Sales Reporting: Essential Reports for Managers to Review

Sales managers need to keep a close tab on business and team performance. Sales pipeline, conversion, channel analysis, churn, lead aging, etc reports are important for sales leaders to track routinely.

A sales report is the documentation that maps out the status of all sales-related activities carried out in a particular period. Data-driven managers keep actionable sales dashboards pinned on their report tab to frequently track a snapshot of the overall business, team, and individual performances.

Sales reports help in the smooth functioning of sales operations:

  • Pipeline quality
  • Improving team performance
  • Key market insights and trends
  • Sales Forecasting
Reporting in Sales process
Reporting in the Sales process

Many sales leaders do not put enough focus on reporting & analytics capability in sales automation tools, instead, their decision-making is done by the feature lists or flashy reporting dashboard UI.

It is essential to understand the challenges of sales reporting in CRMs:

  • Only standard reports, NO customized reports
  • Complete data NOT flowing in the system
  • Data NOT updated in real-time
  • Poor data visualisation
Sales leaders get greater visibility with reporting
Sales leaders get greater visibility through reporting

The following 8 reports make tracking the sales process easy:

  • Sales Pipeline: Tracking the sales pipeline is the most elementary yet essential report for sales managers to understand the business health. A pipeline report gives an overall visual representation of the various stages of the sales process like leads, opportunities, quotations, deals closed, etc. Using these pipeline reports, managers gain critical insight for funnel leakage, sales forecasting,
  • Sales Conversion: This report provides ample insight into the sales process is the sales conversion report. Managers can track step-wise conversion for every stage of the sale process; Prospect -> Qualified Lead, Opportunity -> Quotation, Pilot -> Deal Won, etc. Sales managers can understand stages that require deeper problem-solving to improve conversion rates. Also, this report helps in the attribution of performance better.
  • Response Time: According to a research report, faster lead response times significantly improved customer response and conversion. Responding to customers after a 5-minute delay leads to an 80% drop in customer conversion. Given the facts, managers should keep a close tab on Response Time in the sales process.
  • Sales Channel Analysis: Understanding channel performance is essential in today's digital age, especially with leads flowing in from multiple channels, both offline and online. Smart sales managers should read channel behavior (share %, conversion, lead quality), and prioritize high-performing channels aligning with marketing teams
Important metrics in sales reporting
Important metrics in sales reporting
  • Agent Performance: This report will single-handedly provides insights into how the team members are faring. Quota achievement %, Conversion %, Response Time, and other metrics give a well-rounded understanding of how the agent has been performing.
  • Customer Churn: This report is an audit of your sales process. Helping sales managers understand at what stage and why customers drop off the sales cycle. Managers can routinely access any report and use insights to plug gaps in the sale process.
  • Lead Aging: Despite its importance emphasized all the time, follow-ups are not a very desired activity. A sales manager can track leads going into the cold bucket and not being worked upon and flag it to respective team members through his report.
  • Lead-Opportunity Ratio: Sales managers should constantly understand what levers they need to deploy to achieve their monthly/quarterly targets. Using this KPI, managers can bump up to scale down marketing efforts depending on the Lead-Conversion Ratio. This report gives a clear indication of overall sales conversion performance.

Many sales CRM solutions promise custom reports but hit a hurdle during the journey a few months after kickstart. Managers need to evaluate solutions with robust reporting and analytics capabilities.

Chakra Sales is a modern sales execution solution to productize your sales process from Lead to Order, eliminating manual activities and multiple data entries. By integrating all associated tools, Chakra Sales creates a unified interface for sales activities with automated data capture and activity logging.

If you are looking for a customized sales solution for your fast-growing organization, do consider a free demo with Chakra Sales.