Salespeople often experiment with different ways to get prospects’ attention and make a sale. It could be anything from a compelling email to a creative phone call or even a killer demo. 

On the other hand, sales leaders and managers like you want to monitor their performance and devise new sales and people strategies to drive growth.

But success in sales is more than just ringing registers. You need to understand

  • What sales tactics are working for you,
  • Where you need to improve, and
  • How you can replicate past successes.

This is where sales reports play a vital role. 

In this page, we will take you through 

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What are sales reports?

Sales reports summarize the sales activities in a company over a particular period. The sales data from past and current sales is pulled and arranged in an informative way. This helps to draw meaningful conclusions about future sales. 

Sales reports can give information starting from the tiniest sales activities to a bird’s eye view of your sales pipeline. This allows you to understand the team’s progress towards the sales goals and make informed business decisions.

Why are sales reports important?

As you might have guessed, sales reports pave the way to your business direction and growth. Let’s understand how it can impact each aspect of your company -

 

Importance of sales reports in business

Sales reports can help business leaders and directors gain insights regarding the business to help in informed decision-making. They can use sales reports to 

  • Track revenue, pipeline health, churn rate
  • Identify positive and negative trends in the market
  • Map out a business strategy based on the trends observed
  • Get visibility into the performance of the products, services, and industries.
  • Identify high-performing territories and zero-in on the points of action
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Importance of sales reports in sales enablement

The sales enablement team is the unsung heroes behind sales success. They provide the sales team with the necessary tools, training, and content to boost their productivity.

Sales reports give the team an insight into

  • When is a salesperson ready to make their first discovery call?
  • Ramp-up time - How long does it take for a new salesperson to achieve their full quota?
  • When do they make their first win?
  • The quality of the sales enablement materials, training, and support provided.

And more!

Importance of sales reports in sales performance

With sales reports, sales leaders and managers can easily 

  • Identify blockages in the sales funnel
  • Analyze the effectiveness of your sales process
  • Get bird’s eye view of the on-going deals in the sales pipeline
  • Forecast sales accurately
  • Gain visibility into the sales team performance.
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Importance of sales reports in sales team performance

Sales reports give visibility into sales performance not just for the manager but also for every individual salesperson. It allows them to reflect upon  

  • New opportunities in their pipeline
  • Performance of the cold emails
  • Outcomes of the sales meetings

It enables them to realize where extra effort is needed to achieve their targets. 

Sales managers, too, use the sales activity reports to understand the team performance. They can identify salespeople for their various skills to encourage and support them to perform better.

Creating a Sales Report

Creating effective reports is important because you have to present the data about your progress or lag in the best possible way. This becomes more crucial when you create these reports for your leadership.  Here is a four-step guide to creating successful sales reports

 

1. Whom are you creating the report for?

To create a sales report that your audience will understand, you need to know what is important to them and what they will look for in the report. 

For example, the head of marketing would want to know which marketing campaigns have brought in high-quality leads or how many MQLs are being converted to SQLs. In contrast, a VP of sales would want to know the close rate, good performing territories. While a CRO would most likely want the revenue made alongside the sales spends.

When you submit a sales report to the top leadership, ensure that the report communicates the bigger picture. But while sharing it with your peers or direct manager, make sure to include the smaller details of your efforts and their results.

2. Decide the time frame

The numbers mean little if it is not projected over the right time. Sometimes, the numbers may vary greatly or hardly fluctuate. But most importantly, it might not convey the right information. 

For example, while a daily report on sales will help you keep track of progress, you might not be able to identify sales trends or blockages in the pipeline. A weekly or bi-weekly report on sales progress will give you a birds-eye view of the deals in different stages. This gives you a better idea of where you need to concentrate your efforts and how you can help your team achieve their targets.

Again, top leaderships look for the bigger picture—monthly or quarterly reports show the sales trends over the past few weeks or months.

So the period you want to create a report for depends on what you want to convey.

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3. Gather the right data

By the time you get to this step, you would have figured out

  • What you want to convey
  • And whom you want to share it with.

CRM software can create sales reports in an instant once you input the data you have. And a powerful CRM with analytical capabilities will have access to all the sales activities. It stores all the historical data from the time a lead enters your website till closing the deal and beyond. This helps create accurate sales reports in just a few clicks.

4. Choose Engaging Visuals

The primary purpose of sales reports is to convey information in an easy-to-decipher format. And picking the right visuals can help your audience instantly get the precise picture.

One way to do this is to use graphs and charts that explain the significance behind the numbers. There are different types of visuals, each with a purpose to represent different messages. Below are three popular visual representations used to create sales reports -

Pie chart

A pie chart is a circular graph that shows the relative contributions of different segments. This is mostly used while representing percentages from various categories. 

For example, you can use a pie chart to show revenue contribution from different territories or percentage of leads from various campaigns.

Line graph

A line graph connects individual data points over a specified period  to show a rise or fall in numbers. It compares the changes over a short or long time period and is useful in identifying market trends. 

You can use a line graph to represent raising or falling sales numbers, customer churn rate, or website traffic over a specific period.

Bar charts

Bar charts are used to compare the metrics between different categories over a period of time. You can use a  bar chart to show the sales for different products in your company or revenue from different sources. 

CRM for Sales Reports

Visual reports allow sales managers and leaders to decipher data effortlessly. A CRM with analytical capabilities makes it easy to generate sales reports.

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CRM for Sales Reports

Visual reports allow sales managers and leaders to decipher data effortlessly. A CRM with analytical capabilities makes it easy to generate sales reports.

Create Visual Reports

Create various types of reports or choose from the inbuilt sales reports templates

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Predict Sales Accurately

AI powered CRMs in the market analyze the interactions with your prospects and predict the outcome of the deals.

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Automate Reports

Automate sales reports and schedule them to be sent to your inbox at regular intervals.

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