Outsourcing Progress Measurement and Reporting
As with any other type of sales reporting, if you don't have a process for gathering the sales data collected during the sales process, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to put accurate sales information together during sales projection crunch time. There are a number of CRM and Sales programs that can help with sales process reporting; most require you to know what sales information you want at each step of the sales process and have the mechanism in place to get the sales and prospect data entered. Of course, there is always the simple process of counting closed sales at the end of the year and comparing it to what you hoped to have, but that won't help you improve your sales process.
If you have chosen to outsourced sales resources for one or more steps in the sales process, be sure that you are receiving sales progress reports from each step. Many sales outsourcing firms maintain reporting sytems for their step in the sales process, so compilation into one sales report should be fairly simple.
