Why Sales Activity Tracking Matters [+ The 7 Best Sales Goal Tracker Tools & Templates]

Calendars, planners, to-do lists. These are just a few of the tools we use to stay on top of our day-to-day activities. But how can you stay on top of your sales activities? With sales trackers.

If you‘re a sales leader, it’s important to determine the key metrics for evaluating your sales team. By using sales goal and activity tracking tools, you can more accurately monitor your business performance and achieve sales goals with a clearer picture.

In this post, I will define what a sales activity tracker is and how to use one. Plus, I’ll give you some of my favorite tools to help your sales team streamline its process.

Table of Contents

• What Is a Sales Activity Tracker?
• Why Tracking Sales Activity Matters
• The Three Elements of Sales Tracking
• How to Keep Track of Sales
• Paid Sales Tracking Software
• Free Sales Trackers
• Sales Tracking Templates
• Comparing All The Different Software and Templates
• How to Choose the Right Sales Tracker

Sales tracking software helps businesses track, analyze, and monitor information about their sales activities. This software provides sales teams with information about their prospects, the status of current deals, and the sales pipeline's health.

The best sales tracking software enables sales teams to close a higher rate of deals with a greater average value. It also allows them to quickly identify and fix sales pipeline problems.

Sales tracking software also provides managers with useful analytics and KPIs. You can then track, measure, and improve the performance of sales team members.

Why Tracking Sales Activity Matters

As the adage goes, “What gets measured gets improved.” Whether I’m aiming to hone my sales skills or I’m managing a team of individual contributors, tracking sales and the activities that lead to them is essential to keeping and closing a healthy pipeline.

In my experience, without the proper tracking processes and tools in place, the sales department can feel like a black box where indeterminate inputs yield obscure outputs — a recipe for burnout in any organization.

To create a culture where your sales talent actually wants to stick around, you need to implement unobtrusive tracking solutions where success and the process that produced it are both identifiable and repeatable.

In my role as the Head of Business Development for a rapidly growing SaaS company, no tool has been more important than the sales activity tracker. With our tracker, I manage sales contacts and quotas and monitor individual deals as they flow through the sales pipeline.

When I began my role several years ago, the sales department was a mess, with reps struggling to track their own activities, let alone achieve any real quotas. One of my first steps was to implement HubSpot’s Sales Hub along with an equally robust training program to help everyone understand the capabilities of our new tool.

The complexity of your own sales activity tracker will necessarily vary with the size and budget of your organization, ranging from a simple spreadsheet to a dedicated piece of your tech stack that automatically operates in the background. Either way, the main components of sales tracking are the same. Here are the sales tracking elements I’ve found most important.

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The Three Elements of Sales Tracking

1. Organizational Sales Goals

From a top-down view, the sales activity tracker should be designed to achieve measurable organizational sales goals. If the goal for Q3 is a 10% increase of $3M in quarterly revenue, the sales team needs to produce an additional $300K in sales. By establishing an average deal size, sales leaders can determine how many deals need to close to achieve the organizational goal.

The C-suite will always want more sales, which is why I’ve found it’s vital to have a sales activity tracker that can show company brass how to actually attain goals.

When you’re being pushed to achieve more in the sales department, whether it’s 10% or 50%, the sales activity tracker will help decision-makers understand what additional inputs are required to hit those numbers, whether it means increasing your SDR headcount, automating your quoting workflows, or investing in new tools to scale outbound.

2. Individual Quotas

Once a sales team has a target in sight, determining individual quotas is as easy as dividing the total desired revenue by the number of reps on the team, taking into account some territory differences and the general rule that roughly 70-80% of your reps should be able to meet their quotas — otherwise, your established quotas might not be realistic.

Tracking quotas is vital for calculating the compensation of your sales reps, but I’ve found it comes with a benefit that’s often overlooked. When a few contributors on your team are consistently exceeding their quotas, the rest of the department is going to take notice.

If you’ve hired the right people, average reps will realize they need to imitate the behavior of your top performers. In an organization where communication and collaboration are valued, a rising ride really can raise all ships.

3. Performance Benchmarks

Once you know how much revenue each individual contributor should be generating, you can break down the activities that have historically been required to produce that revenue.

Whether your sales team is made up of full-cycle reps or SDRs filling an AE’s calendar with qualified leads, work backward from the sales target to determine the necessary inputs and outline those benchmarks in your sales activity tracker.

If it takes 20 outbound calls to schedule a qualified demo and your AEs convert 20% of demos on average, your SDRs need to make 100 calls to generate a closed deal.

The value of that deal and the size of your sales team will inform how many dials need to be made per month, and the activity tracker will summarize the inputs from your individual contributors, the progression of deals through the stages of your pipeline, and the net new business that emerges as a result of both the individual and collective sales efforts over time.

Sales, like all professions, has both high performers and laggards, with most reps falling somewhere close to average. In my experience, nothing improves the performance and longevity of those in the middle of the bell curve quite like piercing the veil of “luck” and breaking highly desirable results down into actionable inputs.

That breakdown is ultimately the reason a sales activity tracker is so important in any organization that’s currently flying blind. By tracking activities and the closed deals they produce, leaders can hone in on a formula for lasting sales success.

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How to Keep Track of Sales

More generally, a tracking tool, spreadsheet, or template makes it easy to have all the information you need to review in one place. You can then use these resources to quickly identify trends and any corrections needed in one-on-ones and team meetings to review performance.

To top it off, seeing where you need improvements means you can put a plan in place that optimizes sales performance and team time.

On a more granular level, you and your team can use trackers to keep tabs on key activities that drive sales performance, including the following.

Prospecting

Here’s the deal: prospecting can be a time-consuming and sometimes frustrating activity. Without it, though? Your sales pipeline is liable to dry up — and fast. So finding prospects is necessary, but that doesn't mean you can’t be more efficient with this task.

Of course, a sales tracker can be used to log the basics, such as company/decision maker names, contact numbers, pain points, outreach activities, etc.

But beyond that, log where and how you and your sales team find potential customers. Then, note down how many hours this activity takes each day. Once you’ve gathered enough data, spotting ways you and your team can optimize prospecting will be easier.

Pro tip: If you haven’t already, why not take AI out for a test drive? According to our State of AI Report, nearly 80% of sales pros say AI helps them spend more time on the most critical parts of their role. Further, finding data-driven insights (34%) and helping to write prospect outreach messages (31%) are two of the most popular AI use cases in sales.

Outreach

Like prospecting, cold calling is a time-consuming but necessary sales activity. Again, like prospecting, tracking this task opens up the potential for better efficiency. To start, note down things like if/when you’ve reached out to a prospect and how (e.g., cold calling, email, or in-person).

Want to track your hit rate? Note the number of prospects who answered your calls, read your emails, or took a card if you went door-to-door. Then, track the volume of meetings you booked based on your outreach.

After a month or so, you might also uncover trends, such as specific days of the week when more prospects pick up the phone. You can then dedicate more time to prospect outreach on those days.

Pro tip: To improve your or your team’s outreach hit rate, consider inside sales training. For example, a simple lesson on using the Voice of Customer (VOC) in sales prospecting could make a difference.

Meetings

Do you know how many meetings you or your team held this week at a glance? If not, would you have to start snooping through people’s diaries to find out? If you answered “No” followed by “Yes,” then you need a sales tracker to start logging this information.

Aside from logging the number of meetings that took place, you can use a sales tracker to log the number of those meetings that had a positive outcome. The number of meetings booked highlights whether your prospecting and outreach are working. And the number of meetings leading to a positive outcome highlights whether your meetings require improvement.

Pro tip: If prospect meetings aren’t resulting in deals, it might be time to revisit different sales closing techniques.

Here are the best software, templates, and tools to help you track your sales activity, monitor your team's effectiveness, and make data-driven decisions for your business.

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Paid Sales Tracking Software

1. HubSpot Sales Tracking Software

If you're looking for more than just a template to work with, the HubSpot Sales Hub offers sales tracking software to better automate and streamline your sales process as prospects move through your pipeline.

I love how easy it is to organize every part of the sales pipeline with HubSpot’s sales tracker. Plus, with the amount of details you can add to each card, you or your teammate can personalize each pitch and follow-up.

Best for: Sales teams looking for a collaborative way to track sales and goals

Get started with free sales tracking software.

What I Like

• Gives you a better understanding of how much of your pipeline is caught up in each stage of your sales cycle at any time, so you can eliminate bottlenecks and close faster

• Makes automation of basic tasks and workflows more straightforward — freeing up your sales team to build relationships and close deals

• Allows you to connect your email inbox automatically, so documents and communications sent to prospects are automatically logged in the HubSpot CRM

2. HubSpot Sales Dashboard

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In addition to Sales Hub software, your sales team can use free interactive dashboards to track sales activity using HubSpot CRM and Sales Hub. With this tool, you can track your pipeline using different metrics and manage the data for transparent deal forecasting.

Data can guide everything you do, even in sales. In my experience, staying on track with my goals is easier and more motivating when I can see how I’m doing. That’s what I like about HubSpot’s sales dashboard: The charts provide a visual understanding of my performance.

Best for: Visual deal forecasting and sales tracking

What I Like

• Offers deal forecast reporting to show you the amount of forecasted revenue by deal stage
• Helps you to monitor how prospects move through the pipeline with multiple reports based on sales performance
• Allows you to spend less time building reports in spreadsheets and more time accurately answering your business’s strategic questions
• Comes with pre-built template boards, so you don’t have to create your pipeline dashboard from scratch
• Includes built-in automation to help complete repetitive tasks
• Offers over 150 integrations with tools that can level up your sales pipeline and goal tracking
• Allows customization of view style, choosing from Gantt, Kanban, and more

3. Smartsheet

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Smartsheet is a work management platform with powerful sales tracking capabilities. What caught my eye first was how similar the tool is to a spreadsheet. This can be useful for anyone who’s spent a lot of time tracking their sales goals and data in Excel but is ready to upgrade to a more comprehensive solution.

The platform is also designed to provide greater visibility and consolidation, which makes it useful for large teams.

Best for: Enterprise-level sales leaders and executives looking for more visibility and alignment with sales rep activities

What I Like

• Offers real-time sales forecasting and visibility into tasks
• Has an Excel-style interface that makes it easy for Excel or Google Sheets users to get familiar with it right away
• Collaborative task management features make it easy for teams to work on sales goal tracking tasks simultaneously

4. Flowlu

Flowlu’s sales tracker displays real-time sales funnel information, including reporting and analysis.

Flowlu keeps track of your tasks in their online CRM. I liked how approachable it was to enter different data points and tasks in the app. One cool feature of Flowlu is you can download their mobile app and use limited features there.

This sales tracker is only free for up to two users. Beyond that, you are looking at $29 a month for a team of eight and increasing by team members from there.

Best for: Small teams who need to visualize their pipeline and like the flexibility of a mobile app

What I Like

• The price point, even for the paid plan, is reasonable
• Flowlu can generate mind maps, helping sales teams visualize their quarters in review better
• You also have the option to communicate with your clients in Flowlu, which might take away the need for another sales software
• I love the document builder, which lets you set parameters for the document you need created and then plugs in your information that’s saved in Flowlu

5. Salesforce

Salesforce is one of the more well known sales trackers in the industry and lets businesses automate their sales processes and funnel.

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I have a lot of experience using Salesforce, and there are definitely pros and cons. I love that virtually every step of tracking your sales can be automated, including reporting, email campaigns, and more. I think Salesforce does a good job of connecting a sales team with marketing so they can be on the same page.

However, my biggest complaint with Salesforce is it’s not intuitive or very user friendly for those without experience. You might have guessed this was the case simply because there are job positions specifically for those who understand and use Salesforce.

You do get an assigned CSM to help you learn the software, but this was still not enough to feel confident when I first started using Salesforce. So before you commit to this sales tracker, be sure you have someone on your team who knows how to use it.

Best for: Big companies who want to connect marketing and sales to get a sales tracker that does it all

What I Like

• Great automation features
• Easy reporting and documentation creation
• Connect marketing campaigns and track ad spend to make campaigns lead to quote requests

Free Sales Trackers

Maybe your business wants to explore sales trackers without having to invest a lot of money upfront. These two free sales trackers are ones I’ve used personally and recommend as a great way to dip your toes into the world of tracking sales.

1. Trello

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Trello is a project management tool that you can customize to your needs. I personally find that it works great for tracking my sales outreach with clients. The Kanban-style board makes it easy to visualize outreach and stay on top of sales goals.

The free plan works great for individuals or small teams working on fewer deals at once. You may be limited to 10 boards (which I would use to represent different steps in the sales pipeline), but you can add unlimited cards (I’d use these for every task and client interaction).

Best for: Small teams looking for a visual pipeline dashboard

What I Like

• Good for tracking basic information for a small volume of leads
• Very visual platform, so it’s easy to overview the full pipeline, including key tasks and task status related to each stage
• User-friendly, and the pre-built template boards and built-in automation make it easier to get started with the software
• Over 150 integrations with tools that can level up your sales pipeline and goal tracking

2. Monday.com

Monday.com has its own Sales CRM, but you can also use the free plan to access some workflow planning features. I like how Monday’s boards are organized. In my opinion, they almost look like a more visual version of a spreadsheet.

If you’re an individual sales leader, the free version is worth looking into to organize and track client data and sales activities.

Best for: Individuals who are getting started with sales goal tracking

What I Like

• Easy and intuitive to set up, and the customizable views help with task management
• Great for viewing large amounts of data in one place
• Provides a detailed way to stay on top of your sales workflow and goals

Sales Tracking Templates

Perhaps you're reading this blog and realizing what you actually need is just a solid template for tracking your own sales, without all the extra features of a traditional sales tracking software.

Here are five templates that I recommend because of their ease of use and ability to help you visualize your sales.

Sales Data Tracker Template

I personally love a good spreadsheet. I also love a free template, so this sales dashboard is a win-win.

A sales dashboard is a simple yet effective way to visualize your sales data. With a sales call planner, you can help your team track and manage your outreach activities and their performances.

Best for: Integrating with your current workflow

What I Like

• Offers convenient snapshots of key sales objectives and metrics to help you track your team's performance with more accuracy and precision
• Includes step-by-step instructions as you fill out each section
• Lets you build an innovative sales dashboard that will equip you to hit new sales records.
• Templates can be used in Excel or Google Sheets

CRM Template

If you’re interested in a sales CRM but not quite ready to commit to a full solution, I love this free CRM template.

HubSpot created a detailed sales lead follow-up tracker (or CRM tracker) to help your company keep track of how it interacts with customers who buy your products or services. You’ll have a place for meeting notes, names, titles, and proposed solutions that you’ll want to discuss on your next call.

Best for: Getting an introduction to sales tracking

What I Like

• Displays your sales pipeline and the value of your open opportunities for better relationship management
• Helps you to better calculate your team's win/loss ratio by calculating the progress of each opportunity you input
• Assists salespeople to better organize, track, and rank prospects based on priority

Sales Forecasting Template

Sales forecasting can be tricky if you aren’t familiar with the process, but this sales forecasting template makes it easy to understand. In my experience, it was also very easy to use.

This forecasting template lets you see the stage a deal is in to help you calculate the probability of a successful close. It can also use that figure to calculate future pipeline numbers, so you’re never left with an empty funnel.

On top of that, this resource comes with other helpful sales templates and checklists in a handy sales productivity bundle.

Best for: Start-ups, entrepreneurs, and sales reps who are just getting started

What I Like

• Divides sales progress by quarterly increments to better predict closing rates
• Easy to input and interpret data in a simplistic sheet
• Useful tool for busy entrepreneurs or small sales teams

Sales Pipeline Template

If you‘re a key stakeholder in your organization, it helps to have a macro view of your sales team’s activities — especially with regard to what's currently moving through the sales pipeline.

I like that this tracking spreadsheet breaks down the number of deals in each stage so that you can visualize the progress and opportunities within the sales team.

Best for: High-level sales pipeline analysis

What I Like

• Simple, yet effective, tracker that can be used to evaluate sales strategy better
• Provides a probability percentage average of prospects reaching each step
• Includes visual bar graphs, which can be an easy indicator of which steps in the pipeline could be improved to better aid salespeople to win

Leads Sales Tracking Spreadsheet

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Keeping track of your leads can be challenging if your sales organization doesn't use a CRM. Entering this data doesn’t take a long time if you have a detailed lead tracker.

This lead tracker lets you keep the historical data you've added when your business is ready for a CRM. Simply export it as a CSV and import it directly into the new platform.

I like that this lead tracking template provides an organized view of your sales data and acts as a good solution if you’re in between CRMs or just aren’t ready to invest in a full solution yet.

Best for: Small businesses and entrepreneurs who are in the early stages of lead generation

What I Like

• A good starter template for smaller businesses that don't need the full functionality of a formal CRM
• Allows you to keep track of communications with each customer and plan future contacts and follow-ups as they progress from prospect to customer
• You can also indicate lead sources to identify how prospects found your business

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Comparing All The Different Software and Templates

If you’d rather just skim the features and prices of all the different types of software and templates I’ve mentioned before, here is a helpful chart for choosing what will work for you.

How to Choose the Right Sales Tracker

Now that you’re more familiar with what sales trackers exist, you might be wondering which one is the best for your business. I can’t stress enough how important it is to take advantage of free trials and demos before you commit to one sales tracker.

I would ask multiple members of my sales team to trial different trackers and then report on what they like and don’t like. Not only will this help you get team buy in, but it should also give you a better insight into which tracker will fit your team.

Another aspect you’ll need to consider is how much your sales tracker will cost per person. Although there are some great free sales trackers, most are free up to a certain number of team members, and you want to make sure each sales team member has access to your tracker. So, deciding on a budget before you start demoing can be important, as some plans can start at only $30 a month for a team of eight, whereas bigger sales trackers like Salesforce can cost as much as $500 a month per user.

Finally, I think identifying which features are a must for your company can help you decide which trackers you want to demo. Some companies will really need to automate their sales pipeline, whereas others may not have the amount of quote requests to necessitate automation.

Determining which features are a must can help you from overpaying for plans that include features you don’t need.

Make Smart Decisions With a Sales Activity Tracker

A sales activity tracker can give you the full picture of your sales team‘s productivity, close rates, projected revenue, and broader performance. Having your finger on the pulse of these numbers means you’ll make better-informed decisions more quickly.

Whether you’re a sales rep, a sales manager, or higher up, you’ll find the information you need to do your best work in a sales activity tracker.

Editor's note: This post was originally published in August 2023 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

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