The end goal of any sales rep is to close, close, close. From initial contact to making that call to seal the deal, a good salesman/woman should have little else on their mind then moving forward. Although selling different products and services require you to alter your approach, vary your efforts and adapt to different interests and questions, a good salesman/woman must be able to interpret and record customer feedback and funnel it into a structured and clear pipeline in order to succeed.

The pipeline is in effect the measuring stick from which a sales rep's job security will rest, and having a full and healthy pipeline reveals positive employee activity, closing effectiveness and of course revenue potential. This real time sales tracking capability has been long overdue in the eyes of corporate executives, CEO's and sales managers, and has quickly become an industry standard. Powered by Customer Relationship Management software, this sales tracking capability called Opportunity Management is now available in real time CRM solutions, and affords the sales rep a fully integrated software solution that can track a lead all the way to a closed sale.

Opportunity management embedded in a CRM solution accommodates the needs of both Sales managers and their reps, as well as provides them with the tools to fill their pipeline, track each sales progress and ensure that no opportunity goes begging. Having this visibility into ones potential sales will breed accountability and give sales reps the organization they need to close more deals regularly.

To help you better understand the capabilities and benefits of tracking ones opportunities, the following points will highlight the usability and effectiveness of a good CRM solution with opportunity management.

Lead & Account Segregation – tracking ones opportunities properly really starts with having the ability to convert the interested in Lead into an Account. This conversion capability keeps your leads (potential customers) from your Accounts (current customers and those interested in buying).

Account Management – this will allow you track your current customers and pending customers, as well as add multiple contacts on the account as any sale could involve satisfying more than one contact.

Account Opportunity Management – this feature allows you add multiple opportunities to the one account, allowing you track repeat business as well multiple proposals linked to the same deal. This capability is directly linked to your pipeline and all opportunities are displayed there.

Opportunity Pipeline – this feature provides users and managers with a bird's eye view of all opportunities, their probability of closing, their value, and links to the next steps needed to close.

Opportunity Activity Management – inherent to all CRM solutions is the ability to create and track activities and link them to a particular record. Having the capability to generate and track activities linked directly to an opportunity affords the user the ability to handle more opportunities on the whole.

Closing Opportunities – another very important part of managing your sales pipeline is the ability to close your sales in the system for reporting purposes. Closing a sale won or lost will give users and management a better understanding of what efforts work, what customers are interested in, and how to approach them in the future.

The clarity offered by today's CRM solutions has taken the sales process to the next level and rendered the spreadsheet tracking model almost obsolete. With intuitive and user friendly CRM models that can literally walk you through the sales process, the diligent and savvy sales rep can close more deals today then ever before.