In today’s complex sales environment, sellers are relying on CRM data to drive deals more than ever before.
According to an Affinity survey, 41% of sales managers have seen an increase in CRM usage over the past year.* To make data-driven sales decisions for strategies like key account planning, sellers need insights that go beyond static contact records and deal progress. One way sales teams can improve deal success? Activity tracking.
In this blog, we’ll discuss how activity tracking in Salesforce can help sales teams effectively find, manage, and win more deals.
What is activity tracking in Salesforce?
Activity tracking is the process of recording and collecting data from sales activities, which can help to close more high-quality deals.
Activity tracking relies on creating an entry in your CRM database for any interaction between your sales team, prospects, and even existing customers. This is connected to the other CRM entries for that person and company in a relational database that includes when sellers send and receive emails, set meetings, or have impromptu conversations with prospects—this is all information that can be accessed and used within the sales process.
How Salesforce activity tracking can improve your CRM data
When sales teams have access to real-time activity insights, it enables sellers to better research, source, and engage new opportunities.
Activity tracking increases seller accountability
Engaging in high-value but manual selling activities, such as initial outreach and prospect engagement, is necessary in order to drive deals forward.
As sellers work against the clock to win deals, it’s easy to get lost in activities that don’t provide a strong return on investment. When these tasks get in the way, it impacts sellers’ abilities to hit pipeline goals and close deals effectively. Activity tracking keeps sellers accountable for revenue-driving activities by providing a clear record of sales activity along with data and metrics relevant to their performance.
While it’s rarely effective to micromanage sellers, tracking activity in Salesforce enables sales managers to stay on top of their team’s productivity. Activity insights make it easier to identify areas of improvement and coaching opportunities that can boost sales performance.
Tracking sales activity improves efficiency
Accurate and complete activity tracking can accelerate deal velocity in more ways than one.
According to a recent Affinity survey, 65% of sales managers believe poor quality outreach is due to missing context from previous interactions.* Activity tracking puts that data and other necessary insights at sellers’ fingertips, reducing embarrassing errors or crossed wires that can delay deals—or even put them in jeopardy.
When unified activity information is readily available, it also eliminates the need for sellers to interrupt their workflows and sift through multiple sources of engagement data. Accessible activity data makes sellers more efficient, allowing them to focus on building relationships and engaging in activities that move deals forward faster.
Activity tracking helps sellers identify and correct problems in real time
As sellers face growing targets in a competitive market, being able to quickly pinpoint which opportunities aren’t advancing—and why—is key to improving win rates. Activity tracking provides end-to-end visibility for every deal in your sales pipeline.
Additionally, activity tracking makes it easier for sellers to determine challenges and gaps in the pipeline and take the necessary measures to course-correct before it’s too late.
For example, when there’s a record of activities, it’s easy to see which opportunities have lapsed in engagement. This way, you can make sure those contacts receive timely and relevant follow-ups.
Activity tracking promotes a culture of collaboration and transparency
Selling shouldn’t—and doesn’t have to—exist in a silo.
When sellers have access to a complete history of activity across the entire company right within their CRM, it puts everyone on the same page. This provides a smoother experience for customers while closing deals faster.
When sellers have a consolidated view of activity information, they’re also able to lean on relationship context from their team members and take advantage of their shared network to prioritize the right opportunities. It encourages sellers to work together and secure more deals as a team.
Automated activity tracking boosts data accuracy and availability
The quality of decisions made throughout the sales process is directly related to the quality of data available in your CRM. Inaccurate data or complete lack thereof makes it challenging to effectively move prospects through the pipeline.
However, it’s unrealistic to put the burden of data management on sellers alone—especially when you consider the volume of sales activity.
Automating activity tracking improves the availability of data while minimizing the impact on existing sales workflows. At the same time, it reduces the risk of error that comes with manual data entry so sellers can confidently make data-backed deal decisions.
How to get the most out of activity tracking in Salesforce
Activity tracking is only effective when that data is used to enhance the deals process. Here are a few ways you can use activity insights to your advantage.
Log every activity in Salesforce
With shrinking resources, adding additional processes into the dealmaking workflow feels counterproductive. But when sales teams only have access to fragments of data it significantly reduces the usefulness of the information available. For example, a seller who only has access to half of a prospect's previous interactions is still missing the necessary context to create an effective account plan.
If sellers aren’t able to get value out of the activity tracking data, they’re less likely to rely on it in the dealmaking process—lowering Salesforce CRM adoption and impacting their ability to close deals.
Integrate Salesforce with your email, phone, and calendar tools
In a high-velocity sales environment, CRM upkeep and usage often get put on the back burner. Asked in a recent Affinity survey, 35% of sales managers cited time as the biggest barrier to keeping CRM records and activity up to date.*
Fortunately, activity insights are often readily available within the platforms sellers already use every day. Tools including Affinity for Salesforce or Einstein Activity Capture take advantage of this data exhaust and automatically pull insights from existing workspaces such as email and calendar, and track that activity directly within Salesforce.
By eliminating the burden of manually logging emails, events, and other interactions, sales teams benefit from improved accuracy and completeness of activity data within the Salesforce CRM.
Utilize activity tracking to create a roadmap to success
Activity tracking takes the guesswork out of the sales process. It helps sellers easily identify gaps and visualize patterns in outreach and communication that can inform their dealmaking process.
Historical activity insights help sales teams determine what works best to move sales through the pipeline. For example, you may discover that email is more effective for outreach than phone communications. Or your ideal post-meeting follow-up cadence is three days instead of five. Activity data can even inform the optimal relationship strengths that improve outreach success and win rates.
By analyzing sales activity from prospect to close, you get an improved understanding of your sales cycle. It reveals successful strategies that you can replicate to build stronger pipelines.
Use activity data to unlock relationship insights
Purely transactional deals are a thing of the past. In today's world of B2B sales, successful outreach and deal origination relies on relationships.
Activity tracking provides a timeline of every activity associated with a person or a company. When you layer relationship intelligence on top of this CRM data, sellers can better understand the strength of the relationships in their own networks—and those of the company at large.
This relationship context helps sellers uncover warm paths to introductions that secure deals 25% faster compared to cold outreach.
Bonus: Read our step-by-step guide to Salesforce activity tracking to get started.
Augment your Salesforce activity tracking with Affinity for Salesforce
Affinity for Salesforce improves your activity tracking so sellers can focus on what matters—prospecting, selling, and closing deals.
Elevate your Salesforce activity tracking with:
- Streamlined data capture for high-velocity dealmaking. Save over 200 hours of manual CRM work per user with integrations that automate the capture of account and activity data in Salesforce.
- Access to CRM data directly within your workflow. Affinity for Salesforce extensions improve CRM usage by extending Salesforce records and activity insights to sellers directly in the tools they use every day—from their email inbox to their browser—without ever having to open Salesforce.
- Relationship insights that enrich existing activity data. Get warm introductions and accelerate the sales process with AI-driven relationship intelligence to make better use of your company’s network of connections and build stronger relationships. Plus, stay on top of buyer engagement with relationship alerts so you never lose touch with valuable contacts.
- Long-term historical data for better decision-making. Affinity for Salesforce retains data indefinitely, compared to alternatives like Einstein Activity Captures that limit storage to two years, improving long-term decision-making and relationship insights.
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Salesforce activity tracking FAQs
Why should you track activities in Salesforce?
Tracking activities in Salesforce can help sellers better source, manage, and close deals. When teams track their activities and interactions, it improves efficiency in the sales process by giving teams access to the relationship context they need, when they need it. It also improves accountability by encouraging sellers to focus on revenue-driving activities that accelerate dealmaking.
Complete activity data also helps teams draw out valuable relationship insights that unlock warm introduction paths and context to better qualify deals—improving deal quality and time-to-close.
Which activities should you be tracking in Salesforce?
All customer touch points should be tracked as sales activity in Salesforce. Specific activities that should be recorded include:
- Sales tasks
- Phone calls
- In-person and virtual meetings
- Email communication
- Calendar events
Complete activity records provide valuable context for sellers to engage clients, build account plans, and unlock relationship insights that help sellers source, manage, and close deals faster.
How does activity tracking in Salesforce work?
Activity tracking in Salesforce is as simple as inputting sales activities, such as outreach and account engagement, into your Salesforce database. These are typically organized into three categories: tasks, events, and calendars.
This data can then be accessed throughout the sales process to inform decision-making. Salesforce users can also set activity notifications, as well as roll-up activities to contacts, opportunities, contracts, or other custom fields.
Affinity for Salesforce improves existing Salesforce activity tracking functions with an API that automates the creation, updating, and enrichment of CRM records from inbox and calendar activities. By automating activity tracking, sellers have access to complete activity insights that advance deals—without the burden of manual data entry.
* Data from Affinity’s 2024 survey of 250+ business leaders across investment banking, media and communications, real estate, professional services, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and enterprise technology.
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