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By Candi Bashiri, Director, Systems Sales Operations, Lynx Software Technologies
November 19, 2024
Sales reports are to sales leaders as a baton is to a musical conductor. By using the data in sales reports to coach their teams, sales managers can help everyone work together effectively and maintain a steady rhythm. They can even select their first chair performers when a sales report highlights exceptional results. This is why generating, maintaining, and using the right sales reports — and training others to understand and use them too — can help you grow your business.
Learning how to successfully run and use sales reports enables leaders to make informed decisions and ultimately drive team success. Here's how.
What you'll learn:
Sales reports are a presentation of data pulled directly from your CRM to provide a snapshot of sales performance metrics and related insights. Sales professionals and business leaders use the data in these reports to track key performance indicators (KPIs) that help guide their decisions and point to next steps for meeting sales goals.
Depending on the purpose of each report and its audience, they can be used on a daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or even annual basis. Many sales people use reports, usually daily or weekly, to monitor their progress toward goals, check in on their pipelines, and determine their most immediate tasks. Sales managers use reports to stay abreast of their team's performance and determine where and how they can best help individuals meet their goals.
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Sales reports are a treasure trove of insights into your sales performance. At a high level, sales tracking informs leaders on how their teams are performing against year-to-date targets, making it easier to gauge individual and team effectiveness. Sales reports also help forecast whether you're on track to meet your sales goals, allowing you to fine-tune your overall strategy along the way.
Here are four ways you can use sales reports at various levels within your organization.
There's also the personal angle. As you get more practice drafting and using sales reports, you'll not only find ways to improve your skills as a salesperson, but you'll also raise your internal profile as a strategic player. That builds your value and gives you more opportunities to collaborate at higher levels. In fact, sales statistics from Salesforce's Trends in Data and Analytics for Sales report show that 94% of sales leaders say their organization should be getting more value from their data. If you're one of the people who understand how to do this, then you're better positioned to move up quickly.
Sales reports generally include the following components:
A tip for creating sales reports: When selecting KPIs, always consider who's using the report and what they want to learn to determine which metrics you should include and how granular to get. I've also found that showing which filters you've used and how you're sorting helps people understand various reports more easily.
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Sales reports vary by frequency, focus and level of detail. In general, the closer the person using the report is to the data, the more detailed and frequent their report will be. The further they are from personally affecting the data and the higher they are in the organization, the more digestible and high-level the report or sales dashboard should be.
For example, a sales representative likely wants a daily report on their own activities, leads and deals so they can track their progress against goals and prioritize their tasks for the day. A sales manager may prefer a weekly report on team-level progress, while their VP of sales prefers to get monthly reports on sales performance for each region, line of business and product. The highest-level viewers, such as board members, may only want quarterly sales reports with year-to-date revenue and high-level sales forecasts.
Here are some of the most commonly used sales reports.
Today's reporting technology makes creating and updating sales reports easy. For instance, Sales Cloud
creates simple visualizations of data and enables users to drill into key drivers such as lead volume and sales pipeline metrics. However, that doesn't mean the human touch isn't important — especially when it comes to understanding what to include and how to best display the data. Use this simple process for writing a sales report.
Staying away from "don'ts" is always a best practice, so watch out for these common sales report pitfalls:
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Sales reports should be consistent and clear, with information that helps the viewer track against targets and meet their goals. Use these best practices to build concise, actionable sales reports.
Securing the right tools helps sales leaders better analyze team performance and identify areas for improvement. Modern software provides automation that improves accuracy and can even build in real-time analytics. This is why it's essential to know your tools — their capabilities and how to use them. Platforms with the latest AI can even identify action items for you and your team. Learn your technology. Train to become a master of the tools you use to create your sales reports, and not only will you optimize your current efforts, but you'll build a brighter future for your career.
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