Want to know how successful your business’s sales revenue is and measure its growth? Understand why your company lacks sales success and what can be done to improve your sales team’s performance and business ROI.

Sales reporting can help you get detailed, actionable, and best recommendation insights to improve your sales revenue. You can level up and make the necessary improvements and adjustments in your sales strategy and marketing campaigns. 

Furthermore, these sales analyses allow your business to identify the possible opportunities for maximizing growth revenue. 

Read this blog to the end and get the details, including steps to create sales reports, benefits of reporting, tips for call center sales reporting, and what sales reporting is.

What is Sales Reporting or Report?

A sales report or sales analysis report is a detailed documentation of every sales event, action, or purchase behavior inside a firm within a specific period, whether yearly, monthly, weekly, or daily, depending on the project, business needs, goals, and objectives of the individual company. 

Sales reporting is the process of gathering, analyzing, and arranging data about the sales of a business in a document. Firms create sales statistics to track vital indicators, analyze trends in sales information, and improve overall sales strategies. Sales reports can contain a range of sales facts, stats, and real-time data, such as:

  • Number of sales
  • Sales call reports or 
  • sales call volume
  • Total value of sales
  • Average purchase value
  • upsells and add-on sales 
  • outbound emails and cold calling
  • Average lead response time 
  • Sales cycle length.
  • Current prospects number.
  • No. of renewals
  • Rate of conversion.
  • Product Return Rate

Sales reporting is a continuous job and an ongoing process or cycle that requires frequent data updates and reports accordingly, as per the sales cycle progress or process. As it is a repetitive task, sales analysts or managers can use pre-determined workflows to eliminate the recurring work.

The sales report can include different sales-related information, such as the customer’s specific demands and pain issues and the sales agent’s or representative’s recommendations for future action plans.

How do you create a sales report?

The sales report process consists of procedures designed to convert raw sales data into actionable insights that can help enhance your business sales success rate. Here is how you can create a sales report:

  1. Define goals and audience: Set your sales-related goals and objectives, such as conversion rate, increased lead generation, improved sales numbers, or customer satisfaction. Understand and give access to the sales report to those who need to observe or benefit from it, e.g., sales agents or reps and managers, for closing deals, improving gaps, and identifying new opportunities.
  2. Identify data sources and needs: Identify the relevant data points that align with your set goals and objectives, such as revenue, leads generated, and sales conversions. These could be gathered from your CRM sales software, sales spreadsheets, or a combination of sources, but make sure they are accurate and real.
  1. Set report periods: Depending on your ongoing project or business needs, you can set your reporting time or consider your report cycle duration to be weekly, monthly, or annually like sales call reporting or sales conversion reports.
  2. Collect and manage data: Acquire accurate and real data from your sources and organize them in a better format for clear understanding, ease of use, and reduced complexity for data analysis. Ensure data consistency with date, time, and format.
  3. Select and analyze data: Categorize the collected data from the sources according to the relevant sale goal category you have set. Analyze the data and identify the customer journey with the essential sales report indicators.
  1. Create sales report: Prepare a sales reporting document according to its relevant factors, format, or category with clear and accurate data and information related to the sales. Use visual representations in reports, such as sales report charts, graphs, and tables, to better understand and simplify complex data.
  1. Summarize the report data: In a clear, crisp, and concise manner, summarize the KPIs or important findings in the data and suggest a recommendation based on your findings that can help improve decision-making or take successful measures in the future.
  1. Finalize with proofreading: Cross-check the report for the accuracy of the calculations, data, formats, grammar, and clarity of written content or the whole report. Use consistent text and visual format for the standard and professional presentation of the reports.

By following the above steps and establishing a well-defined reporting process, your organization can gain better sales insight, make data-driven decisions, and achieve long-term success with a better sales call strategy.

What are the benefits of sales reporting?

Several data sources can be combined to generate sales reports, including customer relationship management (CRM) platforms, price quote (CPQ) software, and order management systems. These reports provide valuable insights into customer behavior, market trends, sales breakdowns, and other data. 

Sales reporting provides firms with a deep insight and perspective of the sales journey and sales performance, allowing them to make better decisions, discover areas for improvement, and grab opportunities. 

This enables businesses to understand their customer better and make salesforce and marketing efforts accordingly. Here is the list of sales reporting benefits:

1. Enhanced sales performance: 

A sales report provides rich data related to the sales specifically, allows you to monitor those data, and helps you determine the sales progress of the sales goal. If you are falling short of accomplishing the goal, you can identify the gaps in improving the sales agent’s performance and get back on track.

2. Transparency of the Data: 

Sales reporting can provide transparency of data on the individual agent’s performance or the success of the sales goal and conversion rate set by the business by accurately representing visual charts, formats, and data categorization.

3. Improve Customer Satisfaction: 

Valuable data and Insights from sales reports can help businesses, marketers, or sales agents more effectively identify customer needs and preferences. As a result, you can design and customize your sales approach and offerings based on the needs of your customer base.

4. Data-driven decision-making:

 The sales report data and insight help you find the actual evidence and figures of the sales progress, customer journey, conversion rate, and others, allowing businesses to operate on the actual data, not guess. This leverages firms to make an informed decision on approaching the customer for better results, satisfaction, and a maximum success rate.

Things must be included in sales reporting.

Clients or Business details: 

Include the details of the Clients or businesses, making it easier for your team and the clients to understand whose sales report it is. Furthermore, include contact details such as phone number, name, address, or the individual client or business, depending on whose report you are preparing. Make sure to add the updated information to the report, as it helps other members follow up on the reporting.

Sales report overview:

 Cover the details of the reports, such as the tracking period or the necessary time frame for reporting. Also include the date, time, duration, and the different indicator factors per the organization’s goals and objectives. These can be sales metrics or activities, such as sales call volumes, outbound and inbound calls, or other sales-related activity data.

KPIs and Data Presentation or Breakdown: 

Mention the key performance indicators accurately representing the sales data and classification, such as customer satisfaction metrics, sales insight, and sales-related activities that can include call resolution rate, inbound and outbound call volume, outreach success rate, gross revenue, net sales, or lead generations. Present these data in the standard visual and text format with accurate charts, graphs, and table breakdowns.

Data Insight and Analysis: 

Represent refined data patterns, new trends, and analysis, not just raw data, to get accurate insight into the market’s updated customer demand and preferences. Include a brief sales data analysis and explain them with precise data representation.

Consideration and Actionable Recommendation:

Based on your data analysis, offer considerable insights and recommend actionable changes or suggestions for improving sales performance or grabbing possible sales opportunities. Ensure the report is clearly and transparently accessible by the organization’s authorized person. Also, data sources such as CRM and spreadsheets should be included in the standard and consistent format.

Sales reporting tips for call center

Call centers handle a high volume of interactions, so efficient and insightful sales reporting is necessary. Here are some sales reporting tips for the call center:

Target right metrics: Keeping a record of the call volumes, average time handles, and response rate of inbound calls or first call resolution is necessary but can differ according to the organizational goals. Moreover, sales-related metrics such as conversion success rate, revenue generation, and upscale deals are essential.

Simple and actionable insight: Provide simple and actionable insight that can include an attractive and straightforward representation of the accurate data for easy understanding and analysis and following the insight for the execution.

Leverage technology: Use CRM or call center software with built-in reporting tools to automate data capture for basic call details and sales outcomes. Integrated call recording with reporting for quality assurance and coaching also includes built-in and designed features such as call recording, call filtering, call history, outbound and inbound calls, IVR, and integration capabilities.

Reporting for sales improvement: Track the results of call recordings by agents, products, or different marketing campaigns to identify strengths and weaknesses in sales performance. Use the sales report for coaching, training, and improving sales conversion, call center strategy, and agent performance. 

If you want reliable and effective sales reporting software and contact center features to increase revenue, improve customer satisfaction, track real-time agent performance, and effectively optimize sales rate, choose the Dialaxy cloud-based contact center solution to experience a modern sales reporting and business communication system.

Try a 7-day free trial to experience your business’s automated sales reporting call center solution.

FAQs

How often should I create sales reports?

You can create sales reports depending on your needs and choose weekly, monthly, or quarterly reporting cycles.

Why are sales reports important?

You can use sales reports to gain insight into your sales performance and also:

  • Track progress toward goals
  • Identify top performers and areas for improvement
  • Measure the success of sales strategies
  • Make data-driven decisions

Who needs to see sales reports?

This sales report data may benefit a sales representative, sales manager, executive, and other departments (e.g., marketing). The exact amount may vary according to your company’s structure or needs.

What are common challenges with sales reporting?

The following are some of the common challenges with sales reporting:

  • Data inaccuracy or inconsistency
  • Difficulty in generating reports due to complex data sources
  • Reports that are not user-friendly or visually appealing
Prasanta Raut

Prasanta is the founder and visionary CEO of Dialaxy. He is on a mission to redefine the landscape of SaaS solutions, infusing creativity and ingenuity into every aspect of Dialaxy’s offerings. His fervent dedication to simplifying sales and support processes drives Dialaxy’s forward momentum, delivering unparalleled value to businesses of all sizes. Embark on a transformative journey with Prasanta and Dialaxy as they pave the way for a new era of sales and support excellence.

Prasanta Raut

Prasanta is the founder and visionary CEO of Dialaxy. He is on a mission to redefine the landscape of SaaS solutions, infusing creativity and ingenuity into every aspect of Dialaxy’s offerings. His fervent dedication to simplifying sales and support processes drives Dialaxy’s forward momentum, delivering unparalleled value to businesses of all sizes. Embark on a transformative journey with Prasanta and Dialaxy as they pave the way for a new era of sales and support excellence.