Successful sales professionals are always result-oriented. Spurred by the desire of closing more deals and growing revenue, the sales professionals are self-driven. That’s why sales reporting plays such a crucial role in a salesperson’s life. It is the best way to demonstrate their achievements. High-profile salespeople know how to spot opportunities, optimize funnel leaks and turn prospects into customers. If you manage a sales team, you definitely use some reporting tool to measure their progress. And that’s a good thing. Sales reports provide you various insights into your sales process.

But a common problem we’ve noticed is that many companies do not go far with sales reporting. They do not report the right metrics, or worse, do not set any reporting process.

While setting up a robust sales reporting process, you don’t want to over-burden your team with excess metrics. The type of sales metric you track depends on the business and marketing campaign. But there are core metrics your sales reports should absolutely have.

This eBook aims to introduce you to sales reporting, its importance, and what core metrics you should always choose to measure.

WHAT IS SALES REPORTINGSales reporting is a cumulative summary of all the sales activities that you do over a specific period of time. The sales report comprises the data that helps you analyze the sales performance.

WHY SALES REPORTING MATTERThe most crucial reason sales reporting matter is they provide you with context. It helps you understand each aspect of your sales process. This way, you can optimize the inefficient stages and scale your business rapidly.

HOW TO PREPARE A SALES REPORTNow that you know what is sales report, and its importance, let’s see how to prepare one.

1) Set an ObjectiveThis point may seem obvious, but many salespeople tend to ignore it. With no objective, your sales report will be all over the place.

3) Collect DataThe next step is to collect all your data points in one place. To ensure you are tracking only the important metrics, you should filter, analyze, edit your data.

2) Understand your AudienceJust like any other aspect of your business, your sales report should also put customers first. The metrics you choose depend on the type of audience you are targeting.

4) Choose Visuals over TextYour team members are busy with daily business activities, so you need something that explains complex data in a simple way. With visual information, your sales repost becomes easy to read and analyze.

5) Add Context to Your DataNumbers can lie. Without appropriate context, your numbers could be misinterpreted. While it is good to keep an eye on your sales number, any fluctuation shouldn’t be taken as it is. You have to see the conditions that resulted in those fluctuations.

CORE METRICS TO TRACK IN YOUR SALES PIPELINEThe metrics you choose to report depending on the type of business and the marketing campaign. But some core metrics are present in almost all sales reports.

1) Deals in the Sales PipelineYour sales reps have identified the prospects and moving them forward in the sales funnel. But how many prospects do you currently have? And what percent of those are likely to become your customers? The deals in the pipeline metric will help you make revenue forecasts and reveal systematic weak points in the sales cycle.

2) Conversion RateConversion rate is the percentage of deals closed vs the percentage of deals lost. If your goal is 10% and your team is struggling to close above 5%, obviously your sales funnel lacks something. Maybe your target is too high or the sales tactics you employ are deficient. Measuring the conversion rate will help you discover what’s working and what doesn’t.

3) Revenue by Sales RepresentativesIt is the most fundamental metric used by the manager to gauge their team’s sales performance. If you get a detailed report of what your successful sales executives are doing right, you can guide the under-performing employees to do well.

4) Length of a Sales CycleWhat is the average length of a sales cycle and why are some representatives unable to close the deal within that period? A shorter length cycle indicates what sales tactics are working best to convert prospects into customers. And when this does not occur, you know that there is something wrong with the sales tactic.

5) Source of the LeadYou need to know where your most precious leads and customers come from. As a sales manager, you have several platforms to experiment with. Not all platforms will yield the same result. By tracking the source of each customer - email campaign, paid ads, cold call, etc - you will pinpoint which of your sales strategies are working and which needs to be discarded or modified.

6) Response TimeWhen a prospect first connects with your business, there’s a chance that they made a similar inquiry with your competitors. There’s obviously a link between a good sales revenue and how quickly a salesperson responds. You need to know the average response time of your business and address whatever problems that prevent sales representatives from responding to sales inquiries within a reasonable time.

ConclusionWhatever information you decide to enter into your sales report, they must always support the big picture of scaling your revenue.

The Sales cycle never ends, and hence it’s your job to fine-tune it frequently. Once you develop a good sales report strategy, you can see the difference in your team’s performance. The insights you gain will help you pinpoint problems and rectify them immediately.