Selling is like sailing.
If you can feel the wind coming at your back, you are on the right way! In the world of sales, the winds are trends, and those trends can be tracked and predicted with analysis reports.
In many ways, sales analysis is a form of data-assisted decision-making. Sales leaders don’t have to guess what problems they’re facing. They can use analysis to pinpoint specific shortcomings to address and create a flexible sales strategy based on a firm foundation.
In this article, we’ll explore the different ways a company can use data to analyze sales performance and walk you through key types of sales analysis reports, including what each reveals about your company’s operations.
Let’s dive in.
What Is a Sales Analysis Report?
Sales analysis reports convey information that can be used to develop strategies for increasing sales, improving efficiency, and reducing costs.
Sales analysis reports are not only used for, as the name implies, sales performance analysis, but also for customer analysis, prospect analysis, competitor analysis, product line analysis, and sales territory analysis. Sales reports can give you instant access to any key sales information such as your sales team’s activity, company wide sales goals, the number of sales leads acquired during a specific day, week, or month, and so on.
Sales reports should be shared across your company and relevant teams continually to help identify trends, check the current status of your sales team, and measure performance against goals. Here are some of the most common types of sales reports sales leaders use to manage their sales teams and track sales performance.
Sales Conversion Report
A sales conversion report measures the effectiveness of your sales team at converting leads into new customers. This report is considered vital for analyzing and managing your sales team’s performance.
This report could also be used to align your sales and marketing teams as both departments use this metric to determine the quality of leads acquired.
Revenue by Salesperson
This report allows you to look at the revenue made by each salesperson and compare it to their total account revenue. This will help you understand if your sales team is adequately reaching their targets and getting deals for your company.
The data presented in the report is indispensable for evaluating sales teams and individual sales reps. You can use it to boost motivation among your salespeople by showing them how they compare to one another.
Average Deal Size
This report gives you an idea of how big or small is the average deal size for your business. This data will help you identify how many were deals successfully closed last month. It also lets you analyze what percentage of your total sales volume comes from each different type of sale.
The reason why average deal size is important is that it provides you with a sense of how much money you can make on average. You can then use this information to determine your overall sales potential and the amount of time it will take for you to reach your target.
Customer Spend Breakdown
This report shows how much each customer has spent during a particular period. Some companies may want to look at monthly spend breakdowns over the last 12 months, while other companies may only be interested in weekly or daily reports.
In many cases, if a company can understand its customer spend breakdown, it can attract more profitable customers and help retain the ones it has. A customer spending breakdown is a simple way to understand how much money different segments of your customer base are spending on your product or service.
Payment History Report
This report provides a breakdown of each payment received from a customer during a specified time frame. It’s important to know the average day’s sales outstanding (DSO) for each customer. If it takes too long for customers to pay invoices, it might be worthwhile to contact them and see if they have any concerns about late payments.
Product Performance Report
This report is specifically useful for ecommerce businesses. The main purpose of a product performance report is to help you compare the performance of different products within a specified period of time. For example, if you notice that one specific product has a lower conversion rate than expected for that period, then you can examine the data and try to figure out why that happened.
Sales Region Performance
If you have more than one online store or website, or simply customers from different regions, this report will help you analyze each of those regions separately. It’s important to take into consideration the following:
- Customer location – Where are your customers located? Are they local, national, or international? What distribution channels are they using?
- Product distribution – Where do your products sell best? Are they popular in certain regions?
- Sales channel – Where are you selling your products? Which ones are performing better than others?
- Salesperson performance – How well does each salesperson perform in each region? Are there any salespeople who consistently underperform in certain regions?
Wrap Up
Sales analysis reports are useful to your business whether you’re just starting out or have grown into a highly successful enterprise. You can create these reports at any point in your sales cycle to review the performance of your sales teams over time and determine what changes need to be made to increase revenue.
