9 sales reports: Templates and examples to keep you organized

Why sales reports are so important to your business

You and your team are undoubtedly juggling a variety of day-to-day tasks, each of varying importance. That said, the need to report and discuss data with your reps can’t be overstated.

Here are some of the big-picture benefits of consistent, in-depth sales reporting:

• Sales reports help align the goals of your sales team and company at large
• More transparency and accountability among your sales reps
• Encourage a culture of teamwork and collaboration
• More accurate sales revenue forecasts and goal-setting

Here they are in more detail (but first, click the button below to receive a downloadable sales report templates doc).

Reports help align the goals of your sales team and company at large

Companies that are likely to achieve or exceed revenue goals have 2.3x higher levels of sales and marketing alignment. Therefore, your sales strategy must align with your marketing strategy. Departments that prioritize cross-collaboration and communication are more likely to see positive results.

Goal-setting in terms of sales targets and quotas are all rooted in your data. Until your sales reps know what those goals and benchmarks are, they’re in the dark.

More transparency and accountability among your reps

Sales managers must have a pulse on who their top-performers are. The same rings true for salespersons who might be struggling. If you don’t know who is driving your team forward, or holding it back, you won’t be able to replicate productive behavior or make necessary improvements.

Your reps need to know where they stand. Research from Gallup notes that employee engagement is tied directly to how well managers develop their workers.

A good sales management process helps you to coordinate your sales operations, motivate your team and ultimately boost your sales team’s performance. Through weekly sales activities reports and check-ins, reps can reflect on their sales strategies so that, rather than losing motivation, they’re empowered to improve over time.

Encourage a culture of teamwork and collaboration

Although sales representatives are often fueled by competition, teams are ultimately working toward the same goal: to win deals.

Sharing data across your team helps create a much-needed sense of motivation for your reps to come together and hit their quotas. Your performance data highlights the expectation to do so in black and white.

More accurate sales forecasts and goal-setting

In a day and age where only half of sales reps are actually meeting their quotas, any given team can benefit from better sales forecasting.

Real-world data means more accurate projections regarding revenue, which influences everything from your sales strategy to hiring reps and beyond.

Additionally, sales analysis reports that highlight performance and successful activities can help you prioritize actions that result in deals closed. In turn, you’re able to better target more accurate sales goals that are attainable for your reps.

9 sales report examples your team can actually use

There are many different types of sales reports. Keep in mind that you’ll likely need more than one sales report format to give yourself a comprehensive view of your company’s strategy. That said, you don’t need all of the templates below to get started with reporting.

Any combination of the following sales report samples can help you better predict and forecast your team’s performance in the future.

1. Sales pipeline report

A sales pipeline template covers the status and progress of your team’s deals, all broken down per-quarter. This spreadsheet represents a straightforward way to predict and forecast your deals in Microsoft Excel or Google sheets if you don’t yet have a dedicated reporting tool or CRM.

Rather than dig into the specific details of your sales funnel and individual team performance, this sales report template is more concerned with the big picture, making it ideal to share with stakeholders outside of your sales team.

However, as your team grows, you’ll need to migrate to a dedicated CRM that opens up opportunities for teamwide collaboration, task automation and allows you to dig deeper into individual actions.

2. Weekly sales report

Weekly sales reporting allows you to uncover trends among your sales team without micromanaging your reps. Additionally, your data here can represent talking points during your weekly sales meetings or stand-ups.

A weekly sales report template is primarily looking at individual reps’ actions and performance. For example, who’s winning the most sales leads? Who’s conducting the most outbound calls?

Meanwhile, you can also use weekly sales reports to keep an eye on total meetings and conversions to ensure that your team is operating at top productivity.

3. Monthly/quarterly sales report

Here you’re focused on big-picture trends, the overall health of your funnel and revenue.

The upside of a monthly sales report template is that you’ve given your sales team enough of a time period to gather actionable data. If you want to determine what’s working and what’s not, a month or two is typically more than enough time.

For example, a consistent drop in conversions or calls made month-to-month is definitely a cause for alarm, while an uptick in sales or conversions shows you that you’re doing something right—accurate reporting will help you work out what and how to keep doing it.

This is also a key status report template to share beyond your team to provide a general overview of how your sales department is doing in the context of your company.

4. Individual (or team) progress report

Putting together a sales report template for each individual rep is a smart move. Doing so allows individuals reps to own their data and instills a sense of accountability.

If nothing else, individual reporting gives you a clear view of your top-performing reps and what they’re doing right.

Below is an example of a smaller team report (broken down by individual performance) in Pipedrive. Our platform allows you to control permissions and access when it comes to sharing. In other words, you can limit individual access to certain reports so you don’t have to worry about reps looking over each other’s shoulders.

5. Lead status target report

In some cases, you might need a sales report template dedicated to a single lead or account.

Monitoring your lead status means keeping tabs on each individual interaction that moves them closer to finally becoming a customer. Such a report gives you an actionable to-do list of next steps in terms of nurturing your most valuable leads.

6. Annual sales plan report

It’s tough to predict the future (especially in today’s climate). Even so, putting together an action plan is crucial.

In short, your annual sales plan builds off last year’s reporting to help you determine your sales targets, campaigns and how many reps you need to pull it all off.

7. Sales and marketing report

Remember the earlier statistics showing that when sales and marketing teams align their efforts, revenue skyrockets? Reporting on the performance of both operations in the same sales report template helps you monitor that progress.

The ability to track your most valuable marketing channels and actions go hand in hand with delivering a better ROI for the efforts of both departments. This rings true for various efforts, including leads from Google, paid ads, cold email, sales calls blog posts, social media and everything in-between.

Your company’s sales department should make an effort to collaborate with marketing when it comes to both strategy and reporting. Not only does this streamline your sales process, but it also allows you to gather valuable data regarding how your email leads perform versus leads from other sources.

8. Daily sales report template

Daily sales activity reports should be short and sweet. Rather than worry about trends, such reports are focused on the literal facts of the day.

For example, how many meetings did you book yesterday? Who managed to close a deal? Tracking daily sales activities is important for keeping track of both individual and team-wide success for the short-term.

9. Activities report

Activities reports allow you to get an in-depth look at your team’s productivity and what activities are helping you drive more sales.

With accurate activities reports (such as what you get from Pipedrive’s activities performance insights), you can see who in your team completed the most activities and get an overview of planned activities, and then track how much of the planned work is completed.

What are some important KPIs for sales reporting?

There are tons of sales metrics to help measure success. You can’t possibly fit them all in a single sales report template (nor should you try).

Here’s a rundown of important KPIs to watch throughout your reporting to ensure that you can translate your data into action.

Emails sent and/or calls made

The importance of tracking emails and calls is two-fold. Not only are you trying to determine how productive your reps are, but also how many of these actions result in demos and bookings.

Completed activities per user

Based on completed sales activities, you can determine which actions are most valuable and which reps are crushing their quotas.

New deals added

For the sake of your reps and revenue, you should ideally be adding new deals consistently. If you’re not consistently increasing your number of deals, you should go back to the drawing board and re-strategize how to drive more leads into your pipeline.

New deal value

Of course, more deals don’t necessarily mean better deals. Monitoring value puts your deals into context and determines which of them you should prioritize.

Deals won

In short, what does it take to get someone through your sales funnel to eventually convert? Finding common threads between deals won can help refine your sales department’s strategy over time.

Deals lost

Just as you want to celebrate your wins, you should note your losses. If deals are dropping off at the same stage in your funnel, that’s not something you can ignore. This is where resources like Pipedrive’s “Lost Reasons” report is invaluable:

Lead conversion rate

Conversion rates are crucial for evaluating the efficiency of your sales strategy and determining whether your revenue targets are realistic.

Average conversion time

Note that almost every sales report template above is based around a particular time period. By understanding how long it takes for someone to convert on average, you can temper your expectations in terms of sales performance.

Sales by source

Again, making the distinction of where your buyers are actually coming from allows you to prioritize the appropriate sales channels.

Customer lifetime value (LTV)

Customer lifetime value (LTV) is a prediction of how much a customer is worth to your business throughout the entire period of your relationship.

Given how much it takes to acquire versus retain a customer, improving your LTV and generating recurring revenue should be a top priority. Additionally, LTV is a key metric for sales forecasting.

Churn

Churn or churn rate is a measure of how many customers stop doing business with you over a specific period. Both quantitative and qualitative, your churn rate directly influences your sales forecasts and further clues you in on why your customers ultimately bounce.

Again, there are obviously a ton of sales KPIs to monitor. The beauty of reporting via Pipedrive is that all of your metrics are clear, customizable and front-and-center for each report. Rather than a bunch of graphs and pie charts that you try to track by hand, our platform guarantees accurate, time-sensitive reports and dashboards that are easy to read and share with your team.

How to make sure your sales reports are effective

Let’s say you’ve gotten your report templates squared away. Now what?

Here are some key tips to ensure that your salespeople treat your data as more than just numbers on a spreadsheet.

Share your sales performance reports with your team

As noted earlier, performance data isn’t something that sales managers should keep to themselves. For the sake of improving your strategy and keeping your colleagues engaged, you’ve got to share the wealth.

Thankfully, all of the sales templates noted above are prime for sharing (and you can share the sales report templates we have linked above).

There is no “right” way to share your data, but here are some quick ideas that go beyond face-to-face meetings:

• Reviewing via screen-sharing platforms (such as Zoom)
• Featuring reporting data on your Kanban board (think: Trello, Asana)
• Scheduling weekly or monthly emails which highlight your key sales reports

Anything you can do to make your reporting more accessible and share-worthy is a plus—case in point, the popularity of sales leaderboards. Such presentations of data, as long as the entire team is on board with healthy competition, are both shareable and create a sense of buzz around your numbers.

The concept here is simple: give your reps a pulse on what’s going on and how they can improve. Reports are a time-efficient way to provide those answers at a glance.

Don’t drown your team in data

Reporting can almost be addictive. The more you dive into your data, the deeper you want to go in terms of details and specifics.

However, try to stick to the facts when sharing data with your team. Otherwise, you risk overwhelming them. This means you’re responsible for determining which KPIs you share and also how often you decide to send reports.

Once again, there is no one-size-fits-all approach to reporting in terms of frequency. Smaller teams might discuss sales data during their daily stand-up while larger teams might review reports in greater detail at the end of the week. As long as you’re reflecting on your data, you’re on the right track.

Remember: no single sales report can contain everything. If you need to split your data and reporting into multiple templates, so be it.

Translate your data into actionable steps

The end goal should be some form of action on behalf of your team. Maybe that means rethinking your call volume or investing more in a certain channel.

Either way, you’ll never know what to do next until you talk about your data. That means establishing clearly defined next steps and priorities based on what you already know.

Beyond simply sharing a sales template report, your team is responsible for answering the following:

• Are we on track to reach our sales goals?
• If not, what changes do we need to make? If so, what are we doing well?
• How can we have better conversations with our customers?

With these questions in mind, you can point toward action items to guide your sales strategy moving forward.

Final thoughts

Reporting is an absolute must-do for teams today. With the help of our reporting templates, you can start organizing your data ASAP.

Hopefully these examples, KPIs and tips will put you and your team on the path to owning your data. If you haven’t already, make sure you download Pipedrive’s free sales report template today to start doing exactly that.