In the sales industry, it’s extremely important to keep a Sales Journal.
So what are we talking about exactly by a Sales Journal? In our case, a sales journal is simply a diary where you can record your most important memories, great, bad, terrible, etc., to help sustain or avoid those past experiences.
A Sales Journal is a tool to help your business move forward. It’s also a way to understand your strengths and weaknesses, so you can build on the positives while strengthening the negatives.
One of the most important reasons to keep a Sales Journal is so you can look back and see how you’ve grown since day one. Which, by the way, is an excellent way to start building confidence in sales if you are new.
I would suggest keeping your Sales Journal just like any other tool, in an organized manner, with tabs for each month.
When you can look back on the highs, lows, good days, and the bad, it will help you see what works best for you, and your organization.
Table of Contents
Why are Sales Journals Important?
Keeping track of your progress when it comes to sales will allow you to reflect on all things important in your career:
- Financial situations that may have been rough for you to handle.
- The attitude and mentality you had when you were closing huge deals and making record sales.
- The attitude and mentality you had when you were in a slump.
And so much more.
But most importantly, keeping a Sales Journal helps you learn from your mistakes.
I’ve seen sales reps who struggled and were never able to pinpoint the reasons why. They just kinda said “screw it,” and coasted until things got better.
Because they failed to take notes on their experiences, it just simply left them paralyzed, and unable to determine what went wrong in the first place.
By taking notes, you’ll be able to see changes that could not be determined if there was no record of your past experiences.
When it comes to the sales industry, whether you’re an owner, a manager, or a sales rep, it’s important to keep track of what is selling, what is working, and why. This can also help you to create new marketing plans.
Another great benefit of keeping a sales journal is if you had a bad encounter with a particular customer, write it down in your journal so you don’t forget the lesson learned. This will serve as helpful information for future encounters with that same customer or similar customers.
Keeping a Sales Journal allows you to “be your own boss” in many ways.
It’ll allow you to monitor certain business aspects that need to be addressed or improved upon.
A great example of this is if sales are down for the month, write it down within your journal to know what needs to be done to improve. You can then create a new marketing plan or brainstorm other ways to increase your sales, so the business does not suffer for the next month.
Similar to keeping track of your progress when it comes to sales, it allows you to monitor your attitude throughout every necessary experience.
How to Categorize your Sales Journal
Let me give you guys a simple structure that I’ve created for my Sales Journal that you can quickly copy and improve on.
1) Have a section tabbed as “Good.”
Write down all of your positive experiences within your sales journal here.
This is a great place to start because it allows you to have a reminder of what goes right in any situation, whether it’s making sales while dealing with customers or devising new marketing plans.
The amazing benefit from this section is whenever you feel like you’re in a sales slump or just not in the best mindset to conduct business, by reading your “Good” section, you’ll be reminded of what to do to get back to that feeling and level.
2) Have a section tabbed as “Bad.”
The purpose of this section is to monitor and learn from your mistakes.
It’s very important that you write down as many experiences as possible within this section because it allows for a better future learning experience, which leads me into my next section.
3) Have a tabbed as “Lessons Learned.”
In this section, write down the specific lessons you have learned from past experiences.
This will allow you to refer back to your previous lessons multiple times throughout your sales experience instead of having to make the same mistakes over and over again or not knowing what happened in the first place due to a lack of note-taking.
4) Have a tabbed as “Future Goals.”
Lastly, this is where you’ll refer back to your previous sections multiple times throughout the month.
This section allows for future goals and improvements to be made regarding all of the sections previously tabbed within your Sales Journal.
For example, suppose you’ve had a bad experience with a particular customer or with any other situation that you’ve tabbed within your “Bad” section. In that case, it’s important to make a list of what needs to be done and improved upon so the future experience does not turn out the same way.
This will allow you to see if there were any mistakes made and how they can be fixed or improved upon.
5) Add whatever you feel is necessary to your sales journal for you to benefit from it the most.
If you’re feeling lazy, go to your “Lazy” section of your journal and read what you did to get out of that mood.
If you’re feeling excited, go to your “Energetic” section of your journal and write down what allowed you to get into such a great mood.
This way, if you need energy one day, you can read what you had written and use those tips to snap back into it.
If you’re ever in need of motivation, read your “Motivated” section, and it’ll give you the inspiration to get back on track.
Where do I write my Sales Journal?
The perfect place to write our sales journal is anywhere you can keep track of all the necessary information.
It could be anything from your desk at work, in a Word Document on Google Drive on your computer, on a note-taking app on your phone, or even in your planner.
But it’s best to stick to one place. If you start writing notes on your phone, then jump to a notepad, then back to your computer – it’s gonna start to get real messy. As long as you have one location where all information is being kept together to monitor progress, then you’re good to go!
Tips for writing your Sales Journal
1) Time.
Make sure that every experience is being timed accurately so that you can get an accurate reading of how long it took to get the sale.
This will allow you, in the future, to determine what times are best for certain sales situations.
2) Environment.
You need to make sure that wherever you’re writing your journal, it’s in an environment that will allow you not to be distracted or interrupted.
This means that when you sit down at your desk in the morning, you do not get up until all of your experiences are written out for the day.
If you’re writing in your planner, make sure that you have enough time for this because it may take some time to write all of the necessary information down.
3) Attention to detail.
When writing out each entry, be very detailed.
This means leaving nothing out, no matter how small or unimportant it may seem at the time.
For example, if you’re trying to get a sale for your product but the customer tells you that they need to see it in person before making a decision, write down what happened after they leave.
Did they show up? Did not come back to the store until three days later? Showed up at 9 am when the doors opened?
This will allow you to monitor the behavior of each and every customer so that you can define which ones are serious about buying and which ones aren’t.
By writing your Sales Journal, it is only going to benefit you in the future by saving time and money, as well as cutting down on energy wasted on making unnecessary mistakes.
Conclusion
The importance of keeping a Sales Journal is very valuable to the success of any person working in sales.
To be successful, you must make your experiences beneficial by writing things down and monitoring how each one turns out.
While there are many different methods to writing a Sales Journal, all that matters is that the information gets recorded in some way to reap the benefits later on down the line.
Thanks for taking the time to learn about the importance of keeping a Sales Journal.
I hope this has helped you in some way, shape, or form with your future endeavors in sales.
