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Creating reports can be a hair-pulling, tedious task. On top of that, most companies produce between 5 and 20 reports per month, as shown in recent research on business reporting.
Automated reports that your CRM creates for you? Better, isn’t it? And, helpful too.
Essentially, a CRM report pulls out important metrics from the software you’re using to manage customer relationships.
Since there’s a lot that goes into managing customer relationships, CRM reports can cover anything from lead sources to closed deals and email outcomes.
Unfortunately though, paying attention to each and every report can be very time-consuming. And, often, unnecessary. You just need to look at some high-level CRM reports to be able to steer your team in the right direction.
The million-dollar question then is: which CRM reports should you be keeping tabs on? Let’s answer that for you in this post. Overall, you’ll learn:
On we go.
A CRM report provides a summary of different things you’re tracking in your customer relationship management software.
Let’s say you’re tracking where your leads are coming from. A CRM report on it will give you a summary of all the main channels driving leads your way, helping you make better business decisions and improve your lead generation strategy.
Without CRM reports, all your customer data and interactions are likely going to be all over the place. Digging into them will take time, effort, and a few cups of coffee.
However, with CRM reports you get all the centralized data from your software packed into easy-to-understand reports. These can help you make instant decisions by presenting data in an organized fashion.
But for making the most of these organized reports, you need a CRM that pulls all the reports in one dashboard according to 50% of the sales experts we talked to.
Some 35% also say that good CRM reporting should give you the ability to add filters too. Only 6% say it’s important for a CRM to let you sort reports by date and/or team member.
This brings another important question to the surface: which CRM tool is the most popular (most used). We asked our respondents about it and HubSpot turned out to be the majority’s favorite (41.8%).
17.1 % also use Salesforce – the second most popular among CRM software. 13%, 10%, and 8% also use Zoho, Zendesk, and Pipedrive, respectively. The remaining 10% use other CRM tools.
Understanding your sales funnel can help you identify where sales prospecting, lead management, and sales processes might need some improvement. . Now you can take control and optimize your sales funnel, but first, you need to monitor the right KPIs:
Now you can benefit from the experience of our HubSpot CRM experts, who have put together a plug-and-play Databox template showing some of the most important metrics for monitoring and growing your sales funnel. It’s simple to implement and start using as a standalone dashboard or in sales reports, and best of all, it’s free!
You can easily set it up in just a few clicks – no coding required.
To set up the dashboard, follow these 3 simple steps:
Step 1: Get the template
Step 2: Connect your HubSpot account with Databox.
Step 3: Watch your dashboard populate in seconds.
As for which CRM reports the experts use: the most popular CRM report is the Sales Funnel CRM Report used by almost 60% of the respondents.
Closely popular is the Total Sales CRM Report that half of the contributors use. The Sales Goals CRM Report, Sales by Customer CRM Report, and Email Outcomes CRM report are a few more popular CRM reports used by 42%, 39%, and 24%, respectively.
Around 23% of the sales experts also use Forecasted Sales CRM, Activity Overview, and Lead Status CRM Reports each.
Similarly, 22% also look at Win Deals Goals and Total Incoming Deals CRM reports. 20% find the Stage Distribution CRM Report the most valuable with another 20% considering other CRM reports valuable. Other sales reports that our contributors use are:
The remaining 8% (not pictured below) see value in: Call Outcomes CRM Report, Call Log CRM Report, Deal Loss Reason CRM Report, Loss Reason by Source CRM Report
And now, let’s discuss 12 of the CRM reports you can build from your CRM data:
“A Forecasted sales report is the best CRM report, which is highly valuable for your business,” opines Eden Cheng from PeopleFinderFree.
“Forecasted sales or win profitability showcase the projected revenue within a specific time period.” So how does this type of report help you? Cheng answers, saying the report:
From a business perspective too, a Forecasted Sales Report is valuable as it “helps ascertain how much revenue your business will earn in a specific amount of time,” writes Cheng. “Moreover, such a report will also let you know if your business can afford propagation, loan reimbursements, and investments.”
Book Your Data’s Gary Taylor agrees. “Forecasted Sales Reports are extremely important because they tell businesses if they can afford expansions and investments, or if they need to cut back to avoid potential risks.”
Taylor adds more to the benefits of this CRM report type, saying the report “aids you in fine-tuning your selling strategy.”
Here’s how: “the report shows a sales team the projected revenue if they continue with their current level of efforts. By using the pipeline of potential deals and leads, the CRM software predicts your revenue forecast and growth in future sales.
If this forecast is lower than the sales goal, team managers will know that adjustments need to be made in the sales strategy.”
If you are looking for ways to visualize your sales forecast data from HubSpot CRM, take a look at the video below to learn how to put your data together to learn the following:
“Sales funnel CRM report is a time-saving and scalable solution that your business needs more than ever,” opines Explainerd’s Natasha Rei.
“When you understand the funnel metrics of your sales process, you are able to evaluate the ROI of each channel and lead type,” Rei explains. “You can evolve by changing old channels, adjusting new channels, or implementing new methods across all levels of the customer journey with a comprehensive dashboard view.
This way, you will have full control over every dollar spent on marketing campaigns but also gain back market share from competitors who don’t have CRM software at their disposal.”
Tomasz Mlodzki of PhotoAiD also finds this CRM report extremely valuable for their business. Mlodzki comments the report helps them “organize knowledge about transactions and sales opportunities.”
“It also enables me to monitor sales processes, draw appropriate conclusions from failures, and search for new, real business goals,” elaborates Mlodzki.
Sharing their experience further, Mlodzki continues, “Sales funnel reports are necessary for analyzing the activities leading to the improvement of sales effectiveness. Thanks to reports, I can improve the effectiveness of financial plans and calculated revenues. They also enable the analysis of business goals by comparing the achieved results to the initial assumptions.”
According to Brogan Renshaw from Firewire Digital, the Sales Funnel CRM report also helps you identify bottlenecks in your sales process.
“Bottlenecks refer to a substantial number of prospects failing to proceed to the next stage of the sales process. In this scenario, it could either be the fault of the members of your sales team or an inefficient sales process,” Renshaw outlines.
“Once you pinpoint the main culprit for the issue, you can devise solutions to solve the problem. If it’s your members, you can arrange additional training or revise your sales process if it’s your sales SOPs.”
Pandio’s Gideon Rubin also commends this CRM report for providing “a holistic view of how sales are progressing.”
“With the help of this report, the company is able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the sales processes being used. For example, 80% of the deals are made through phone whereas only 53% of the sales have been closed via in-person meetings,” explains Rubin.
“You know that there is a major problem with in-person meetings so the strategy needs to be adjusted accordingly. Closing the sales funnel report also helps you see the revenue you are bringing in or failing to bring in at each stage.
Therefore, a sales funnel CRM report will help the company identify actions within each stage that are driving success so they can repeat it.”
Here is an example of a sales funnel CRM report from Databox. This HubSpot CRM report template provides you with insights about deals and sales pipelines which will help you to track, and grow your pipelines.
“If your marketing campaign includes an email strategy, it’s highly important to regularly run an Email Outcomes CRM Report,” USA Rx’s Chris Riley recommends.
“If you follow the data, you’ll know when your campaigns are working as you’d hoped, or you’ll know when you need to make a big pivot.”
Since email marketing brings in a median ROI of 122%, you can’t undermine the significance of using the Email Outcomes CRM report to track progress and improve your strategy based on your findings.
As Riley says: “with email marketing being one of the most budget-friendly forms of marketing, it only makes sense to regularly check its corresponding CRM Report.
Here is an example of an email outcomes CRM report from Databox. In this HubSpot Marketing Email Overview template, you’ll see how your emails are performing and converting at-a-glance.
Next up is the CRM Pipeline Report that “provide a visual overview of how your team and leads are progressing,” in the words of CocoFax’s Olivia Tan.
“You can track the value and status of all the deals at every stage of the sales cycle.
This type of CRM report helps you determine if the distribution of your deals is adding up toward your sales goals.”
On top of that, Tan points out: “CRM pipeline reports pinpoint potential problem areas so your team can focus their attention on improving the campaign.”
What’s more, the team at Diamond Real Estate Group uses this CRM report to “set team quotas for our marketing campaigns and help sales agents prioritize their development tactics based on opportunity stage,” shares Matthew Martinez.
Related: Single vs. Multiple Sales Pipelines: How to Determine What’s Right for Your Sales Team
In short, the CRM Pipeline Report is great for seeing “how your leads are progressing or regressing through the decision-making process, and what opportunities are pending,” as Martinez puts it.
Here is an example of a CRM pipeline report from Databox. Use this HubSpot dashboard template to monitor the sales and marketing funnel performance and conversion rate optimization effectiveness.
“The Total Sales Report provides a comprehensive overview of your total sales segmented by owner, source, customer, team, and product,” defines Chris Brown from Tudor House Consulting.
“It allows you a quick view of your overall sales within a given time period.” The report also gives you “the option of viewing your sales data in the form of different types of graphs such as pie charts and histograms,” Brown points out.
Having this overview is essential to tweak your sales strategy the right way.
Brown also speaks about this: “the importance of the Total Sales Report lies in its ability to help business owners closely monitor the performance of their sales team, point out areas of improvement and plan effective sales strategies.”
Here is an example of a total sales CRM report from Databox. This Closed Won Totals (by Sales Rep) dashboard template shows you how is your sales rep progressing towards their year-to-date quota.
“Sales Goals is a CRM report that helps you determine whether or not your team is on track to achieve its goals,” Paula Glynn from Pixelstorm says.
The data that the Sales Goals CRM report offers is reason alone for ambitious sales teams to use it. But Glynn explains more: “The report live tracks the team’s performance as the sales column is filled with new sales. This helps keep a real-time track of how you are progressing towards your goals.”
“It also helps determine whether or not we are on the right track to achieve our set targets,” Glynn notes. “You can always stay alert when you’re falling short on your targets and change your strategies to speed up your sales. This is why Sales Goals is my preferred sales report to rely on for my business.”
Here is an example of a sales analytics CRM report you can use to track your sales goals. This HubSpot CRM dashboard tracks different components of closed-won deals in order to gauge current success and predict future sales growth.
Admittedly, knowing where the most high-quality leads enter your sales funnel is crucial for any team to ensure they keep driving those leads.
Alina Clark from CocoDoc agrees. “Tracking the lead sources, and how they perform is crucial for small businesses because it shows how the customers come into your sales funnel, and which channels perform better.”
Fortunately, a Lead Sources Performance Report gives you “a diagnosis of the channels that work, and which ones don’t,” Clark outlines.
“The report acts as a lab test. It shows the ailing sectors of your lead acquisition systems This enables business owners to focus their efforts on the sources that have higher conversion while letting the others slide. Investing your efforts into non-performing lead sources leads to losses.”
Related: How to Find, Prioritize, and Turn More Product Qualified Leads into Paying Customers
Daniel Foley from CloudTech24 echoes the same. “Lead source reports detail how potential buyers learn about your company and what piques their interest in your product or service.”
To add, “this type of CRM report also digs into the quality and demographics of your leads, allowing you to remove marketing initiatives that don’t help you close more deals,” Foley says.
“Examples of lead source analysis reports are:
In short, this report is essential for tracking where you get your most valuable leads from. Having this information is essential for understanding which lead-generating channels you should be dedicating more resources to and vice versa.
Here is an example of a lead sources performance report from Databox. This HubSpot (Leads by Source) Dashboard Template will help you gain key insights on which specific sources drive the most visits to your website and the highest quality leads for your business.
Iupilon’s Angus Chang marks this CRM report as their favorite. “The profitability report is the most valuable CRM report as it clearly shows the source of money.”
Chang goes on to elaborate: “This report is helpful to determine which customers make the biggest contribution to your revenue, which of your customers are most loyal, and who have the highest potential to buy from you again.”
In short, “a profitability report is valuable because it helps businesses to identify their growth opportunities and market trends, etc.”
Here is an example of a profitability report from Databox. This Stripe MRR + Churn dashboard template helps you monitor your churn rate and track your MRR growth in real-time. It also enables you to see how many sales you make every day, how much revenue did you lose from churned customers, how many customers you currently have, and much more.
Ivacy’s Saad Qureshi adds another CRM report to this list.
“Sales conversion reports are the best way to keep an eye on the percentage of leads that are converted through sales or deals in a defined date range,” Qureshi writes.
Essentially, the ultimate goal of any sales strategy is conversion, which is what makes the Sales Cycle Conversion Report so valuable. It gives a clear look at how well your sales strategy is doing in terms of driving conversions.
Qureshi talks more about the significance of this report in the context of how they use it for their business. “Since we operate in a market that is highly competitive and volatile we are always on the hunt for trends to hijack and offer our customers the reason to stick with us. We usually monitor our reports by breaking them down into lead sources.”
“For instance, email conversions vs paid media leads,” Qureshi elaborates. “It’s not just that we also break up the audience depending upon the buyer stage they are in such as MQL to SQL, and SQL to SAL.”
“This is a part of the closed-loop process, which enables us to track leads even after they are handed over to the sales team and attribute financial results to particular campaign tactics. This attribution has helped observe a positive impact on our business and has helped us grow by 85%.”
Here is an example of a sales conversion report from Databox. Use this HubSpot Full Funnel Analysis dashboard template to see how many leads are being qualified by marketing and sales, where are things breaking down, what does your lead quality actually looks like, and more.
For SaaS businesses, the equivalent of the Sales Conversion Report is the Most Profitable Service Offering CRM Report.
“Because many firms don’t know which services are the most profitable, the Most Profitable Service Offering CRM Report is extremely useful,” Ryan Dalal from Merge PDF observes.
Basically, this report is helpful for helping you make confident, data-backed decisions instead of deciding based on assumptions or gut feelings.
As Dalal writes “you may think you have a terrific offering, but when you look at who orders it and how much it costs to supply the service, you’ll realize you need to subcontract it or get out of the business entirely. There are many soft costs in services, and it’s quite simple to lose money on services if you don’t pay attention to how those expenses affect revenue.”
Another report you may find useful for your SaaS business is the Profitwell Growth Overview Dashboard that tracks all the incoming sources of revenue for your SaaS business, as well as different churn metrics.
As its name suggests, this report is invaluable for determining how well your marketing and sales strategies are doing. The information, in turn, assists in deciding which campaigns to work on and which to shut down.
In the words of Alex Claro from Credit Donkey: “These reports will indicate whether or not your marketing and sales initiatives were effective. If these initiatives are lucrative, you may allocate additional resources to them in order to optimize the profits and increase sales.”
Claro also outlines campaign health reports are crucial for converting more and driving repeat business. “This report is a fantastic resource for small company owners who want to learn which marketing channels are most effective in attracting new consumers and converting them into repeat customers.”
“Measuring your outcomes in numbers allows you to take advantage of possibilities more quickly and make better use of your time,” Claro adds.
“The report will assist you in better managing your marketing budget and expanding your client base in a more efficient manner. This report is [also] crucial for assessing the best outcomes, whether you create a dedicated product website utilizing free website builders or conduct promotions on your app.”
Here is an example of a campaign performance CRM report from Databox. Marketing and sales professionals can use this campaign performance report to get a full view of the top and bottom of their funnel, and an instant snapshot of deal flow and progress towards monthly sales goals.
“The DOA (Dead on Arrival) CRM Report informs users which goods are the most prone to errors or receive the most customer complaints,” shares Revenue Geeks’ Adam Wood.
“The report’s goal is to figure out where and why customers are having issues, and it’s based on customer service calls and emails (including refund and exchange requests) as well as customer surveys.”
This makes the report a crucial one for eCommerce owners – helping them determine either how to improve the error or discontinue the product. Ultimately, the DOA report is indispensable for improving customer experience in the long haul.
Woods agrees. “This report is extremely important because it can detect all kinds of minor problems that you missed or took for granted but the client falls over, which can seriously harm your business.”
Related: 11 Tactics for Effectively Measuring Your Customer Service ROI
Here is another sales report you might find useful to improve customer experience. This Customer Success dashboard allows you to measure your customer support team’s responsiveness to user concerns in terms of revenue.
Whether it’s a sales cycle or profitability report, you now know how important a CRM report is. Plus, with this list of the 12 best CRM reports, you also know which ones to pay the most attention to. Here’s to better customer relationships. ?
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Masooma is a freelance writer for SaaS and a lover to-do lists. When she's not writing, she usually has her head buried in a business book or fantasy novel.
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