As with most things in life, sales need trackers and reports. Otherwise, how would you know what's working and what isn't, where you need to focus your efforts, and where you're acing your sales game. 

Imagine going to school and not having a report card to track your progress or metrics. While it may be all fun and games at first, you’d have no idea which areas to work on and how you can improve. 

Likewise, without reporting and recording your sales practices, you'll be left in the lurch of the guessing game, and you'll be left going round in circles. 

Dizzy is all it'll make you. 

Are your sales representatives on pace to fulfill their targets? What caused the negative quarter, and how can you avoid it in the future? Do you have a sufficient number of prospects in your sales funnel?

It’s impossible to answer these issues without accurate data, which is where sales reports step in. They record all sales activity and provide crucial insights, assisting sales managers in planning ahead of time and developing sales strategies.

Like a smartwatch tracks and reports your fitness, you'll need a sales rep tool or software that tracks, records, and reports your sales data. 

What are sales reports?

Sales reports, also known as sales analysis reports, are records that summarize a company's sales activities during a specific period. These reports often contain data on sales volume, leads, new accounts, and revenue. They assist business leaders in keeping a pulse on sales activity and give sales managers information about the success and potential of their sales personnel.

What exactly is a sales reporting dashboard/ sales reporting template?

Before we delve into choosing effective sales reporting templates for your business data, let’s first understand the sales reporting dashboard and how they work on the ground level. 

A sales reporting dashboard is a graphical depiction of your sales data. This data is frequently filtered by time period, and many sales dashboards may draw in real-time data.

Quota achievement, conversion/win rate, average deal size, revenue, and sales funnel leakage are all common KPIs tracked.

A sales reporting dashboard often contains several metrics that allow a specific party to discover insights and make appropriate decisions for the company.

it's imperative to acknowledge some factors before deciding on crucial metrics or even sales reporting dashboard templates appropriate for your business needs.

Here are a few questions to get you started:

• What's the purpose of the sales report? 
• What are the most important factors to consider while making business decisions? 
• Who will read the report? 
• What data types need to be addressed?
• Will these KPIs get translated into other reports? 
• Do you make decisions that require real-time updates? 
• What's the most significant approach to represent team members' insights?

By answering these questions, you can understand the purpose of your sales reporting dashboard. Sales being a case-specific undertaking, it's crucial to discover the factors that will benefit your organization. 

Why are sales reports important?

Imagine if a sales team sets an aggressive quarterly objective of closing six figures in new income streams and then checks in around two months later, only to learn they're considerably off course from achieving their goal. 

They were undoubtedly working their butts to make their objective reality, but that isn't enough. Setting objectives is excellent, but they must be both reasonable and feasible. Tracking your success with sales reporting software tools and reporting on realistic targets sales reports are the essential components of long-term business development. 

But wait, there's more:

• Navigation system: Consider reports your "navigational tool" for guiding your sales team in the right direction. Modern sales reporting software will help you obtain actionable sales insights to generate future revenue and demolish targets. They make it apparent to your sales team what's vital and what they should be focusing on.

• Consistent monitoring: You must work hard on the right things at the right time. And for this you need to monitor your sales techniques. Reporting provides continuous feedback on how your team is functioning, allowing you to course-correct as needed.

• Clear sales reporting metrics:  As long as you don't overburden your team with too many sales reporting metrics, utilizing reports allows you to demonstrate to your team what KPIs are critical to your success. When your team has a set of basic, clear sales reporting metrics, they can spend all of their attention on generating money – rather than wasting time debating what to focus on next.

In summary, a sales report serves as a roadmap for tracking your success and monitoring the team's efficiency to construct the most lucrative funnel, keep your costs to a minimum, and maximize productivity. 

What are the best sales reporting practices?

Whether this is your first or tenth sales report, writing an efficient sales report that reflects your sales activity can be challenging. However, breaking down the sales reporting process into five manageable parts will make it easier. 

Here's how to create a good sales report that includes all the essential components.

1. Determine the report's audience and purpose. 

The first and most crucial stage in creating a sales report is determining who it's for and what they need to learn from it. This will assist you in deciding what information to include.

Assume you're presenting your manager, the head of sales, with the monthly sales activity report. It’d help if you highlighted the sales team's productivity and how it relates to the company's overall revenue goals.

Meanwhile, a sales report for the marketing team may be more concerned with which techniques generate inbound leads.

2. Choose a specific time frame

You don't want to look at data from three years ago when you only need last month's information. Choose an appropriate time frame. 

• Daily sales report

A daily sales report summarizes the day-to-day actions of sales teams. You can increase accountability and productivity by using daily sales reports.

• Weekly sales report

A weekly sales report assesses the performance of sales representatives and the sales department over five working days. Managers can use these micro reports to measure the success of sales techniques before monthly reports arrive.

• Monthly sales report

A monthly sales report is a longer-term assessment of sales performance completed each month. Because it covers a wide enough range to track whole sales cycles, it provides a broader perspective of performance than other forms of sales reports.

• Quarterly sales reports

A quarterly sales report is a tool for tracking the performance of sales metrics over three months. One month is commonly insufficient time to track the success of sales techniques or identify trends and patterns that will lead to opportunities for improvement. As a result, companies use quarterly sales reports.

3. Gather relevant data

How do you decide which data to track? Choose metrics that are relevant to the goal of your report.

As a company's sales increase, measuring performance and maintaining track of the many data points becomes more difficult. Instead of relying on an Excel spreadsheet, employ sales reporting software to automatically gather, organize, and analyze sales data. 

4. Explain the data

Once you've gathered your data, it's time to decipher what the numbers represent for your report's target audience. Discover the insights that are not immediately apparent.

Always contextualize information in sales reports so your audience can use the data to make decisions.

5. Make it appealing

A report that is merely statistics and words may not engage your viewers. To make your sales report easier to understand, visualize your data with charts, graphs, tables, and other infographics.

Assume you're working on a predicted sales by source report. Rather than overloading your audience with spreadsheets of figures, you may provide the overall value of the deals for each source in a table.

The sales reporting software from Convin can assist with this task—from bar charts to pie charts, Calvin has every visualization option you need to show your data.

How does Convin's sales reporting tool work?

Convin integrates seamlessly with your CRM and automatically adds all deal data to your CRM, providing you with complete visibility into the sales process and pipeline.

Convin's sales reporting solution is simple to set up and use.

Step 1-  

Convin integrates seamlessly with your calendar, dialer, cloud-based system, video conferencing platform, Slack, and CRM. Convin automatically joins the meeting to record it after clicking the calendar meeting link.

Step 2- 

Then it starts listening in on your conversations and even records them - how despicable is that?

Step 3 - 

Convin transcribes the entire conversation after recording it, so no more taking notes. 

Step 4 - 

Convin analyzes the call based on custom parameters and then highlights the call insights for you, such as topics discussed, queries, feedback, call performance score, soft skills, actionable items, and so on.

Step 5- 

And finally, the integration with Slack and CRM. 

Sales reporting templates:

Sales reports frequently include a stated goal, a data summary, a section-by-section breakdown, and an assessment of the results. Even if you understand these fundamental pieces, a sales report sample or template may teach you exactly how to put them together.

Here is an example of a sales reporting template for Art Supplies Central:

Executive Summary

This report is prepared to outline the preparation for the annual sculpting contest and sales event of the [Art Supplies Central] that will be held on April 27, 2030. The store encountered challenges in gathering participants and the needed sculpting supplies for the contest and the sales event but managed to gather ten participants by November 8, 2030, and the store found a new supplier for the event that can deliver the needed materials before the set date. Total actual project expenses account for 85.71% of the allocated budget.

The Project

The Project The [Art Supplies Central] is currently preparing for its sculpting contest and sales event held once every year in celebration of International Sculpture Day. The event is usually held every last Saturday in April at the Art Convention Hall located in Los Angeles, California. The event preparation started last April 1, 2030, and the preparations are set to be completed by April 26, 2030.

Scope

The main project objective is to celebrate the art of sculpting as well as to encourage aspiring sculptors to start creating sculptures of their own by purchasing the store’s available sculpting materials. The project involves a sculpting contest and a sale of sculpting materials. Major deliverables include a successful contest and sold out sculpting materials.

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