6 CRM Sales Reports Every Sales Team Needs to Succeed in 2023

The secrets to selling more lie within your CRM. Amid a sea of data on leads, accounts, deal progress, and rep activities, CRM sales reports surface the insights you need to make better decisions and drive more revenue.

According to HubSpot, organizations that use sales analytics increase revenue by 17% on average. Yet many sales teams fail to fully capitalize on their CRM reporting capabilities. Only 40% of businesses say they have a well-defined sales reporting strategy, while 23% have no strategy at all.

As we head into 2023, make it your resolution to put CRM data at the center of your sales operation. Start with these 6 essential reports that every sales rep and manager should be leveraging.

1. Contacts Report

Your contact database is one of your most valuable selling assets. But to get the most out of it, you need to slice and dice that data in meaningful ways. That‘s where the contacts report comes in.

Filtering is your friend here. Narrow down your full contact list to focus on high-potential segments. Some powerful ways to segment include:

• Lead source: Identify which marketing channels deliver leads that convert to customers at the highest rate. Double down on channels that outperform and investigate underperformers.

• Title/Role: Zero in on contacts with decision-making power, like VPs and C-suite execs. Build a strategy to reach more of these high-value personas.

• Last contacted: Surface neglected contacts in danger of going cold and prioritize them for immediate outreach. According to InsideSales.com, you‘re 100x less likely to connect with a lead after 30 days vs. 5 minutes.

• Location: Planning a conference or field marketing event? Filter contacts by region to build an outreach list and set up meetings.

Layering contact scoring data into this report is also hugely valuable. By grading contacts on criteria like title, company size, industry, and engagement level, you can spot your most promising leads and route them to reps for fast follow-up.

2. Lifecycle Stage Funnel Report

The lifecycle stage funnel report visualizes the health of your pipeline. It shows exactly how many leads you have at each stage, from the "top of the funnel" where new leads enter to the "bottom" where deals are won.

Tracking full-funnel conversion rates in this report is critical. How well are you moving leads from one stage to the next? Where are the biggest drop-offs?

Say you start with 1,000 leads, of which:

• 200 become Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) – 20% conversion
• 50 MQLs convert to Sales Qualified Leads (SQLs) – 25% conversion
• 10 SQLs convert to won deals – 20% conversion

Your overall lead-to-customer conversion rate is 1% (10 wins / 1,000 leads). According to Implisit, average lead-to-deal conversion rates range from 0.6% to 1.8% depending on industry, so 1% indicates room for improvement.

Diving deeper, we see that while marketing is generating a high volume of leads, only a quarter are being accepted by sales. Increasing that MQL-to-SQL handoff rate would have an outsized impact on revenue. The prescription? Tighter alignment between marketing and sales on lead quality criteria.

Conversion rates are just one of many powerful metrics you can track in funnel reports to guide process improvements. Closely monitoring this report will help you plug leaks and optimize your pipeline for maximum efficiency.

3. Revenue Report

Nothing gets a sales leader more excited than the revenue report. Tracking closed-won deals, average selling prices, and sales cycle times, this report shows how effectively you‘re generating cash.

Key questions this report can answer include:

• What is our average deal size and how can we increase it? Simply take total bookings divided by number of deals. If you sell multiple products, calculate ADS for each to see which drive the most revenue.

• How long does it take us to close a deal? Measure the number of days from opportunity creation to close, then dig into ways to shorten that cycle.

• Which lead sources generate the highest value customers? Attribute revenue to original lead source to see which channels pull their weight. Use this data to optimize marketing spend.

• How well are we retaining customers? Track key metrics like revenue churn, upgrades/downgrades, and renewal rates. It‘s 5-25x more expensive to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.

Revenue reports can also be used to create sales forecasts, which are crucial for budgeting and resource planning. Start with the deals you‘ve already closed plus those in pipeline weighted by probability to close. A simple formula:

Forecasted Revenue = Closed Revenue + (Opportunity 1 Amount x Probability) + (Opportunity 2 Amount x Probability) +…

Say you‘ve closed $100K in revenue for the quarter and have two deals in pipeline, one for $50K at 50% probability and another for $20K at 90% probability. Your forecast would be:

$100K + ($50K x 50%) + ($20K x 90%) = $143K

For even more granular forecasts, break down revenue by segments like region, product, or customer type. By comparing actual revenue to forecasted, you can gauge sales performance and course-correct as needed.

4. Companies Report

Account-based selling is all the rage these days, and for good reason. Highly targeted sales and marketing outreach to top accounts can generate impressive ROI. Gartner found account-based methods increase deal size by 35% on average.

The companies report makes it easy to implement an account-based approach. Instead of viewing data on individual leads, you can track and measure engagement at the company level.

Scoring is just as important for accounts as it is for contacts. Assign points to companies based on attributes that align to your ideal customer profile, such as:

• Employee count
• Revenue
• Industry
• Technologies used
• Level of engagement with your brand

Rollup metrics to the account level, like number of contacts engaged, number of open opportunities, and total pipeline value. Use this data to tier accounts and prioritize those with the greatest revenue potential.

Another valuable metric to track in this report is reach into key buying centers. Modern B2B purchases involve 6-10 decision makers on average. Have you engaged stakeholders across IT, finance, procurement, and the C-suite at your target accounts? If not, formulate plays to gain wider access.

5. Wins & Losses Report

Learning from past successes and failures is crucial to repeatable sales wins. The wins and losses report makes that learning systematic by cataloguing the reasons behind each closed deal.

Most CRM‘s have a "reason for loss" or "reason for win" field you can populate on each opportunity. Some common reasons include:

• Price
• Product fit
• Competition
• Timing/budget
• Decision maker buy-in

Tracking these reasons over time, you can identify patterns and failure points in your sales process. Say you‘re losing a lot of deals to a particular competitor known for their smooth user experience. You might focus your product roadmap on improving UX and arm reps with battle cards touting your superior ease of use.

On the flip side, if you‘re winning a lot of deals because of your hands-on support and onboarding, double down on that strength. Build "white glove service" into your value proposition and make it a focus of sales and marketing messaging.

Another valuable exercise is to hold regular win-loss review meetings. Bring sales and other cross-functional stakeholders together to dissect a handful of recent wins and losses in depth. Identify root causes behind each outcome and brainstorm ways to replicate the wins and prevent repeat losses.

6. Custom Reports

While the reports above are relevant to nearly every business, you‘ll also want to build CRM reports tailored to your specific go-to-market model and KPIs. Most modern CRM‘s have robust custom reporting capabilities to accommodate this.

Some examples of custom reports include:

• Sales activity: Track activities like calls, emails, and meetings logged by each rep. Use this data to enforce activity quotas and launch contests. According to The Bridge Group, the average inside sales rep makes 45 calls per day.

• Product mix: For companies with varied product lines, track the percentage of revenue and pipeline value attributed to each offering. Identify cross-sell and upsell opportunities.

• Segment performance: Compare conversion rates, ASP‘s, and sales cycle times across customer segments like SMB vs. enterprise, or North America vs. EMEA. Tailor your sales process for each segment.

• Renewals and upsells: SaaS and other recurring revenue businesses must closely monitor renewal rates, churn, and account expansion. Identify at-risk accounts and trigger proactive outreach.

• Sales velocity: Measure how quickly deals move through your pipeline on average. Identify the key factors that influence velocity, like rep experience level or use of sales enablement content.

The key is to focus your custom reports on metrics that align closely to your top priorities, whether that‘s increasing win rates, expanding wallet share, or speeding up deal cycles. Avoid the temptation to build one-off reports just because you can.

Putting Your CRM Data to Work

In today‘s hyper-competitive selling landscape, sales leaders can no longer rely on intuition to guide their decisions. The organizations that will thrive in 2023 and beyond are those that ground their strategies in data.

Your CRM is the lifeblood of your sales data, capturing a wealth of information on leads, deals, and customer interactions. The 6 reports described above will help you translate that raw data into actionable insights.

Some tips for getting started:

1. Make reporting a habit. Block off time on your calendar each week to review key reports. Share insights with your team regularly.

2. Customize your CRM dashboard. Build a dashboard featuring the reports and KPIs that matter most for your role. Check it daily to stay on top of trends.

3. Establish data hygiene standards. Accurate reporting requires clean, consistent data. Train your team on CRM best practices and perform regular data quality audits.

4. Embrace experimentation. The beauty of data is that it enables you to test new strategies and gauge their impact. Regularly analyze your reports to develop and validate hypotheses for improving sales outcomes.

The insights are there for the taking – but it‘s up to you to grasp them. According to ValueSelling Associates, high-performing sales organizations are 1.6x more likely to report widespread use of sales analytics. Will you be among them?

As you build out your tech stack for the coming year, don‘t neglect the power of CRM reporting. Equipped with these 6 essential reports – and others tailored to your business – you‘ll be poised to outsell the competition and crush your revenue goals. Here‘s to a data-driven path to sales success in 2023!