Sales tracking software refers to any software tool that enables sales teams to quickly and accurately track their sales activities.
Sales tracking software helps you better understand your target buyers, identify potential pipeline issues before they become massive problems, and improve individual sales rep performance via detailed analytics that quickly pinpoint what works and what doesn’t.
Can Spreadsheets be used as Sales tracking software?
At first, spreadsheets such as Excel, Google Sheets etc seems capable of managing your customer relationships. But as your company grows, you will soon start needing more scalable tools.
There are only so many variables and formulas you can pack into a spreadsheet before it becomes too difficult to manage. Plus, not all sales activities are quantified the same way. For example, gaining insights on which rep is performing best could be as simple as adding up a few columns on your spreadsheet.
Most companies using spreadsheets as a sales tracker solve this problem by creating separate spreadsheets for different sales activities. But it’s time consuming and inefficient to have to switch back and forth between multiple documents just to enter or view data. Your sales tracker should improve the efficiency of your processes, not make them more complex. With these drawbacks, Excel isn’t the optimal choice for tracking or analysing sales activity.
Advantages of Using a CRM as Sales Tracking Software
Personal communication
A CRM tool serves as a central customer database, and is the ideal source for various communication and marketing-related purposes. Moreover, a CRM allows you to keep track of all interactions between your company and its customers in one single database. As an organization, you can collect data for each customer and better respond to their individual needs. In turn, you can then create a more personal approach based on the wishes of that particular customer.
Real-time data access
CRM allows you to manage your leads more efficiently and track sales swiftly, simply and cost-effectively. At any given time, at any given place, you have the right data at your disposal to take well-considered strategic decisions. And yes, your Excel files can easily be imported.
Spreadsheets
Multiple users cannot access one Excel sheet
Files and data could get lost
Creating formulas us very time consuming- risk of co-worker changing by accident
Impossible to save attachments- invoices, emails etc
Data cannot be shared with the team whilst on the go
Time loss when looking for right file
JeffreyAI CRM
All departments within your company can work together and track information
All data is stored in the cloud; faster access and more safe
Our dashboard provides an overview of your business through automatic statistics
Documents are automatically liked to the contact.
Automatic data
Right data at your disposal at any moment any time any place
Disadvantages of spreadsheets
From time to time, spreadsheets are scornfully referred to as the world’s worst CRM tool, simply because that’s not what it was designed for. You can easily enter customer or contact data in a spreadsheet, but that’s about as far as it goes. Who are your customers? What do you know about their profile? How big of an asset are they to your company? This information would allow you to better respond to the needs of your customers and achieve better sales results.
Manual data entry
Excel can be used for a wide range of applications, but you have to do things manually: all data you want to store in a spreadsheet, has to be entered by you or one of your co-workers. Just entering and updating customer data becomes incredibly time-consuming. And you’re opening the door to human errors.
Loss of time
Managing your contacts in a spreadsheet is not the only thing that costs time. If you want to visualize your sales results in useful statistics, you’d better get to work: select the right data, create rows and columns, draw up a graph and select a format – prefer a bar graph or a pretty pie chart? If you create invoices in a spreadsheet, you already know you’ll have to do so manually – without any way to automate the process. And remember: what isn’t done automatically, is sometimes done incorrectly or simply forgotten.
No real-time collaboration
The ability to collaborate in spreadsheets is also pretty limited. Of course you can share spreadsheet files, but real-time collaboration? Impossible: the standalone version a spreadsheet doesn’t allow multiple users to work in the same spreadsheet at the same time, Microsoft Excel Online is clunky at best, and Google Sheets has its limitations too (fewer features, loads slower, formatting and printing are harder). In other words, if you urgently need to access a file that one of your co-workers is working on, you’ll have to sit on your hands and wait for your turn. Or create yet another copy, but then you can’t forget to merge them afterwards. It works, but fast and practical are not exactly words that spring to mind.
Lack of scalability
As your company grows and customer relationships evolve, a spreadsheet soon becomes insufficient. For example, spreadsheets won’t tell you anything about the upsell opportunities for a certain customer, or when you should give him a follow-up call. In the age of customer relationships, this means you’re missing out on tremendous opportunities.
How can JeffreyAI help you with your data?
Improving your sales numbers requires a healthy helping of cold hard data—the kind of data that only sales tracking software can provide.
How to upload your data in 3 easy steps
Step 1- Download our template
Step 2-Transfer your data from your Excel sheet onto our template
Step 3- Upload the data
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