As an entrepreneur launching a small business, whether it’s an accounting firm, law practice or bakery, you may have devised your own methods for tracking the success of your company. You may be using calculators and adding machines, spreadsheets, Word documents or basic graphics to measure your sales and performance metrics.
It doesn't have to be so difficult. Technology is making it much easier to track the information that will allow you to improve the way you do business. Check out these innovative software and cloud-based options:
Salesforce.com
Offering a solution for small businesses, Salesforce allows real-time tracking of your deals. Quickly capture details on every client and collaborate with your team. Because everything is in the cloud, you don't have to install any hardware or software. Plus, you can access your information from anywhere, including your phone. The starter package -- at $25 per user per month, billed annually -- allows you to manage your contacts, leads and accounts for up to five users.
Pipedrive
Everyone knows the importance of your sales pipeline (the number of deals you have lined up and their potential monetary worth) to ensuring that you hit your small business sales goals. Pipedrive provides you with an overview of your pipeline, displaying deals by where they are in the sales stage so that you can focus your efforts where it matters most. The software offers sales reporting, full customization, mobile applications and other features. You can sign up for a free trial. Packages are $9 per user, per month, and don't require a contract.
Profit Finder Pro
Gain real-time tracking abilities to see how your marketing and sales staff is performing. The technology allows you to zero in on the weak spots in your business so that you can make improvements and increase your profitability. Offering a 30-day money back guarantee, the software starts at $60 per month for a single user and $197 per month for up to 10 users.
Halogen
If you are looking for a tool to drive employee performance, Halogen is an industry favorite. It allows you to provide ongoing feedback to employees, manage their goals and development, administer evaluations, set compensation and more. It offers a one-stop shop for managing your talent so that you can easily and efficiently get the most out of your employees. The company offers a library of innovative learning resources, including webinars, forms and templates, ebooks and more. Take advantage of the free trial. You will need to speak to a sales representative to find pricing information.
Rivalry.com
Create a culture of healthy competition among sales reps with live leader boards through this technology. Establish goals for every sales rep based on key metrics that drive your business, and then measure their progress along with everyone else. Rivalry integrates with Salesforce.com. The Queen Edition is $25 per month per user; the King Edition is $50 per month per user and offers more features such as "Quota Trending" and "Activity Analysis."
Xactly
This cloud-based sales incentive compensation-management solution offers you end-to-end automation of all aspects of your sales compensation plan, and enterprise analytics show you where the business is headed and what you can do to make improvements.
Receive objective cross-industry data on incentive and compensation plans so that you can tailor yours to meet your financial needs and attract top salespeople to your business. It fully integrates with Salesforce, SAP, Microsoft and Oracle. Contact a sales professional to learn more.
Stop struggling to glean powerful sales and performance metrics from pages of spreadsheets, status updates through email and lengthy sales reports. Take advantage of the many software programs that will increase your productivity in an innovative way, streamline your processes and decrease your margin of error.