7 Types of Sales Analysis Reports To Get The Right Sales Insights
What if we gave you a car, but you cannot ever drive it or ride in it. It’s just out there lying in the parking lot. Frustrating, right? To have an asset that you’re unable to use. Sales data is no different.
Any business that relies heavily on direct selling always has a huge data dump, but only a few manage to make good use out of it. In fact, only 46% of sales reps actually have data insights to gauge a customer’s propensity to buy, even when 85% of them know that it can boost their efficiency.
Source: Salesforce
If you think that this gap is because these teams don’t have access to data–you are mistaken. In all likelihood, they have all the data and metrics they need. All they need is the understanding and the skill to turn that data into an insightful report and use it to take corrective measures. Well, that’s what we’re here for. In this article, we’ll introduce you to the 7 most common and useful sales analysis reports that every sales team can benefit from.
However, before proceeding there, we’ll quickly address a common misconception about sales reports.
Sales Reports v/s Sales Metrics
In our previous article, we covered the key sales metrics you should track for your business. So, to avoid any confusion, we must call out that sales reports are not the same as sales metrics. Metrics are key data points that you analyze to create a sales report. Also, metrics that are not sorted into a report fail to benefit the business because you don’t get any insights from them. It is only when you make organize metrics in a tabular or visual format to interpret and derive conclusions from them, that you make use of them.
Without further ado, let’s get to the elephant in the room. Here are 8 types of sales reports that you can create periodically to make insightful decisions for your business.
1. Conversion Rate Report
The journey of lead to a paying customer involves several stages. At each stage, you get some and you lose some. Conversion rate measures these step-wise victories. It tells you the number of leads that progress to the next stage, out of the total in hand. Needless to say, a conversion rate report, therefore becomes the North Star for your sales team.
Let’s say you had 1000 leads at the beginning. Out of those 800 got interested in the product. Then 600 requested a demo but only 100 asked for a quote after the demo. Using your conversion rate report, you’d get to know that the demoing stage of your sales process is what you need to work upon to ensure you have more eggs in the basket than out of it.
2. Average Deal Size Report
The average deal size report is not very different from your school report card. It adds up the score of each deal a.k.a the revenue from each deal and divides it by the number of deals. Much like how our report card gave us a percentage by taking an average of scores.
The deal size report is a must-have for any sales team because it lets you set realistic targets and milestones for your sales cycle. It also tells your sales reps to set a conversion target. They know exactly how many deals they need to crack to meet their targets.
Source: Pactsafe
3. Average Sales Cycle Length Report
As the name goes, the average sales cycle is the average amount of time taken by a rep from the first contact they make till the final purchase. The average sales report is the perfect sales performance monitor. In the report, you can easily identify the top performers, average performers, and the below-average by comparing the individual average with the overall team average. Using this insight, you can empower the mediocre and struggling performers with better training and the star performance with motivation to do even better. You can also compare your business’ average with the industry average to identify if your sales process is lagging.
Source: Marketing Sherpa
4. Won and Lost Deals Analysis Report
In sales, this an open secret that you can’t win them all. However, the challenge lies in knowing the reason behind every victory and that for every failure. Won and Lost Deals Analysis Report helps you in deciphering that. It analyses the won and lost deals against a range of variables such as company size, competitor involvement, source of lead to tell you what worked and didn’t work in different cases. Needless to say, you get a list of dos and don’t for your sales reps to use using this insight.
5. Customer Churn Report
If you think the sales process ends at getting a customer, you may be far from the truth. In fact, it is as much about retaining an existing customer as it is about getting a new one. Invariably, you’ve got to take into account the customers that leave you. A customer churn report takes care of that. It not only tells you the number of customers that no longer purchase from you but also analyzes its impact on the revenue. That way, you are able to set more accurate sales targets to cover your losses.
Source: Profit Well
6. Sales Call Report
Quite self-explanatory, a sales call report keeps tabs on the number of calls and follow-ups made to a customer. Wait, that’s not all. It also records important information from the call about the customer. This is where you get data insights about the customer’s “propensity to buy”– a much sought-after insight by sales executives. It is the report that tells them which customers are likely to convert soon so that they can prioritize accordingly. For instance, if you’re an insurance company and a sales rep finds out that a customer’s insurance is expiring in two days, they’d probably do an active follow-up to convert them. On the other hand, if they know that the customer already is covered for another 3 months, they’d schedule a follow-up only after the said period.
7. Revenue Report
Last but definitely not least, comes the revenue report. That’s one report that almost every business definitely prepares. It’s the straight-up analysis of the top revenue, against individual revenue. This is the truth-revealing report that tells you individual contribution, how close they’re to their targets, and how close you to your revenue goals. That way, you know exactly where to push to squeeze better results. That being said, you should never look at a revenue report as the only insight into your sales team’s performance. It should be reasoned with other reports to get a better idea about the circumstance that affected the revenue results.
What’s best for you?
If you’re wondering how to choose the report you need for your business, here’s the deal. First of all, you cannot make informed and insightful decisions by looking at just one type of report. If you want to understand individual performance, you need both the average sales cycle report as well as the revenue report. If you need a report to set targets for the upcoming week or month, you’d need the average deal size report and the churn rate report.
The right report for you depends completely on the goal you wish to achieve using the report. At some point or the other, you will end up using each of these types of reports to gain insights into your sales performance.
