In the fast-paced world of sales, managing and optimizing sales activities is essential for success. Sales activities encompass the fundamental tasks and actions undertaken by a sales team on a day-to-day basis. These activities include making phone calls, conducting meetings, responding to emails, and engaging in instant messaging to interact with potential clients and existing customers. In this article, we will explore why it's crucial to log sales activities, the benefits it offers, and why automating this process is a game-changer for sales teams using HubSpot.
What are sales activities?
Sales activities are the fundamental tasks and actions undertaken by a sales team on a day-to-day basis. These activities serve as the building blocks of successful sales endeavors, including making phone calls, conducting meetings, responding to emails, and engaging in instant messaging to interact with potential clients and existing customers.
Why is it important to log sales activities?
Logging sales activities into your CRM system is crucial for effective Sales Activity Management (SAM). This management process involves identifying, monitoring, and enhancing these critical activities to generate consistent revenue. It shifts the focus from merely managing revenue, which is influenced by various factors, to managing the activities that drive revenue. Successful sales managers and directors can use this to identify key input metrics that influence revenue generation.
By logging all sales activities into a CRM, several benefits emerge. Firstly, it streamlines processes by identifying actions that lead to success, allowing for a more efficient workflow. Secondly, it enhances visibility and reporting, making it easier to pinpoint areas of improvement and demonstrate how efforts translate to revenue growth. Thirdly, it creates alignment around the team when everyone in the field understands what they must do at the sales activity level to achieve specific sales objectives and the consequent business results. In essence, logging sales activities into a CRM is the foundation for achieving the desired business results by effectively managing the activities that precede them.
Why do you need to automate sales activity logging?
Automating sales activity logging is imperative due to the inherent problems associated with manual logging. Firstly, relying on manual entry increases the risk of forgotten entries, resulting in incomplete and inaccurate reporting that can compromise decision-making. Secondly, even when activities are remembered and logged, the content and exact timestamps can still be prone to errors, leading to misleading data and subsequent poor decision-making. Lastly, the manual logging process is also tedious and time-consuming, diverting a significant portion of the sales team's valuable time and effort away from their core task of selling.
Embracing automation ensures that all relevant activities are logged promptly and accurately, freeing up valuable resources for more effective sales efforts and enabling data-driven strategies that enhance sales performance and growth.
How to automate sales activity logging?
Now that we understand the importance of automating sales activity logging, let's dive into how you can do it effectively. We'll cover the four most common activities - emails, WhatsApp messages, calls, and meetings - that you should automate logging for, and we'll provide insights into how to seamlessly integrate these processes into HubSpot.
1. Emails
HubSpot simplifies email logging through its dedicated extensions and add-ons, catering to popular platforms like Gmail, Office 365, and Outlook desktop. For instance, the HubSpot Sales Chrome extension is a free tool that can be seamlessly integrated with Gmail. Once installed, you'll notice a HubSpot icon within your Gmail interface. When composing an email, you'll find a "log" checkbox in your draft, which is checked by default. You can even set "log emails" to be checked by default, ensuring that any sent email is automatically logged in HubSpot. Moreover, replies to logged emails will also be effortlessly recorded. It's important to note that this functionality differs from "email tracking," which primarily focuses on logging when the email is opened.
2. WhatsApp Messages
In regions where WhatsApp serves as a prominent communication channel, your sales team may predominantly engage with customers using this platform. However, HubSpot lacks a native solution for automating WhatsApp message logging. To solve this, consider using Cooby, the most trusted WhatsApp & HubSpot integration tool. Cooby offers a seamless automation feature for logging WhatsApp messages directly into HubSpot. Once Cooby is installed, you gain the flexibility to select which contacts you wish to enable automatic message logging for. This integration ensures that these critical interactions are consistently and systematically logged, granting you a comprehensive overview of your sales activities and customer engagements.
3. Calls
HubSpot also offers a native solution for call logging, available in the Starter, Professional, or Enterprise plans. You can initiate calls directly from a HubSpot contact record, and both the call itself and any accompanying notes will be logged as activities. Alternatively, you can click on "call with phone" from the HubSpot contact record to call using your phone.
4. Meetings
HubSpot's Meetings feature simplifies scheduling and logging meetings. Create HubSpot Meeting scheduling pages for your customers, enabling them to effortlessly book appointments that are automatically logged into their contact records. To make the most of this feature, connect your calendar to HubSpot. This connection allows contacts to schedule meetings on your calendar while preventing any scheduling conflicts with existing events. You can also customize your meeting scheduling page URL and domain for a seamless, branded experience.
By using these integration tools in your sales workflow, you not only save time and effort but more importantly gain the ability to use data-driven methods to manage your revenue. You’ll be able to build detailed reports to monitor and enhance critical activities which will in turn elevate your sales team's efficiency and effectiveness. Witness your sales activity logging seamlessly merge into an insightful and integral part of your sales process as you unlock the power of automation.
