34 powerful CRM reports you should be using

CRM reports can provide valuable insights that can improve your sales process. But do you know which CRM reports can provide answers to which sales questions?

For example, are your cold calls and emails effective? Check your activity reports. Worried by the amount of time a deal is staying in a particular stage? Review your success insights.

CRM reports provide major value for your sales process IF you know how to use them correctly.

Leverage your CRM report insights

Your CRM automatically collects, organises, and analyses important sales data.

Certain CRM reports will depend on your platform, but the most helpful reports are standard.

Here are 34 essential CRM reports, from pipeline analysis to voice reports.

Pipeline Reports

Your pipeline analysis reports allow you to check the health of your sales pipeline.

You should be able to filter each CRM report by team and team member to review individual pipeline performance.

Sales Funnel CRM Report

Analyse a segment of leads or deals to determine bottlenecks in the funnel. The sales funnel CRM report gives you a snapshot of how sales are progressing overall.

Identify strengths and weaknesses over a specific timeframe.

Let’s say that 80% of deals made it through to Qualified via Phone Call, 76.47% made it to the Face to Face Meeting stage. However, only 53.85% of the deals made it on to the Contract Negotiations stage. You then know there’s a major problem with face to face meetings. Adjust your strategy accordingly.

Pipeline Development CRM Report

Check pipeline progression between different dates and review changes.

Select two points of time and gain a visual of the flow of your deals between these dates. How has your pipeline changed and progressed?

Stage Distribution CRM Report

Do you know how your current pipeline is distributed between stages?

Use this CRM report to find out and check the balance of your pipeline. Review the breakdown of the number of deals, the value, and a percentage-based distribution between stages.

Sales Performance Reports

Are you on track to close the number of deals forecasted? How many sales have your reps actually made?

Use the CRM reports below to find out.

Total Sales CRM Report

The Total Sales Report gives you a picture of the value of your won deals. Sort deals by Owner, Source, Customer, Team, and Product.

For example, maybe you filter by Customer. You discover you’ve sold $2,000 worth of deals to Customer X and $3,000 worth of deals to Customer Z.

Forecasted Sales CRM Report

How much revenue have you forecasted to bring in this month?

Check this CRM report to see what your expected sales are and how they compare to actual sales.

Forecasted Sales by Source CRM Report

Look into the sources of your actual sales and forecasted sales. Determine which deal sources are most effective based on this CRM report.

You can review whether deals are mainly coming from your lead provider, organically, by referral, etc.

Sales by Customer CRM Report

This report offers a picture of deal value distribution by customer.

Use this information to identify if you are selling to many smaller value customers or if are you selling to less larger value customers.

Sales by Owner CRM Report

Find out how much revenue each of your reps is bringing to the table.

This CRM report is excellent for identifying your best reps and reviewing their strategies that other reps can replicate.

Deal Loss Reason CRM Report

It’s inevitable that some deals will be lost. The trick is to understand why and what you can do to improve.

Maybe too many deals are being lost by poor follow-ups or potential customers don’t see the value of your product/service. Identify common loss reasons within your company and make improvements.

Sales Activity Reports

Whether you’re a sales manager or sales rep, it’s crucial to understand what sales activities are actually being accomplished.

Review numbers of calls, emails, and visits and analyse the success of these efforts. Are certain activities proving more successful than others?

Activity Overview CRM Report

The Activity Overview report provides an overall view of your sales activities such as calls, emails, appointments, tasks, notes, texts, and visits.

Sort this CRM report by sales teams or sales reps and find out if your team members are actively selling.

Experiment with the filters to discover insights around particular activities.

For example, you can sort and compare all calls that have been made by all your reps over a specific time period.

Call Outcomes CRM Report

Get a better idea of the trends around calls being made and the outcome of these calls.

Call outcomes need to be logged at the end of each session to ensure that this CRM report’s results stay up to date.

Email Outcomes CRM Report

The overall goal of the Email Outcomes Report is to understand the effectiveness of your emails.

Track email communication for both team and individual reps and compare the number of emails sent with the number of emails replied to, as well as emails that haven’t yet received a reply.

Visit Outcomes CRM Report

Similar to call and email outcomes, the Visit Outcomes Report provides insight as to how effective customer visits are.

Sort by interested, not interested, come back later, and no answer. You can also use this CRM report to identify optimal times to visit leads in the future.

Goal Reports

Hopefully, you set specific goals at the beginning of each quarter.

Review if you’re on track to meet these goals with your Sales Goals and Won Deals Goals reports.

Sales Goals CRM Report

Sales Goals is a high-level CRM report to determine if your sales teams and reps are on track to meet their targets.

Once a rep has moved a deal into “Won,” the value is recorded and this report automatically updates to show how close your team is to reaching the overall sales revenue goal.

The flagline in the report above indicates that it’s almost the end of the month. The red line indicates that the “Care Bear” team is falling behind.

If progression is slow, you might need to review other reports to identify the problem and course correct.

Won Deals Goals CRM Report

This CRM report goes a step deeper and looks at the number of deals to close over a certain time period.

When a deal is added to “Won” in the pipeline, it will show up in this report and push you one deal closer to your goal.

Use this report to understand if your team is on track to meet their won deal goals.

Advanced Sell Drill Down

Dive deeper into lost deals and conversions with these CRM reports.

They answer why or why not certain deals were won or lost and what you can do to improve.

Deal Source Performance CRM Report

Is there a correlation between closing a deal from a certain source and individual reps on your team?

This CRM report provides insight as related to deal source such as referrals, website, visits, etc.

Loss Reason by Owner CRM Report

Certain sales reps might be losing more deals than others. Find out the reason why a deal was lost by a specific rep with this CRM report.

Use these insights as opportunities to talk with struggling reps and identify ways they can improve. Review your other performance reports to identify reps who are succeeding. Try pairing up successful reps with struggling ones as a learning opportunity.

Loss Reason by Source CRM Report

Discover if there is a correlation between why a deal was lost and where it came from.

Make sure that your reps have multiple loss reasons to choose from so you have a comprehensive view.

Stage Conversion by Owner CRM Report

This report takes a deeper dive into individual sales rep stages.

Find out how many conversions each rep is completing in each stage of the sales funnel and compare with other reps and the team average.

Rep Performance Dashboard CRM Report

If you want to quickly review individual rep performance, this report gives you an overview that you can compare with other team members.

Identify individual strengths and skills that need improving.

Success Insights

Take a hard look at the success of your sales stages within these CRM reports. You can sort by team and by individual sales rep.

How long is it taking for deals to go through your pipeline?

Stage Duration Analysis CRM Report

Viewing the average amount of time a deal spends in each stage might not seem that interesting at first.

But take that data a step further to use past won and lost deals as guidelines for future deals.

You can use this report to identify the ideal time a deal should spend in each sales stage.

Adjust filters by timeframe and by individual team members to maximise this report’s capabilities.

Stage Duration by Owner CRM Report

Combine the information from the Stage Duration Analysis with this report.

How quickly are your reps moving deals through the pipeline? Which stages are they spending the most time in?

If they are holding deals longer than the average stage duration, you might need to intervene.

Time to First Action by Outcome CRM Report

Are your reps jumping on a possible deal? Or are they sitting on it for a while?

Find out the time to response for each outcome (whether Won, Lost, or Unqualified). You can see how quickly a deal is moved as related to the outcome of that deal.

Time to First Action by Owner CRM Report

Which of your reps act the quickest on their deals? This report gives you a better idea.

Time to First Action by Time Buckets CRM Report

This report provides an overall view of your team’s speed.

Review to know the number of deals contacted within a certain timeframe. You can view Won, Unqualified, and Lost down to the minutes.

Lead Source Analysis

These CRM reports give you valuable insights as to how well your sales and marketing departments are aligned.

Are leads qualified when they arrive from marketing? Identify touchpoints with marketing that could be improved based on this information.

Lead Status CRM Report

Easily determine the status of all of your leads within a specific time period.

For example, how many of your leads are unqualified? How many are on trial? How many are you currently working on?

This report helps you understand where leads are so you can plan how to move forward.

Deal Source CRM Report

Do you know where your deals are coming from? Use this report to find out if one source is better at generating deals than another.

Maybe you find that most of your deals are actually referrals. You then might focus your attention more on customer nurturing and conversations with current customers.

Total Incoming Deals CRM Report

How has your lead flow and amount of incoming deals changed over time?

Check this report to find out how many deals are coming from marketing and if this number has changed significantly during a certain time frame.

Voice Reports

Similar to the importance of the activity reports, voice reports let you specifically track the effectiveness of calls.

How many calls were made? How many of these calls actually turned into deals?

Call Log CRM Report

Never have to hunt for a certain customer conversation again with the call log report.

Not only are all calls organised into one location, but you can also review the recordings.

This approach can help refresh your memory on a customer’s needs/wants before a big meeting.

Call Count CRM Report

Do you know how many calls your reps are actually making? Review the call count to find out.

Also discover if some reps are calling more than others (or if certain reps aren’t calling at all).

Call Duration CRM Report

Longer customer conversations typically indicate that meaningful conversations are happening.

Check the average call time per rep. If a certain rep’s sales numbers are behind, they might not be spending enough quality time on the phone to nurture the relationship.

Compare with successful reps and their call duration. Determine if there is a correlation.

Call Outcomes CRM Report

Are calls resulting in actual conversations? Check how many calls result in no answer, voicemail, or any other call outcome.

You can get a better idea of how successful your cold calling campaigns are and if you need to find another channel to contact customers.

Call Outcome vs. Time of Day CRM Report

When do your reps receive the most phone pick-ups? Find out the optimal time to contact customers and prospects based on past call information.

Based on this report, maybe you find that you are sent to voicemail in the early morning, lunch, and evening. Avoid these times if you want an actual conversation.

Call Length vs. Time of Day CRM Report

Again, an excellent report if you want to know what time is best for customer or prospect conversations.

If you discover that calls are typically shorter between 8:00-10:00 am as compared to afternoon calls, mornings might be the best time for quick conversations.

Conclusion

Your CRM should give you the ability to add filters to most reports, sorting by date and team member.

Combine all of these CRM reports to acquire a 360-degree view of your sales operations. Pinpoint areas that need improvement and processes that can be replicated.

Give the CRM reports above a try with Zendesk Sell. You can sign up for a free trial to gain valuable insights about your sales operations.

This post originally ran on the Base blog. Please visit www.zendesk.com/sell if you’d like to learn more about Zendesk Sell.