Running your small business can feel like running a circus sometimes. There are many things that are right there in your face and there are a million more behind the curtains that need your immediate attention, almost always.
It can be daunting and dropping the ball once in a while can happen. Although a small business is not a circus, it may feel like one more often than not but still, it is not a circus. It is more like clockwork, one wheel moves the other. If one wheel stops, the whole operation may stop. There are many facets of a small business. The accounts part is the most important one. When a business owner is just starting out it becomes inevitable not to acknowledge the expenses and with that we often overlook sales.
It is very important to keep track of your sales, so you can plan ahead. You should not just know the numbers but understand them too. Understanding the sales numbers helps you understand the profits and losses as well as the trends of demand that can help you improve your business.
8 Ways To Track Your Sales In A Small Business
1. Use efficient CRM software
Gone are the days when business owners use to create multiple spreadsheets in order to understand their sales trends and track the profits and losses. The old spreadsheet method is not only more time-consuming but is also less efficient.
Today the market is flooded with CRM software that provides you great statistical insight into your small business. This CRM software is part of website builder tools available online and will not cost you anything.
The benefit of using this CRM software is that they organize the data according to your requirements. So you save a lot of time, as you don’t need to constantly cross-refer.
2. Using automation
Sadly artificial intelligence has not yet reached the point shown in superhero movies but it is not all bad, you can use the next best thing to sort your small business and that is automation!
Automation helps you scale your small business quicking without any data mess to clean up later. All data needs to be recorded manually without automating, which makes it challenging to achieve 100% accuracy. There is always some error in the manual handling of numbers and naturally, it is more time-consuming. Especially as your business grows you’ll have less and less time for such tasks.
3. Detailed analytical reports
Tracking the sales of your small business is essential. After tracking comes the hard part, decoding.
To get the most out of your data, try and make detailed reports so you can decipher the sales trends. These trends will tell you how to change your small business in accordance with the demand. Also, the sales numbers will help you place your money in the right place.
Business is a lot of observation and strategy and the best possible way to strategize is by tracking your own performance. It will tell you where and how to improve.
4. Track your sales goals
You won’t accomplish your goals by sitting and dreaming, they take work, a lot of it. If you don’t track your progress you will never know how far you have come and how much farther you need to go, to achieve your goal.
Setting sales targets and then breaking them into smaller chunks will help you track your success. You can compare your actual sales with the sales goals and track your journey too closely.
5. Track your sales leads
Tracking leads required you to track behavior and compare it with previous lead behaviors and calculate what will have the best impact on sales.
To do this you can use platforms like Exly. It has robust lead tracking and conversion for scaling your small business.
6. Track your sales pipeline
If you want to know exactly what is going on in your small business by the minute, you will have to track your sales pipeline. Doing so will let you know exactly how much money is moving through your pipeline at all times.
7. Track your sales activity
Tracking your sales activity will require you to track the metrics of a sales pitch (that will include both calls and emails), advanced bookings, product demos taken by potential customers, and conversion rate of leads.
After getting all this data in one place, you have to look at the success rate of each aspect mentioned above. On analyzing the data you’ll come across many findings, such as which product or service of yours sells the best, which email or call has a good or bad response, and most importantly you will get an overview of the leads you have. You will get to know whether or not the market segment you are tapping into is working or not. This insight is important to planning the future of your small business.
8. Track your sales funnel
If you are having trouble detecting which part of your sales is lagging behind, tracking your sales funnel will help you detect that efficiently.
Make sure that you analyze all aspects of your process including but not limited to your total inbound and outbound leads, total leads that have been qualified (track this on a monthly basis), and conversion rate at every stage for every process of conversion and an all-inclusive conversion rate at the end.
It definitely takes some time in understanding the intricacies of running your small business. Accounts and analytics are difficult to keep track of and understand when everything is happening at once. It can seem confusing and scary as handling finances is a serious task.
You might face challenges specific to your small business but the process will definitely get a little easier and more manageable over time, with a little help and a lot of will to succeed.
It is essential to always keep sight of the bigger picture.
How Can Exly Help You?
In the beginning, it is important to have reasonable expectations as it can take some time to get used to managing and tracking your small business. You should always remember that your patience will pay off, numbers never lie. If you track and understand your sales trends, you will be able to achieve great profits and avoid sharp losses.
Exly can help you in keeping track of your sales and other accounts and analytics more effectively and efficiently.
- Manage your business efficiently with the help of detailed analytics.
- Exly provides statistics that help you understand your audience better and hence predict the changes or additions you can bring to improve your business.
- Additionally, the tool helps you create a brand and market your business better with the many features specific to your requirements.
- Exly helps you in capturing and converting leads to expand your online business.
Use Exly for managing your small business in the best way you can to maximize your growth. With an easy-to-understand layout, Exly helps you keep a detailed account of your sales and market trends, so you can do justice to your small business. With Exly’s great analytics, track your sales in a small business and make strides in the journey to success.
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