Every enterprise needs to track new leads and prospects from end to end and all points in between. Intelligent business folks and experienced top producers know that entering prospects, tracking leads, nurturing the lead, and closing the sale are all vital to hitting and surpassing your company’s sales goals and quotas. Organized salespeople close more deals faster and with less waste and redundancies. Get to yes now.
If you’ve been wondering how to build a lead tracking spreadsheet but haven’t found the time to create a lead tracker template, don’t worry; we’ve done it for you.
What is a lead tracker template?
A sales lead tracker template is a simple spreadsheet designed to help you better track the leads you are nurturing through your pipeline. For smaller businesses, having a simple place to keep track of all your leads in one place can have a significant impact on your bottom line by keeping things from falling through the cracks.
Our free sales leads tracker spreadsheet includes all the data fields you need to organize, be more productive, and keep your sales pipeline stocked with hot leads at the bottom of the funnel (BOFU), to the top of the funnel (TOFU), and beyond.
Download our Sales Lead Tracker for free:
How to use our lead tracker spreadsheet
A fundamental, no-frills lead tracking spreadsheet should include these essential data fields and categories:
1A. Lead or Company Name. This is the first place to start when building your lead tracker template process and database.
1B. First Name. You’ll want to separate the first and last names when creating a leader tracking spreadsheet and possibly exporting this data for email or marketing purposes.
1C. Last Name. As you build your lead tracking spreadsheet and as it grows more extensive, you want to keep data fields separate. Keeping each data field separate makes pulling reports, exporting this spreadsheet, and drip marketing organized and logical.
1D. Title. Noting and entering your contact’s title is a vital data field that can help you with your marketing activities and building more detailed lists or, eventually, a database. A title is more than a mere formality; it can help you hone your message and efforts to correspond with the prospect’s role in decision-making. Also, you and your sales or team leads can spot patterns or sales history associated with job titles and optimize your process.
1E. Department. This is another field or descriptor that can help you tailor-make your sales, nurture, and marketing approach.
1F. Email. This may be a sales lead’s only form of preferred contact. And for marketing and communications purposes, email is still a prevalent and preferred option for most prospects.
1G. Office Phone. Even with the popularity of remote work, many decision-makers may still prefer or be more easily reached at the office.
1H. Mobile Phone. Many professionals prefer to be contacted on their cell phones or may not provide you with an alternate number. Also, designating whether a number is mobile will become vital if they opt-in to SMS correspondence or receive marketing messages.
1I. LinkedIn. As the leading B2B social media platform for millions of business professionals, LinkedIn can be an excellent source of information and help you with lead generation and marketing.
1J. Website. Entering the lead’s company website can help you quickly review developments at the company or gather more information regarding your prospect.
1K. Assigned Salesperson. As an internal marker, and for any organization with sales teams, it’s important to assign a salesperson to ensure proper uniformity in sales and attribution.
These are the meat and potatoes of any simple lead tracker spreadsheet. Still, even these fields are limited in gathering, entering, organizing, facilitating, and tracking your sales and marketing efforts.
To personalize, customize your data, implement your marketing strategy, feed your sales funnel, and track your end-to-end sales lead tracking, you may opt for a more comprehensive sales lead tracker spreadsheet with many more columns and fields to document your efforts.
Read more: Pipeline Management Software Buyer’s Guide
The extensive lead tracking spreadsheet
The other section on our lead tracker template includes 15 more columns and inputs. Entering and tracking more information helps you define, track, and market your sales leads more accurately and effectively. Also, by tracking all this information, you can best determine what information is essential to your sales team and which factors or patterns most often lead to a conversion.
Columns 1A through 1K are identical, but the additional fields are provided:
1L. Lead Source. What was the first “touch point” in your attribution model or sales funnel? What brought this new sales lead to your site or company, and what was the message and targeting of that call out? Knowing this can be invaluable in the sales tracking process.
1M. Form Submission. Did your sales lead complete and submit a form, and what data can be sourced from this form? Completing a form indicates at least a level of interest, as it requires a small effort from your prospect.
1N. Emailed. Did you email the lead in response to their inquiry or other opt-in action? When did you email the lead? Did they open the email, click on a link, or respond?
1O. Phoned. Did you phone the lead? Did you speak to them or leave a message, or were you unable to reach them? Noting this action can help you monitor your lead nurturing and sales efforts, thus ensuring that every lead is properly handled.
1P. Decision Makers. You first capture the company and the first and last name of your leads, but this is another entry to further describe all those involved in the decision to buy from you. Noting these individuals is always a good idea.
1Q. Number of Employees. How small or large is your prospect’s enterprise? Knowing this information can help you determine features, pricing, or other factors that may be important in your sales and marketing efforts for this client.
1R. Pain Point. This could be the primary issue or challenge your client is facing, and it is an important motivating factor for your lead and the decision-makers. There can be more than one pain point, so it’s important to understand all of them and which is the most important.
1S. Needs. This can be a general description of the sales lead’s needs and a reference to how your solution helps them meet or exceed this need.
1T. Interest Level. This is self-explanatory. Ranking or designating leads as cold, warm, or hot can help you determine what kind of nurturing or approach is optimal for clients based on their interests.
1U. Current Solution. Whether the client has a current solution or none, this is a crucial piece of information to track.
1V. Competitors Being Considered. If possible, inquire about what competing solutions are being considered and note them. Knowing who your competition is can help you highlight your features, pricing, service, or other attributes that may be superior to your competition.
1W. Next Steps. Enter a quick note as a reminder of a follow-up date and action.
1X. Timeline. In this field, you can enter the lead’s estimated decision date, budgeting, meetings, etc.
1Y. Expected Close Date. If a conversion seems likely and imminent, note when the sale will close.
1Z. Notes. Enter brief, helpful, or valuable notes that may not be covered under one of these other categories.
1AA. Won/Lost. If you win the sale, simply note the sale date. If you don’t win the account, note this and possibly which competitor won the sale.
Read more: Lead Generation Strategies & Techniques You Need to Know
A better lead tracker solution?
After reading this article and tracking your leads using our free spreadsheets, you may discover that you need a more robust, scaleable, and powerful lead-tracking solution. Entertaining, organizing, tracking, nurturing, and closing your leads is a significant first step in optimizing your lead gen and sales efforts, but it may fall short of serving your needs and growth.
Efficient lead generation and tracking can be a big lift and challenge for even small businesses. But there’s no reason to despair. As we’ve documented and explored previously, multiple excellent lead tracker software solutions exist, and there’s one to fit every budget, every sized enterprise, and every need.
Let’s briefly explore your potential lead-tracking solutions and what you need to know to make the best decision.
Read more: Top 8 Sales Mapping Software Solutions
You might need a CRM
There are many well-known solutions for lead tracker software, including the big dogs like Salesforce and HubSpot, plus several other lead and CRM options. We recently reviewed many of the most popular lead tracker/CRM solutions in this excellent article by TechnologyAdvice’s Kara Sherrer. Depending on your needs and factors, such as the number of users, features, commitments, trial offers, ease of use, integration with other systems, scalability, and pricing, one solution may fit the greatest number of your demands.
Take the first step in tracking your leads and download these free spreadsheets. Feel free to modify these templates and add more fields or columns. Using either of these two free sales lead spreadsheets is an easy and free way to determine your needs and help point you in the right direction if and when you leap into a lead gen CRM.
Looking for the latest in CRM solutions? Check out our CRM Software Buyer’s Guide.