consistent revenue generation system is vital for the success of any business. This predictability relies on understanding the habits and behaviors that yield optimal outcomes for your organization as a whole.
Leveraging insights from activity data empowers you to establish and drive these predictable patterns by gaining clear visibility into your sales pipeline and the productivity levels of your go-to-market (GTM) teams. The valuable insights derived from accurate and comprehensive activity data enable you to:
- Cultivate a predictable sales pipeline.
- Foster a predictable GTM team comprising sales, marketing, and customer success.
- Identify the activities that drive desired results.
- Determine daily priorities to maximize productivity.
By consistently replicating successful strategies, you can establish a repeatable process for your teams. By focusing on leading indicators such as the number of emails sent per week or the number of demos conducted each month, your teams are motivated to perform at their best consistently. Additionally, in the event of any obstacles, you can pinpoint and resolve issues with precision.
4. Improved collaboration and communication
Activity tracking software often includes collaboration features, allowing team members to share real-time information, updates, and insights. This fosters better communication, coordination, and collaboration among sales team members, increasing efficiency and effectiveness.
5. Faster scaling
Sales activity tracking software is scalable and can accommodate the growing needs of an organization. It can handle large volumes of data, accommodate expanding sales teams, and adapt to evolving sales processes, supporting the scalability and growth of the business.
Key Takeaways
Working with unreliable data, especially during a downturn, is not an option. Successfully navigating through challenging times relies on capturing comprehensive and precise revenue data. The downturn acts as a leveling force, compelling revenue leaders to prioritize fundamental aspects.
Productivity becomes the distinguishing factor, while unified activity data serves as the facilitator. To navigate this downturn successfully, adopt activity-driven Go-To-Market efforts and establish it as the foundation for a robust revenue strategy that can withstand the test of time.
Rather than resorting to significant cost-cutting measures, leaders should focus on enhancing process efficiency and team productivity. Those who pivot towards productivity improvement not only increase their chances of surviving the current downturn but also better prepare themselves for future uncertainties.
Nektar: Providing Clean Data for Activity Tracking Software
Nektar is an advanced activity tracking software that will revolutionize your CRM experience. You can easily capture and unify revenue activity data and buyer contacts within your CRM system. Tracking your sales activities and managing customer relationships will become easier than ever.
You can overcome the challenge of dealing with missing or incomplete data in your CRM. It can be frustrating and time-consuming to update and correct information manually. Nektar allows you to fix missing CRM data effortlessly.
Nektar fills the gaps, ensuring your CRM is always up-to-date and accurate. Say goodbye to the headaches of dealing with incomplete information and focus on what you do best: closing deals.
If gaining visibility into your revenue team’s activities is your concern, get in touch with us to explore how we can solve it for you.
