In today’s digital-first economy, data is the new currency. This is why analyzing sales reports has become essential to modern companies’ business. Sales reports enable insight into how agents are performing and what aspects of their strategy need improvement. This allows them to make informed decisions on fine-tuning their processes and improving the overall customer journey.
However, generating sales reports is only the first step in developing a data-driven approach to sales. To help you out, this guide will cover the different types of reports you can create, all of the ways you can analyze them, and everything in-between.
Why are sales reports important?
Sales reports are the building blocks of data-driven sales processes. They take the guesswork out of the whos, whats, whens, and hows of your strategies so you can make targeted plans toward business growth. Using your sales data, you can reap various benefits like:
- Consistent performance monitoring. Sales data can accurately track key performance indicators (KPIs) like conversion rates, sales cycle length, average transaction value, and more.
- Putting your sales team on the right track. Sales data gives clear documentation of sales activities that can help managers make informed decisions on sales strategies.
- Clear-cut sales goals. Sales data aggregates data from different aspects of your operations so you can gain big-picture insights into your processes. In the long run, this helps teams build more precise sales goals.
Types of sales reports
Just as there are different KPIs that a sales team can track, there are also various types of sales reports that businesses can use to monitor their processes. Among the most important are:
- Sales funnel analysis. This tracks the number of active leads you have as well as the conversion rate between every step of your pipeline.
- Sales forecasting. This predicts the number of sales an agent or team can meet within a given time period.
- Sales goals. This shows the expected number of conversions in comparison to actual sales numbers so sales agents can determine whether they can reach their targets.
- Deals won/deals lost. This tracks the number of deals won and lost during a predetermined time interval.
- Progress report. This gives an overview of each salesperson’s activities. It often includes details such as the number of follow-ups an agent made, customer preferences, and the status of a customer.
Putting the data to good use
Collecting and analyzing sales data properly can help you meet your targets and help improve long-term sales process planning. Some specific ways that you can do this include:
- Generating leads. Sales reports can help you understand the wants and needs of your target market. Using this vital information, you can personalize sales messages for different customer segments and generate more high-quality leads.
- Improving customer profiles. Your sales reports can tell you a lot about your customers. It can reveal demographic characteristics like age, gender, and ethnicity, as well as more specific information like purchasing behavior and product preferences – all factors that can help you build more accurate customer personas.
- Boosting customer life value (CLV). Sales reports can help determine pain points in the customer journey. As a result, teams can improve the overall customer experience and maximize profit margins.
- Improving pricing decisions. Sales reports can be used to identify and analyze factors that affect pricing. This lets teams determine what drives prices for different customer segments, allowing them to adjust accordingly.
Make the most out of sales reports with automation
Sales reports are undoubtedly critical to understanding where your company stands at every step of your sales process. However, generating these reports can be tedious, especially if you are manually collecting data from multiple sources.
With this in mind, the use of automation tools is something worth considering. For instance, Skynamo provides real-time reporting and automated sales analysis so you can keep a close eye on your metrics. To learn more about how Skynamo can help you make the most out of your sales reports, have a chat with us.
