Buyers Guide

Table of Contents

• What is Sales Tracking Software?
• The benefits of Sales Tracking Software
• Typical features of Sales Tracking Software
• The cost of Sales Tracking Software
• Considerations when purchasing Sales Tracking Software

What is Sales Tracking Software?

Sales tracking software enables businesses and sales teams to monitor the entire sales pipeline from start to finish. It does so by distributing new leads to salespeople, coordinating communication with potential buyers, scheduling appointments, and notifying management of sales activity. The software also stores key information about current and future client needs and creates detailed sales forecasting reports. By making these tools available on various platforms, sales teams can access and update information on sales cycles directly from the field.

The benefits of Sales Tracking Software

• Evaluates employee performance: Sales tracking software gives sales managers the ability to look beyond the raw sales numbers of team members and verify that they are properly prospecting to maintain a steady pipeline of activity.
• Increases sales forecasting accuracy: Accurate forecasting is essential to businesses that live and breathe off of sales revenue. When business is booming, forecasts help an organization keep up with customer demands and implementation schedules. On the other hand, forecasting can also point out upcoming deficiencies in cash flow so that companies can alter sales and marketing strategies. By monitoring key data such as closing probability and the average sales cycle length, sales tracking software provides business owners with tools to make these vital decisions.
• Maximizes lead generation investment: Depending on the vertical market, companies spend between 3% and 15% of their gross target revenue on marketing campaigns and other means to generate potential business. Sales tracking software provides you with tools to track leads from the time they are distributed to the sales personnel and ensures that they are prioritizing costly generated leads. Customized reporting can also help you assess the success rates of different lead sources and make changes where necessary.

Typical features of Sales Tracking Software

• Lead management: Manages the distribution of leads to your teams, tracks where potential clients are in the sales cycle, and ensures that sales members are following up with customer dialogue.
• Reporting and analytics: Allows management to compile and review important metrics about sales team pipelines and creates reports based on estimated sales forecasts. Reports can be customized to include only the information necessary to the organization.
• Sales pipeline management: Provides tools that allow sales managers to see at what stages of the sales cycle their sales personnel are and whether additional follow-ups or managerial assistance is required.
• Appointment scheduling: Enables sales teams to organize in-person client interactions via a virtual online calendar. Informs clients and personnel of upcoming meetings using automated notifications through a variety of messaging services.
• Customer history: Allows team members to record vital information about potential clients, such as key decision-makers, current equipment, and available budgets for future acquisitions.
• Mobile support: Provides sales personnel with the ability to access and update client information on their mobile devices, which can then be immediately assessed by management.

The cost of Sales Tracking Software

Most products in this market are priced on a per-user, per-month basis, billed annually. Pricing can be divided into three pricing tiers based on the starting prices:

Price ranges*:

• $6 - $10
• $10 - $24
• $24+

*The pricing included is for the entry-level/lowest-priced offering found on vendor websites on April 12, 2022. These ranges correspond to the 25th, 75th, and 100th percentiles of pricing information gathered from vendor websites of sample products.

Considerations when purchasing Sales Tracking Software

• Existing functionality: Although there are plenty of software packages on the market that are focused solely on sales tracking, many customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) tools already have sales tracking functionality as part of a broader suite of software modules, such as accounting, billing, and post-sales customer service. It's quite possible a currently utilized enterprise system in your organization can provide sales tracking functionality without further investment.
• Integration with current applications: Many of the sales tracking software offerings on the market are specifically designed to integrate with existing ERP systems, which allows sales tracking functionality to be initiated and managed via the interface that your employees are already familiar with. Be sure to take stock of your current application environment before purchasing and whether integration would lead to quicker implementation and less costly training and learning curves.
• Inside vs. outside sales: Before choosing a sales tracking software, consider the nature of your sales team. If the majority of your salesforce isn't remote or in the field, then it may not be necessary to incur further costs by implementing software that is designed specifically for mobile devices.