Time is tight for sales managers, and many avoid the CRM because of this fact. But in reality, your CRM system can actually help eliminate redundant tasks and bring you closer to your reps and your clients.

By logging sales data and communicating with contacts directly from your CRM, everything you need to run an efficient sales team is at your fingertips. There’s no need for manually updating outdated spreadsheets or sifting through a pile of emails. And by keeping all data in one centralized place, you can save a significant amount of time.

The six tips below will help you uncover areas of your CRM system that will enable you to efficiently organize and present team data on deal revenue, potential prospects, client communication, and more. As a result, you can focus on managing people instead of managing your day.

1) Track Productivity Metrics

Not only is public reporting of metrics a great motivational tactic, but staying on top of your team’s activity numbers helps you identify your reps’ strengths and weaknesses.

Activity metrics, however, are not always at the top of sales managers’ agendas. According to a study conducted by Harvard Business Review, activity KPIs only make up 17% of the metrics used to manage sales performance despite being the most easily managed. Without these metrics, you lack insight into your team’s productivity habits. How are you able to reward the top performers and get laggards back on track?

Keeping tabs on everyone’s daily activities is easier with a CRM because you can automate the reporting of logged activities such as meetings, calls, and emails. Gather up all the team data in one place, monitor it daily, and refer to these metrics during one-on-ones. These regular activity performance check-ins can help you gauge where each rep is at and spot areas for improvement.

Below is an example of the Productivity widget in the HubSpot CRM. This widget automatically updates with the number of calls, meetings, and emails sent per rep, along with their logged notes and tasks:

2) Track Revenue Metrics

Communication is essential for both your success as a manager and your reps’ growth as sales professionals. Touching base regularly gives you an idea of your reps’ everyday agendas and maintains the overall health of the pipeline.

So how can you start ongoing engagement with your reps? Look at contact, company, and deal records on a per-rep basis in your CRM, and use this data to strike up performance and coaching conversations.

Some metrics most CRM systems can report on include:

• Deals Closed per Owner: Use filters to create a view for each rep that shows the deals they have closed so far along with the revenue for each deal, and send it to them. That way, you can stay on top of how each rep contributes to revenue, and your reps can track their own progress.
• Contacts Owned per Rep with Last Contacted Date: Create a view per rep to show how many contacts they own and when the last time each contact was sent an email, booked for a meeting or called. This can help you gauge how leads are distributed among your team and how proactive each rep is about reaching out.
• Open Deals with Estimated Revenue: For each member of your team, create a view so they can see their open deals and how much potential revenue is associated with each. This visual will enable them to effectively prioritize their time.
• Deal Revenue Leaderboard: A deal revenue leaderboard ranks reps based on their deals’ forecasted revenue — from highest to lowest. This will promote healthy competition and give your reps the motivational push they need to close those deals (and climb the ranks).

3) Review Logged Calls and Emails

You can’t monitor each call your reps make or proof every email they send. Instead, refer to the logged engagements on CRM contact records at your own convenience. That way, you can put yourself in your reps’ shoes to gain valuable insight into how client relationships are progressing (or not).

There are many benefits of listening to recorded calls — especially when it comes to skill development and coaching opportunities.

For example, when listening to a recorded call, maybe you notice a rep’s tone comes across as pushy, potentially scaring off the prospect. If so, bring this call to your next one-on-one, listen to it together, and give them tips on how they can sound less aggressive.

As for email — perhaps you come across an entirely one-sided email chain logged on a contact record. Your rep is clearly working hard to gain the prospect’s interest, but the buyer just isn’t into it. Time is being wasted.

Send a link of this contact record to your rep and discuss ways they can distinguish good fit leads from disinterested prospects. You can also craft an effective breakup email together that might spark a response.

Using the CRM for call and email reviews is a lot simpler than asking reps to record their meetings or send you messages — saving a lot of back-and-forth time and making coaching more efficient.

4) Create Team-Wide Reports

Revenue climbs with a CRM. Nucleus Research found that sales teams that use a CRM system earn a company $8.71 for every $1 spent.

Your reps deserve to see the monetary value of their hard work at the team and deal level. Deal reports are a great way to monitor the pipeline on both an individual rep and team-wide basis.

These reports can include information such as where a deal is at in your pipeline or how many deals were closed in a given time period. Put them on a public dashboard so the entire team can see how they’re doing as a unit and in comparison to each other.

With HubSpot’s CRM, you can create a recurring email of deal dashboard metrics to send to your reps so they can see just how far out they are from their personal and team numbers.

5) Route Leads Automatically

Lead routing is an important part of sales operations. Allocating your contacts and companies to different reps will ensure all your prospects and clients receive an adequate amount of nurturing and deals are distributed evenly among all members of your team. Overloading one rep with all the leads will mean less quality time spent per prospect and also fewer opportunities for other members of your team to put money in the collective “bank.”

Use your CRM’s filtering tools to divide your prospects by a number of specific characteristics. Is a particular rep targeting educational institutions? Filter by industry. Maybe you want to segment your companies based on size. In that case, filter by a number of employees.

Then, assign prospects in bulk to different sales reps. This will ensure all company and associated contact records are accounted for and distributed evenly to avoid overloading your reps.

Below is what a filtered view of companies in a specific region looks like in the HubSpot CRM:

6) Assign Tasks

The ability to delegate is a key trait of an effective sales manager. Taking on too many tasks will make you less available to your reps and will also rob them of opportunities to build their sales skills, which makes them less effective and self-sufficient in the long-run.

You can build a list of tasks that need to be done right in your CRM, eliminating the need for any external documents. Then, go through the list and assign them to yourself or various reps. Setting up email reminders in your CRM to automate following-up will help keep your reps on track and strengthen communication among your team. With a more organized task system, more time can be spent connecting with leads and closing deals.

With the tips above, you can use your CRM to add structure to your team and gain insight into your reps’ day-to-day activities. Spending less time manually keeping track of data frees up your schedule so you can focus on developing your team and helping your business grow.