How to prioritize sales leads and track sales activities

If you want to grow your business, simply storing contacts in your sales CRM is not enough.

You need to track activities, prioritize sales outreach, and manage different CRM tasks at once.

In this blog post, we’ll cover one of the best and simplest ways to prioritize sales leads.

How to prioritize sales leads

Organizing leads in an Action Stream is the best way to prioritize and track your sales activities.

All leads are also color-coded:

• Contacts with a red flag are at the top of the priority list (marked as ASAP or Overdue).
• Contacts with an orange flag are scheduled for today.
• Contacts with a grey flag are at the bottom of the priority list (scheduled for future dates).

Action Stream is a simple tool for prioritizing, managing, and tracking leads and CRM tasks.

Here’s what you can do with it.

Add multiple CRM tasks to one lead

Growing a business would have been simple if each lead in your CRM only had one thing that you needed to do to bring it closer to a sale.

However, often that’s not the case.

While each CRM contact can have multiple tasks and follow-up reminders scheduled for several months in advance, the Action Stream displays your immediate priorities.

Somewhere halfway through the deal, a prospect can call in requesting a brochure…again. Or, perhaps, it happens to be your client’s birthday.

And while arranging that scheduled demo for them is certainly a priority, sending them a quick card or mentioning it on the call might be a thoughtful touch that goes a long way.

You can schedule all of these CRM activities right on the Contacts Page, and the Action Stream displays only the priority tasks, marked with ASAP, Today, or Overdue.

In other words, lead prioritization happens automatically in the Action Stream. When the time comes, the lead will pop up on your radar.

See all priorities for the day

Not all CRM tasks are created equal.

The Eisenhower Matrix neatly breaks down the tasks into Urgent and Important, Important and Less Urgent, Urgent and Less Important, and Less Important and Less Urgent.

While your main Next Action probably is (or should be) the one that ticks the Urgent and Important box, it doesn’t mean that there can’t be other tasks associated with the CRM contact that might require your attention today.

For example, your scheduled Next Action is to send a lead an updated proposal. While you were halfway through drafting it, the lead rang, and your teammate picked up the phone. Apparently, they also urgently need a copy of your references. So your colleague quickly added another action for today and assigned it to you.

Since both of these tasks are urgent, you can see them both in your Action Stream next to the lead’s name (Joe Bloggs). 

Focus on one lead at a time

At OnePageCRM, we’re strong advocates of minimizing the noise and zooming in on what matters. In fact, our Focus Mode allows you to do just that.

The moment you hit Focus, you will be able to get a full overview of your action plan, with only the CRM contacts with Overdue, ASAP, and Today actions displayed in your Stream.

The Focus Mode removes the distractions and helps you prioritize leads quicker.

Automatically sort leads

The Action Stream is not only simple, it’s also very interactive.

The sales leads with overdue tasks float to the top of your list and are assigned red flags.

You don’t need to track anything manually. OnePageCRM will automatically sort your leads and bring them to your attention.

If you don’t want to tackle each overdue task individually, you can bulk update these leads and change the due dates for their tasks.

This way, you can allocate some time later on to work through your contact list.

Handle a change in priorities

The Action Stream is a tool not only for tracking your sales activities but also for easily prioritizing leads.

Sometimes priorities change, and it’s important to quickly reschedule tasks to other dates.

Even some overdue actions might be just not that high on your priority list anymore.

You can easily reschedule tasks right in the Action Stream by clicking on any flag and picking a new date.

Say, you wanted to send a reminder to Tess about one document as soon as possible.

But just now, you’ve received an email from a VIP customer who asks for an urgent meeting. So the reminder to Tess is no longer at the top of your priority list, and you can reschedule it to later today.