How do you know how much money is coming in and how much money is going out if you run a business? It can be difficult to track your sales correctly if you don’t have the right tools.
Tracking your sales is essential for small businesses. However, when you have them, you can make your small business more profitable by implementing a system that ensures effective sales tracking and inventory management. The expression “retail is detail” perfectly describes the concept. You, therefore, need to pay attention and be attentive to all aspects of your business if you want it to grow, and you need to know how to keep track of sales.
In this article, we’ll discuss sales tracking software for small business and more to help you better keep track of your company’s sales.
What is sales tracking?
Sales tracking is how small businesses keep track of how much inventory they have, how many sales they made, and what those purchases were.
In order to get started with a system that tracks your company’s inventory and sales, you need software. There are many options in the market – some free or low-cost – but not all will serve you well, so it pays off to do your research before choosing.
Sales metrics you should track
There are sales metrics you should track. However, it’s dependent on how you want to measure your success. Some people like knowing how much revenue was earned in a month, some are happy with how many items were sold, and others care about how the business is doing by tracking profit margins.
Not everyone wants to use the same metrics, but here are three that all businesses should think about:
- Revenue: Amount of money generated each period from sales (sales minus any returns).
- Inventory Levels: How much inventory you have available for sale at the present time; includes stock still in stores as well as goods held back for manufacturing or distribution later.
- Sales Volume/Value: Total number of units transferred during a given period divided by total cost per unit – including discounts where.
On a separate note, were you aware that 80 percent of sales are dependent on follow-up calls? Most sales reps give up and don’t even attempt to contact a potential customer after the first of those follow-ups. That’s why it’s critical to track your team’s output.
You need to find out whether they’re sending enough email, making enough calls, or setting up enough meetings so that you can fix problems in your sales process if they exist. Sales tracking doesn’t only focus on tracking outside forces. It also considers how your team operates internally.
With that said, below are three sales tracking tools you should consider using.
Nutshell
Nutshell helps email marketers and customer service professionals quickly send out marketing campaigns, set up email drip programs, track sales leads from marketing emails, and so much more. Built with the client-first approach that’s made them a champion of CRM for small businesses everywhere.
With Nutshell, you can design and implement a sales process to reduce time-consuming tasks and help your reps know where they are at all times. You can specify the actions and follow-ups required from initial qualification to final negotiations. Then, you can put your email outreach on autopilot and measure the impact of your efforts.
The company has two price plans and starts at $19 per user per month.
Zendesk Sell Software
Zendesk Sell (formerly Base), is a web- and mobile-based customer relations management application that allows sales professionals to track leads, manage sales and interact with customers from any location. It features a standalone sales automation module that can be integrated with channels management and web self-service. Zendesk Sell allows sales teams to collect, organize, and track leads.
Zendesk offers a 14-day free trial with no credit card required. Like Nutshell, pricing starts at $19 per month.
HubSpot Sales Hub
Redefine sales with Sales Hub, a CRM many consider essential for this digital age. The first platform to feature a native CPQ function, it gives you confidence in your pricing strategy and empowers your team’s capability to close deals at any stage of the customer lifecycle.
With robust analytics capabilities and available add-ons such as Customer Success, Marketing Automation, and Coaching Apps, it helps optimize every aspect of selling successfully in today’s competitive marketplace.
One of the most incredible things about HubSpot’s Sales Hub is its pricing. Its cost for the individual sales rep is exactly $0.00 per month. (Free) If you’ve got a sales team, then the price is still an affordable $50 per user per month.
Wrapping up
Sales tracking is crucial because it allows you to see how your marketing campaigns are working, identify trends in how customers shop with you, and see whether or not the campaign content you’re running is delivering results.
You don’t need to guess when you have hard numbers. Tracking your sales can help make you a more effective and savvy leader by making more informed, more intelligent decisions. Just remember that when it comes to sales, you need to identify the key performance indicators (KPIs), which are most relevant to your company and track them.
