How To Use a Sales Report Template to Improve Your Sales Strategy

What is a Sales Report?

In July this year, McDonald's declared its second quarter results, saying among other things that its global same-store sales witnessed a 9.7% rise, while same-store sales in the US increased by 3.7%. What can we make of these numbers?

If you track the stock markets, you know that it's not uncommon for a buzz to be created before and after a company declares its earnings. Investors keenly follow these reports to get an overview of the expenses, sales, and net income of a company. It gives valuable information on the company's financial health, and influences share prices.

However, not just publicly-traded companies, but every company worth its salt should generate sales reports, based on which strategies can be crafted. For business owners, and employees, sales reports ought to provide far more detailed information than a general overview. The writing of sales reports are, therefore, a micro-managed affair.

Sales reports are essentially business intelligence documents summarizing the sales activities of companies. They include data on the volume of sales, new accounts, leads, earnings, and expenses for particular time-frames.

With the help of sales reports future sales can be predicted, the effectiveness of sales pitches and sales processes can be ascertained, and the productivity of sales executives can be reviewed.

A sea of data can be gathered from point of sale (POS) systems and compared with market-wide sales trends, so that businesses can strategize on how to stay ahead of the competition.

Sales reports can be daily, weekly, quarterly, monthly, or yearly, and sales data may relate to every stage of the sales process.

Predictive analysis allows businesses to prepare for sales lulls and spikes, and pinpoint problem areas like, for example, which sales representatives are unable to close deals as effectively as others. The organization can then take corrective measures. Analysis of sales reports allows companies to make plans to boost productivity and profitability.

Why are Sales Reports Important to a Business?

1. Sales reports make the sales funnel shorter. The sales funnel relates to a customer's journey from initial awareness about a brand to the ultimate acquisition of the product. Sales reports reveal how good (or bad) a sales lead is. Some of your sources may repeatedly be bringing in sales leads that have poor contact or response rates. Sales reports furnish exhaustive data, which allow businesses to put primacy on high-quality sales leads. They can also alert sales teams to possible leakages, in terms of assigned and contacted leads.

2. Sales reports produce vital business intelligence data that provide sales managers with in-depth knowledge of the organization's most loyal clients, cash flow, the number of prospects in the sales pipeline, departments attracting the biggest revenues, high and low traffic days, and areas for improvement and urgent attention.

A sales pipeline refers to the stages that a company needs to take prospective customers through in order to sell to them. Unlike a sales funnel, which looks at the customer's journey from the angle of the lead, a sales pipeline sees it from the organization's point of view.

An analysis of sales reports allows more convincing decisions to be made regarding a company's performance and its customer-base.

3. Performance reports set benchmarks that sales representatives must meet. By rewarding good performance, workers are driven to put in their best effort. The output of the sales staff and overall sales volume will consequently rise due to this.

4. Sales reports help a business make products and sales activities better targeted. This saves the business money and time. Sales reports, for instance, can inform a business owner which leads have very low response rates, and are unworthy of being cultivated. Strategies can be accordingly adjusted.

Types of Sales Reports

There is no one-size-fits-all solution when you are talking about ways to present sales reports. The nature of the target audience has to be taken into consideration while formulating sales reports. There are various types of sales reports that concentrate on different areas-

1. Revenue by sales rep- Sales reports help organizations identify the revenue that each member of the sales team generates. This is important to gauge the performance of your sales reps. These reports often contain information on sales goals, deals closed, or lost, and the share of the sales reps to team revenue.

2. Sales funnels- Sales reports can reveal how far leads have moved from brand discovery, and how close customers are to purchasing products offered by a company. Sales funnel reports teach business owners how leads can be turned into sales. Comparing successive sales reports gives information on the flaws in the sales pipeline.

3. Rate of conversion- Conversion rate is the ratio of deals won over offers lost over a period of time. This can take the shape of a yearly, quarterly, or monthly sales report that tracks the deals won and sales made by a person, department, or company. Sales data dealing with conversion rates provide a detailed view of the revenue created by the sales team.

4. Loss ratio- Sales reports offer information on deals that could not be closed. This allows organizations to make better decisions to curb losses. For instance, following Sales Analysis, an organization may realize that deals are lost after sales presentations and product demonstrations. They may then take steps to revamp sales pitches.

5. Deal size- Average deal size reports allow organizations to discover the quantity of money made from each sale. This type of sales report helps organizations track revenue, monitor sales consistency, establish quotas for the sales reps, and goals for the team, and establish milestones for the entire sales cycle.

6. Length of the sales cycle- Using this sales data, you can estimate the time taken by the sales team to initiate and seal a deal. This helps in strategizing too. Accordingly, if the sales team usually takes a month to complete a deal, follow-up meetings can be scheduled at the midway point, that is, after a fortnight.

7. Sales call- Reports on the number of outbound calls or visits made by sales reps over a period of time to woo prospective buyers will provide vital information on how efficient your sales team is.

Features of a Good Sales Report Template

In order to generate actionable insights, an effective sales report considers the target audience, convenience, and sales situations. Here is a list of the features of a good sales report template-

1. Tailored- Too much information may overwhelm the reader, and the most crucial details may get buried under a pile of figures and numbers. Instead, think about your target audience and alter your reports accordingly. For example, if a sales report is meant to cater to the top leadership of a company, it will need to provide an overview of team performance. This will allow the management to make decisions that have a bearing on the entire company. Conversely, your team will benefit more from information that is more detailed.

2. Visualized- Dealing with a sea of words and numbers for long periods is bound to make you bored and weary, and your chance of making mistakes will increase. However, the same facts and figures can be presented in the form of attractive visuals, which would then no longer seem like some indecipherable ancient script.

In fact, according to a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the brain is capable of processing complete images even if they are seen by the eye for as little as 13 milliseconds. A good sales report template includes charts, graphs, and tables that make data analysis entertaining, accurate and simplified.

3. Simplified- A vital component of a sales report is the introduction that summarizes the data and major takeaways. Notwithstanding the comprehensive document that you have created following thorough research, readers, especially business heads, may not have the time or patience to pore over every detail. A well-written summary that provides all the highlights in an easily digestible form is more valuable to readers pressed for time.

Moreover, sales reports should be written in a way that prevents knee-jerk and alarmist reactions from stakeholders. For instance, your sales may have declined drastically because of harsh weather that prevented sales reps from venturing out on calls. This should be clearly mentioned while preparing the sales report so that the stakeholders are not spooked.

4. Actionable- An effective sales report provides businesses with useful actionable insights. For example, if the sales report reveals that the sales reps and sales team are not fulfilling their key performance indicators (KPIs), you would need to find ways to improve performance. You would also know if you needed to revise the KPIs, and fix accountability more strictly.

Benefits of Reporting Software Over Spreadsheets

Sales reporting and analytics software is an important piece of Restaurant Technology. It integrates seamlessly with the restaurant point of sale (POS) system, giving it direct access to high-quality, auto-generated information. This is a major win over spreadsheets, which cannot integrate inherently with other business systems, making data reporting and analysis painstaking.

This requires data to be manually transferred from spreadsheets to the other business management systems. When systems are not integrated, sales prospects, leads, and customers may end up receiving redundant, or no information. Manual effort also exposes spreadsheets to debilitating errors. The bigger the spreadsheet, and the more formulae it deals with, the bigger the chance of mistakes creeping in, and even a small copy-paste error can lead to a massive loss for the company.

The upside of spreadsheets permitting team members to edit them easily can also be a downside, because too many updates and calculations can breed errors. What's worse, it may be nearly impossible to identify the source of the mistake.

Also, unless individual changes are uploaded to a central repository, and communicated to the rest of the team members, a spreadsheet can give several versions of the truth, thereby misleading analysts. A reporting software is not hobbled by such issues, and the people with whom a sales dashboard or report is shared may view it, but not necessarily edit it.

Data visualization is difficult to implement in spreadsheets, which may result in data analysts having to wade through a maze of numbers and words, and ending up with a throbbing headache. Attractive data visualization tools, such as pie charts, tables, and graphs can, however, can break the monotony, and make data inspection and analysis far less tiresome. These features are generated automatically with sales reporting software. In fact, features such as sorting and zooming can help customize the way data is viewed, thereby further simplifying data exploration.

Moreover, spreadsheets are not always mobile-friendly, given that only a handful of rows and columns can fit into a mobile screen at a time. However, sophisticated business intelligence platforms can have dashboards responding well to different mobile screen sizes.

Also, with business intelligence software, you need not manually refresh reports after every modification. The sales dashboard will instantly update to the most recent version whenever changes are made, and every team member can easily see those changes.

Top 3 Reporting Tools for Restaurant Businesses

1. Zip POS Dashboard-
This business intelligence solution helps organizations make sense of all the unstructured data generated by their POS systems, from sales per labor hour, to net sales, and so on. And it does this in real time. Business owners need not put in manual labor to collect data, as POS systems automate sales reporting. POS data can be stored in the cloud and analyzed to deliver useful insights that allow businesses make better decisions. The Zip POS Dashboard mobile app spares managers the trouble of having to examine POS reports from office computers. With the help of the app, reports can be checked from anywhere and at any time. Automated data visualization allows easy interpretation of data.

2. Salesforce CRM-
This software is renowned for its automation features, which help sales representatives to become more productive. Sales representatives can make use of the Salesforce solution to identify leads with high potential. Moreover, sales reps using this software also benefit from access to tools like Salesforce Sales Cloud. This solution enables the generation of real-time customer data. Users can view reports, and sales forecasts to make data-driven decisions. Additionally, Salesforce CRM can integrate with external programs like helpdesk software and accounting solutions.

3. HubSpot Sales-
This software solution offers a wide range of features like report templates, sales pipeline management, customized reports, Gmail and Outlook connectivity, sales automation, and so on. The software alerts users right away when a prospect takes action, like clicking on a link or starting an email account. Contacts can be imported easily with the help of the HubSpot Sales software. This program allows the automation of the sales process even by users with no coding experience. Follow-up emails can also be automated without making them seem impersonal. Integration between HubSpot CRM and HubSpot Sales allows the performance of sales reps and the sales pipeline to be closely monitored.

Conclusion

Sales reports constitute one of the most crucial sources of business intelligence information for any organization, whether it is a small business, mid-sized business, or large business.

Sales reports give you important information about the success (or failure) of your sales teams and the sales performance of your organization so that your decisions for the future are more effective. Reports can vary in type depending on their focus of attention.

Sales reports let you know which components of your sales strategy are working and which ones need refinement so that your plans can be more refined. For example, a restaurant can look at sales before and after the introduction of digital menu boards to evaluate the effectiveness of its strategy.

Sales reports offer precise, timely data that could help sales reps make wise choices on sales activities. Moreover, analysis of past sales enables a restaurant to create an accurate demand/ sales forecast. This ensures that it neither runs out of stock during high-traffic periods, or is stuck with unsold stock during lean periods. It also lets the restaurant optimize staff scheduling and control labor costs.

When creating sales reports, it's important to consider the report's targeted audience, its purpose, scope, and the best format to convey the information. It is therefore very important for businesses to use a powerful software solution that can deliver better outcomes than Google Sheets and Microsoft Excel spreadsheets.