All sales activities need to be monitored and evaluated. To do this, companies set up reporting systems, to analyze what's happening in the field (or online!), and implement corrective or improvement actions. The aim is always to facilitate the achievement of commercial and financial objectives.
But effective reporting can be time-consuming and complex. Sidely is here to help!
Here's what you'll find in this article:
Sales reporting involves collecting and analyzing data on sales of products or services, with the aim of improving sales strategy and achieving the company's financial targets.
It is generally drawn up at the request of management and is intended for them.
Commercial reporting can cover :
This involves the creation of sales dashboards to analyze sales performance and support strategic decision-making.
The objectives of sales reporting are generally :
⚠️ Be careful not to confuse
This performance report therefore focuses on the results of individuals and teams, which differentiates it from the sales report, which is better suited to analyzing operations that do not require "human" sales action, such as transactions carried out via an e-commerce site, or other automated sales processes.
Sales reporting is also to be distinguished from the sales report, also known as the visit report, a document that records the important elements of a contact with a prospect or customer (context, subjects discussed, current offer, next steps planned, etc.).
Here are a few important steps to follow for good sales reporting.
Identify the main objectives you wish to achieve with your reporting. Generally speaking, this means highlighting the elements that will show whether sales activity is in line with the company's financial objectives.
Select the most relevant KPIs that effectively measure the performance of your sales activity. This could include data such as monthly sales, conversion rate, sales per customer, etc.
Be sure to collect data consistently and accurately. Use appropriate tracking tools and ensure that all data is up-to-date and reliable.
Once you've collected your data, analyze it to identify trends, strengths and weaknesses in your business activity. This will help you understand what's working well and what can be improved.
Present your data clearly and concisely, using graphs, tables and visualizations to make information easy to understand. Make sure your reports highlight key points and recommendations for action.
Review your reports regularly to ensure they remain relevant and useful. If necessary, adjust your KPIs or data collection method to better align your reporting with your business objectives.
→ These steps form a virtuous circle, shown in the diagram below.
From a technical point of view, there are three main trends in the production of sales reports.
CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. These are SaaS software solutions for organizing customer data collection, sales management, customer service and customer relations. There are generic solutions such as Salesforce, Pipedrive and Hubspot, and industry-specific solutions such as Sidely, the specialized CRM for field sales teams.
Business intelligence (BI) software are applications designed to transform raw data into actionable information through the generation of easy-to-understand visual reports. These tools generally extract data from various sources, centralize it in a database and then generate interactive dashboards. Examples include Tableau and Microsoft Power BI.
Finally, very small businesses sometimes produce their sales reports manually, using tools such as Excel or Google Sheet. This practice has become rare, as SAAS tools are now affordable and easy to use.
🔧 When it comes to consolidating reporting data from a variety of IT and software tools, the subject of CRM integrations quickly comes to the fore! And with good reason: it's the best way to save time by automating the aggregation and structuring of reporting data. While CRM publishers generally provide integrations with third-party tools used extensively by their customers, you may have to develop specific programs to connect to applications that are not supported. In this case, you need to be careful about data security and confidentiality. And don't forget that these programs will need to be maintained! When choosing your reporting tools, take this into account.
Now that we've seen the basics of sales reporting, it's important to point out that the definition of key figures is closely correlated with your industry. To obtain relevant, usable information, you need to start by adapting sales reporting to your industry.
To better understand the importance of adapting your analyses, here are 3 typical industries in which it is essential to consider specific performance indicators.
But the sector that is the most complex to evaluate is certainly supermarket sales!
Firstly, because retailers do not systematically share sales figures by store with their suppliers, and secondly, because there are many possible explanations for this performance at point-of-sale (supply, assortment, merchandising, competition, promotions, etc.).
As a result, most brands send their sector managers on a tour of the stores that distribute their products, to collect information directly from the shelves.
In addition, there are many performance indicators in the retail sector:
To achieve this, it is essential that sales staff are equipped with a mobile shelf-reading CRM. Because, as we've seen, the relevance of sales reporting depends first and foremost on the quality of the data it contains.
Let's end with a list of tips to ensure that your reporting is effective and, above all, has an impact!
