Creating a Simple Sales Activity Tracking Sheet

What distinguishes average salespeople from top-performers? Regardless of education or experience, success is directly tied to self-discipline. Above all, top-performing salespeople know their numbers.

Tracking sales activity might not seem fun. It doesn’t give you the euphoric feeling that closing a deal can; tracking your numbers doesn’t have an immediate pay-off. It can take months (sometimes years) before you’ll reap the rewards of it, but if you want to rise to the top in your industry, then you have to know your numbers.

Here’s the good news: keeping track of your sales activity doesn’t need to be complicated.

I recently wrote a blog post that went in-depth about how to approach setting your sales goals. I shared the formula and steps required for you to reverse-engineer your goals. If you haven’t done that yet, go do it now! Now that we’re on the same page, it’s time to take those annualized numbers and break them down into more tangible and easily measurable goals. From there, we’re going to develop a goal tracking sheet guaranteed to keep you on the right trajectory to crush your goals this year.

Let’s start by using the same numbers I used in the reverse-engineering exercise. The person in our example who wants to make $300,000 a year needs 454 annual leads. We’ll use those numbers to extract the monthly, weekly, or even daily numbers of actions you need to hit to reach that annual goal.

Creating your Tracking Sheet

In the example below, I used 108 closed deals, 151 quotes, and 454 leads annually. I created the monthly numbers by dividing by 12, and I created the weekly numbers by dividing by 46 (remember, we don’t use 52 weeks in a year—we subtract for holidays and vacations).

These numbers should create your area of focus. Getting 10 leads per week (or 2 leads per day) is now one of your non-negotiables. Every single day, no matter what, your goal is to get 2 new leads.

Your goal tracking sheet will look like this sample, but replace these numbers using your numbers. If your CRM doesn’t track your numbers for you, then I recommend using an Excel Spreadsheet to track your numbers (or something as simple as a sticky note for daily use that’s transferred to your Spreadsheet). Do whatever you have to do to keep in front of you at all times.

Here’s what it might look like if you wanted to track your relevant numbers each week while keeping your monthly goal front and center:

I also recommend that at the end of each month, quarter and year, you should review your numbers to gauge how accurate your estimates were and adjust for the following year accordingly. Hopefully, your ratios will get better as your sales skills improve. This will allow you to close more deals with even fewer leads.

Tracking Sales Activity can be Fun!

If you really want to have fun with numbers, calculate what every lead is worth to you in dollar value. For example, if you got 454 leads last year and you made $300,000, that means that every lead you got was worth $660.79—regardless if you close the deal or not! So start thinking of every new lead you get as being worth $660. If you get 10 leads per week, you just made $6,600!! Every time you get a new lead, do a $660 dance and celebrate.

Stop letting your goals be these big, beastly things that you wildly hack away at in the hopes of stringing something together. Have fun with it! But remember, top-performing salespeople never wing it; they evaluate, they plan, and they execute. Get control of your goals today, track your sales activity, and I promise you’ll be a better salesperson for it.

Until next time—go sell some stuff!