What should I track in my CRM?

Track. Everything. Entirely through your funnel.

The more data the better.

Here are a few suggestions of what you should track for each lead:

• Time of lead creation
• First call attempt timestamp
• Subsequent call attempt timestamps
• Current status (new, contacted, application, etc.)
• Source*

Once you know this data for each of your leads, you can report on some really cool aggregate information:

• Count of leads by source
• Contact rate
• Application rate
• Deal close rate
• Time to first touch (how long did it take your team to contact the lead)
• How many attempts were made

*Note that while it's important for you to track the source of your leads for your own attribution data, but it's also wise not to share this information with your sales team during lead followup. Knowing the lead source can lead to follow up bias, where a sales team assumes one source is better than another, and works those leads harder, thus fulfilling their own prophesy. If they had worked all the leads just as hard, they would have gotten better results from all their sources.

Also, lead scoring is not a good idea. Every lead should be given an equal shot, because you never know who you're throwing out if you only call the leads you think you like.