Want to boost your understanding of how well sales are going and what prompts customers to click that Buy button? Sales tracking software helps your marketing and sales teams better manage leads and the sales pipeline, so you can see how your business is performing at every stage.
In this guide, you’ll learn about the basics of sales tracking tools, some of the top sales tracking software options for small businesses, and how sales tracking features fuel data-driven decisions.
What is sales tracking software?
Sales tracking software monitors and measures the sales process: recording lead generation data, logging information from sales calls, tracking sales, and analyzing your sales team’s performance.
A sales tracking tool is like a combined performance dashboard and ledger of your company’s sales pipeline—a visual timeline of deals in progress. Many customer relationship management (CRM) platforms include built-in sales tracking capabilities.
This technology makes sales pipeline management simpler. Many businesses track leads on one platform, record sales calls on another, and store conversions and team performance data in a spreadsheet. Sales tracking software consolidates it all in one platform. This saves sales teams time by gathering and analyzing data automatically, instead of relying on sales reps to enter the data manually every time.
Tracking software also gives you a look into your team’s performance by measuring metrics such as the number of phone calls they’re making or answering, how often they’re nurturing leads, and how well they close deals (measured by conversion rates).
How sales tracking software works
Sales tracking software works by collecting data from the entire customer journey—every lead, sale, and customer interaction.
For example, when your marketing team gets sales leads from a social media ad, the software logs customer data such as contact information and what they’re interested in. After a lead converts and buys your product, the system adds their purchase history. If that customer later reaches out to your service team, it captures the details of the call.
Benefits of using sales tracking software
- Insight into sales performance
- Increased efficiency
- Improved pipeline management
- Sales coaching opportunities
Tracking software offers a clear view of your company’s sales performance, pulling in data from across your sales pipeline to give you a comprehensive picture. You can look at your dashboard to quickly identify if you’re on track for a record quarter—or if you need to make some sales strategy adjustments.
Insight into sales performance
Sales tracking isn’t just recording when sales happen—it’s analyzing how well your sales team is performing.
This technology allows you to see how your sales process is performing overall, with real-time visibility into each stage of the pipeline. How long does it take for a lead to become a conversion? Are conversion rates increasing? Is something hindering your reps from hitting sales targets?
Using tracking software (or the sales tracking capabilities in your CRM) answers these questions, giving you an inside look into sales processes so you can identify areas for improvement. You can benchmark performance against your own historical data, not just industry standards.
You can customize a dashboard within your sales tracking software to see the big picture, with the metrics most important to you front and center. This helps you keep tabs on key figures like conversion rates and sales cycle length, giving you the data you need to identify trends and make informed decisions.
Increased efficiency
A 2024 Salesforce study of 5,500 sales professionals found that 70% of sales reps’ time is spent on non-selling tasks like researching, manual contact management, and administrative duties. Choosing a CRM with strong sales tracking capabilities as part of your tech stack automates many of these tasks, so your reps can focus on what they do best: sell.
Using sales tracking software instead of a patchwork of tools helps your company become more efficient by keeping all sales data in one platform.
Improved pipeline management
Instead of relying on guesswork to understand where deals are getting stuck, tracking software highlights potential bottlenecks in your sales pipeline. You can use sales tracking as a diagnostic tool to triage your sales efforts and see if anything is hampering deal progression.
For example, sales tracking software might show that your company’s customer retention rate has fallen 10% compared to this time last year. You can investigate to see if a competitor is offering a better deal or if customer feedback points to a specific reason for the dropoff, such as a technical issue on your website or a bad customer service experience.
This helps you understand how your pipeline is performing and offers projections based on your data, so you can adjust your sales strategy and make smarter decisions in real time.
Sales coaching opportunities
Sales tracking tools allow you to see individual sales rep performance. You can look at key performance indicators like lead response time and number of follow-ups to see how well your reps are nurturing leads and closing deals.
Maybe a rep isn’t personalizing messaging well enough or is taking too long to follow up on leads. You can use this information to coach sales reps on aspects that need improvement. Some tools, such as Agentforce Sales and HubSpot’s Sales Hub, use CRM data like your key performance indicators (KPIs) to offer targeted coaching insights.
What to look for in your sales tracking software
There are several common capabilities found in sales tracking software, each offering specific benefits for your sales process.
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Automation. Sales tracking software tools automate data entry tasks, such as inputting customer information and notes from sales calls, giving your reps more time to focus on selling.
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Pipeline management. Pipeline management features give sales reps a customizable dashboard that shows progress on KPIs and how deals are moving through each stage.
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Lead scoring. Not all leads are created equal—sales tracking software can prioritize leads based on their potential value to your company, letting your sales reps identify opportunities for increased revenue.
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Forecasting. If data analysis isn’t your strong suit, sales software forecasting features can forecast revenue using historical data.
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Scalability. Scalability ensures the software can grow with your company, supporting more users, higher data volumes, and additional features without straining your budget.
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User-friendliness. A user-friendly interface helps your team adopt the software quickly, reducing the learning curve and improving day-to-day productivity.
When choosing sales tracking software for your business, start by identifying your biggest pain points. If your sales reps are spending too much time on data entry, look for strong automation features. If they’re struggling to understand where deals get stuck, prioritize robust pipeline management and forecasting capabilities.
Consider how the software will integrate with tools you’re already using: your email platform, marketing automation software, and accounting system. Also consider your team’s technical comfort level and choose software with a user interface that matches their skills.
8 best sales tracking software tools
There are a variety of sales tracking software options, with several pricing plans to fit your budget. Here are some of the best small-business tools to track deals and keep your pipeline moving. All pricing below reflects discounted rates for annual billing.
1. Shopify
Shopify allows small-business owners to manage and track sales activities in real time, monitoring KPIs like conversion rate and net sales. Shopify features pre-built reports that help you identify trends and an intuitive dashboard that gives you an at-a-glance look at sales performance based on the KPIs most important to you. This makes the platform especially helpful for businesses that want sales and ecommerce activity unified in one system.
Pricing: Shopify plans start at $29 per month.
2. Zoho CRM
Zoho CRM includes a customizable dashboard and sales automation as part of its sales tracking platform. You can also track sales by territory and use your data to forecast future performance. Managers can keep tabs on sales reps’ actual and projected performance through Zoho CRM. This is useful for growing small and midsize sales teams who need to automate repetitive tasks and gain deeper insight into team performance.
Pricing: Zoho CRM offers a limited free plan for three users; paid plans start at $14 per user per month.
3. Freshsales
Freshsales offers an AI-powered sales tracking platform, where an AI assistant (Freddy AI) helps track deals through the pipeline and generates lead nurturing emails. Freddy AI also scores leads and shows where they are in the pipeline, making recommendations along the way. Freshsales is well-suited for companies looking to use AI to make data-driven decisions.
Pricing: Freshsales has a basic starter plan (without Freddy AI) at $9 per user per month, with premium plans featuring Freddy AI starting at $39 per user per month.
4. Salesforce Sales Cloud
Salesforce Sales Cloud features lead, account, contact, and opportunity management in a streamlined CRM platform. Agentforce Sales, which is tailored more for large enterprises, uses AI agents to help track and manage deals throughout the pipeline. Salesforce Sales Cloud is a fit for growing businesses that want more of a sales-focused CRM and are interested in using AI as they reach an enterprise stage.
Pricing: Salesforce plans (without AI agents) start at $25 per user per month, with Agentforce Sales (with AI agents) included at the $175 per user per month level.
5. HubSpot Sales Hub
HubSpot Sales Hub offers sales tracking and pipeline management, with premium plans including AI features such as a prospecting agent and customer support agent. Sales Hub features a comprehensive dashboard for sales reps, including a calendar, lead scoring, and a library of sales content. HubSpot helps small businesses better understand their pipeline, and the educational content and coaching are helpful for sales rep development.
Pricing: Sales Hub has a free bare-bones plan with basic sales, marketing, and service tools for up to two users. Plans with AI capabilities start at $9 per user per month.
6. Nutshell
Nutshell is a CRM that shows how your sales reps’ efforts are meeting quotas, offering a view of your company’s sales pipeline (and how deals are moving through it). It also includes an activity tracker, so you can see where your reps are spending their time, as well as customizable reports. Nutshell gives sales managers more insight into team performance, allowing you to better understand sales reps’ strengths and weaknesses.
Pricing: Nutshell Sales plans start at $13 per user per month and feature contact management and AI agents in the starter plan.
7. Bitrix24
Bitrix24 clearly displays your company’s sales funnel, showing the percentage of deals that are in each stage of the pipeline. With a colorful Kanban board, you can easily monitor sales from awareness through conversion. Bitrix24 also includes sales automation with rules that you can create and adjust as needed. Bitrix24’s visual tools help illustrate sales performance, which makes sales data more approachable than a spreadsheet format.
Pricing: Bitrix24 has a free basic plan. Paid plans start at $46 per month.
8. Pipedrive
Pipedrive allows you to manage leads, calendars, and pipelines all in one place. It also includes AI-generated sales reports and a view of how well your team is performing compared to goals. It’s available on Android and iOS apps. Pipedrive is a helpful one-stop shop for growing businesses, bringing sales data and team collaboration onto a single platform.
Pricing: Pipedrive starts at $14 per user per month.
Sales tracking software FAQ
What is the best sales tracking software?
The best sales tracking software is the one that most accurately fits your specific needs and budget. Many sales tracking software programs include AI to help forecast performance, and automation to handle repetitive tasks like contact management.
Is there a 100%-free CRM that includes sales tracking?
Some free CRM platforms include sales tracking, but they tend to limit the number of users who can access the software or the pipelines you can track.
What is the best CRM software for sales?
The best CRM software for sales has an intuitive dashboard that puts conversion rates, sales cycle length, and pipeline progress front and center. For instance, Shopify offers an ecommerce platform with a dashboard featuring live metrics, so you can see how sales are performing in real time.
