Sales report: how to make a complete and quick one

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Is your company familiar with the concept of sales reporting? It compiles information from the entire sales process to reveal strategic data that can further boost the conversion process. A sales report can help you assess your team’s progress and make better business decisions.

However, preparing this type of document is a challenge for many managers. The good news is that creating an effective sales report doesn’t have to be stressful. With the right tools and good planning, you can accomplish this task in just a few minutes.

With the advent of modern sales reporting software, it’s never been easier to gain detailed insight into all sales processes to optimize performance and ensure healthy business growth. Modern reports provide presentations that are easy to create and understand, with no technical skills required.

Below are some tips on how to create complete, accurate, and decisive reports that will truly help you maximize your business results.


What is a sales report?
To understand this concept, consider the following singapore whatsapp lead questions as an example: “Is your sales team on track to meet its defined goals?” “What caused the company to have a bad quarter and how can it be corrected?”

It’s not impossible to answer these questions without accurate data, right? That’s where sales reports come in. This document describes your sales activity over a specific period of time. It brings together data collected in the sales area and serves to show the performance of the strategies adopted. A sales report is an essential management tool that helps you answer many questions about the health of your business.

Contrary to what many people think, the idea is not just to use this data to sell more. In reality, the usefulness of this type of report is deeper, especially for companies that want to gain more space in the market sector in which they operate, obtaining growing, healthy and recurring revenue.

Furthermore, it is through the sales report that it is possible to know whether the marketing and loyalty actions worked or not, whether in specific or general planning. The details may vary, but usually include metrics on leads, new accounts won, revenue generated and overall sales performance.

Sales reporting can also help you identify your ideal customers and develop strategies to optimize your sales process. This document is formatted to communicate important data to specific teams or leaders.

What is a sales report for and its importance
The sales report structure can be used for a wide range of work fronts, as long as they have a common objective when using it. The focus of the information collected is to identify flaws and opportunities to optimize the company's processes.

Some important information refers to the progress of sales in general, detailing the revenue generated, the evolution of sales volume, measuring it in relation to the pre-established sales target, the CLV (customer lifetime value), etc.

In reports that focus on salespeople's performance, for example, we can observe points such as:

Number of sales the seller made
What were the seller's transportation expenses?
Sales made in each region
How many sales were made through each digital channel
What is the total sales value of the seller?
And fulfillment of goals and commissions
In collective reports, common themes are:

Sales growth rate
Increase in average ticket
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
Lifetime Value (LTV)
The shopping cart abandonment rate for e-commerce
Sales cycle
Return on Investment (ROI)
And achievement of collective goals
It is worth remembering that through collective and individual sales reports, specific or systemic adjustments can be made. In addition, they encourage learning within the company, because when a salesperson who has achieved good performance shares their sales techniques, everyone wins.

It is also possible to create gamification and reward strategies to stimulate your sales team, increasing employee productivity. Thus, it can be said that the main objective of a sales report is to reveal problems and find gaps for solutions.

What is the purpose of sales reports?
The purpose of a sales report is to help you gather and analyze the data that matters most to your business. It should also help you determine the scope of your report, such as the time period you want to analyze. The objectives can revolve around different aspects of your business.

How to create a sales report: step by step
When a company has an automated management system that integrates information from various business sectors, such as finance, billing systems or inventory management systems, creating a sales report becomes easier.

Set a goal
Ideally, you should focus on data that contributes to achieving specific goals. Some common goals are:

– Measure the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns.

– Identify trends for sales forecasting.

– Motivate your team to perform better.

– Collect useful data to guide your sales team to work better.

Define the ideal format
There are several different types of sales reports, and there’s no one document that’s right for every organization. In fact, different teams within the same organization may use different sales reports to show a variety of data.

However, centralizing information in a single system for presentation in a single format is the best option so that interested departments can access data more accurately. In this regard, software can help make this process more efficient.

These can come in many forms: a daily sales report format will track key sales performance indicators that are relevant on a day-to-day basis, such as the number of calls or meetings a sales rep makes, or the leads collected. Typically, weekly report templates might track the number of deals closed by the team or the revenue generated.

Most reports can cover different stages of the sales process and cover a specific time period, for example: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. A monthly sales report format, for example, will provide a broader view of the activity of the team as a whole or of each employee.

Bringing all of this together into sales dashboards will allow you to automate your data, without the need for time-consuming manual calculations and repetitive exports.

Define the necessary information and metrics
Now that you’ve outlined the purpose of your report, it’s time to collect sales data, filter the information, and analyze it. Make sure your data collection process is geared toward your goals. If possible, use tools that integrate with your CRM system and online store, as this will make data extraction much easier.

Sales report: which metrics to use?
Start by outlining the metrics you want to include in your report and the general trends you consider important. For example: number of goods sold, net sales, profits, and customer acquisition costs.

Conversion rates
This is one of the most important metrics. Conversion rate is the ability of your sales team to convert leads into prospects and customers. A high conversion rate in your daily report will tell you that the strategies you are currently using are delivering results.

Similarly, a lower conversion rate would mean that your sales strategies need to be improved. Creating a daily sales report on your conversion rate will allow you to address issues in time so that they don’t carry over into the next month or quarter.

Average ticket
This metric initially defines the average ticket for total sales, then the average ticket for each type of product or service (since there are often discounts based on quantity and other factors).

Sales cycle
This sales report example covers the entire sales funnel, from opportunity to closed deal. It will outline the progress of your sales team or individual salespeople and show how well they closed deals and how long it took them to get there.

This metric exists to measure the time spent with each customer. Ideally, the sales cycle should be as short as possible, and by calculating this key performance indicator, it is possible to think of strategies to increase the speed of closing the deal.

Business won and business lost
Keeping track of the deals you win and lose helps you see how your business is doing. This metric will also give you insight into which of your products are more popular than others.

By using the right data, you can identify trends related to top-performing product offerings to maximize opportunities to win more business.

Win and loss reports will also help sales managers understand how their teams and reps are performing individually.

Conclusion
Whether you’re a small business or a large business, the steps above will help you create an effective sales report. Sales reports show which strategies are working, which aren’t, and highlight opportunities for growth.

Soften offers a complete system to manage your company's main processes in an automated way. We offer a platform for creating sales reports in an integrated business management system to meet your business needs.