Best Salesforce Reports and Dashboards for Sales Managers

June 10, 2024
8 min

Are you a sales manager looking for insights into your team’s performance and future revenue projections?

While simply inputting data into your CRM is a step in the right direction, sales reports in Salesforce offer way more. They allow you to analyze your pipeline, track team productivity, and pinpoint growth opportunities.

This post delves into the capabilities of the Sales Cloud, a Salesforce product with pre-built reports and tools for fine-tuning these reports to best fit your needs. Let’s dive into what a Salesforce report really is and what are the best Salesforce sales reports and sales operations dashboards.

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How to Build the Best Salesforce Reports for Sales Managers

The sales department is a cornerstone of any organization, necessitating timely and well-organized data for impactful decision-making.

Concise sales reports guide pivotal company choices, from product strategy to employee bonuses. Effective use of CRM systems, like Salesforce, empowers sales teams.

If you’re new to Salesforce, consider the “Reports & Dashboards for Lightning Experience” on Trailhead, Salesforce’s free education platform. It helps understand the basics of how to create reports and dashboards for sales and marketing managers using Report Builder’s features.

Before discussing the creation of optimal Salesforce Sales Cloud reports and dashboards, it’s essential to gather relevant data, choose the right metrics, and understand your buyer persona.

The main purpose of all sales operations reports is to answer the following questions:

  1. Are you reaching your sales goals?
  2. What is your revenue compared to expenses over a certain period of time?
  3. How did your sales team perform on a month-to-month, quarter-to-quarter, or year-to-year basis?
  4. How many sales is your organization going to make by the end of the month/quarter/ year? What is your projected revenue for the upcoming period?
  5. Which services and products are not fulfilling expectations?
  6. What are the best-selling products and services?
  7. What are the primary areas of opportunity?
  8. What are the main challenges of the whole sales process?
  9. How much time does each sales rep spend on every sales process phase?
  10. How many sales efforts turn into actual sales?
  11. What actions can you take to address missed sales activities?

 

Which Data to Collect for Salesforce Sales Reports?

With organized data, you can better identify your clients’ pain points and tailor your communication.

To have a comprehensive view, you need to have both the business and personal information of your customer.

Here is, the data, that you should always collect:

Company data

  • Company website
  • Company location
  • Industry
  • Company LinkedIn URL

Personal data

  • First name
  • Last name
  • Job title
  • Number of LinkedIn connections
  • LinkedIn URL or social networking URL (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram)
  • Business email
  • Personal email
  • Phone number

You can further enrich and segment this data with more related facts:

  • Social media group membership
  • Account subscriptions
  • Person’s background: working experience
  • Products/services used
  • Technologies/tools used
  • Events visited
  • Contact’s date of creation
  • First/Last date of a LinkedIn message sent
  • First/Last date of the email sent
  • Campaign name
  • Next follow-up date
  • Current outreach status

Of course, the data you collect for detailed sales reports can go beyond the mentioned ideas, depending on your business specifics.

Generally, you can segment all the client information by the following criteria:

  • ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) and buyer personas
  • Industries
  • Company size
  • Lead sources
  • Behavioral factors and interaction history

You can also categorize leads, such as identifying lost leads by their reasons, to develop strategies to win them back.

After choosing your data and grouping criteria, score the leads based on activities most likely to lead to a purchase, such as:

  1. Emails open rate
  2. Link open rate
  3. Reply rate
  4. Number of replies by category
  5. Bounce rate
  6. Landing pages visits
  7. Site traffic
  8. Forms completion
  9. Lead magnets download
  10. Number of chat interactions
  11. Pop-up clicks
  12. Number of video watches
Content-Reporting-in-Salesforce

Content Reporting in Salesforce for Tracking Content Marketing Success

After classifying the data, prioritize leads by sales stage, opportunity, industry, or product. This aids in identifying less effective sales activities, such as engaging with non-promising leads or investing too much time in non-sales-related tasks.

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How to Prepare Data for Tracking and Analysis in Salesforce Reports and Dashboards

 

Choose a Reporting Timeframe

For a precise report, decide on a timeframe: weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. This choice will reveal trends in sales cycles, customer behaviors, and marketing outcomes, highlighting sales patterns or product launch successes.

 

Select Effective Visuals for Reporting

The best sales reports should present data clearly and actionably. Consider how to display results, whether through bar graphs for product performance or pie charts to show individual product contributions.

The visual representation of your report isn’t just about making them beautiful but also about making them cohesive and comprehensive.

Search for the best Salesforce dashboard examples on the Internet or ask a Salesforce consultant for advice.

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Maintain Data Integrity in CRM

For accurate reports, you need clean, accurate data. CRM tools, like Salesforce, ensure client information is consistent and up-to-date.

By routinely cleansing your data ,you can analyze pertinent details effectively. For example, Salesforce’s data quality dashboards can spotlight gaps in contact or industry data.

Acccount Contact Opportunity Data Quality in Salesforce

Account, Contact, Opportunity Data Quality Reports in Salesforce

Must-to-Track Metrics in the Best Salesforce Dashboards for Sales Managers

Generally, all businesses need to keep a hand on the pulse of the following numbers, measurements, and activities:

  • Number of Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL)
  • The number of calls, emails, appointments, and meetings
  • Leads by Stats, Type, Stage, Source, Period
  • The top sales rep by revenue/ The top-performing agents
  • Activities by sales rep
  • % of closed businesses
  • Closed business by Type
  • Month-over-month growth/ Year-over-year growth
Recent-Activity-Dashboard-in-Salesforce

An Example of a Salesforce CRM Dashboard for a Recent Activity of a Sales Rep

  • Lead response type
  • Number of Active & Close Leads, Opportunities, and Deals
  • Top deals/ number of deals lost
  • Lead conversion rate
  • Leads by industry
  • The number of demos scheduled
  • Weekly pipe gen/weekly pipe gen by source
  • Lead status by owner
  • Stale opportunities/ Opportunities stuck in stage for 60 days
  • Top campaigns/campaigns by ROI
Lead-Funnel-Dashboard-in-Salesforce

Lead Funnel Dashboard with New Leads, Reasons for Unqualified Leads Salesforce Reports Examples

  • Revenue goal progress for the period
  • Reasons for unqualified leads
State-of-Union-Dashboard-in-Salesforce

The Example of State of Union Dashboard in Salesforce for Tracking Sales Pipeline per Sales Rep and Month-to-Month Growth

  • Opportunity-to-Win ratio
Opportunity-Conversion-Salesforce-report

Opportunity Conversion Rates Salesforce Report

  • Deals Won vs. Deals Lost by Owner
  • Deals Closed by Quarter/Month for This Year Against Quota
  • Deals Closed by Quarter/Month for Last Year Against Quota
  • Deals Closed by Region/Department/Territory for This Year Against Quota
  • Deals Closed by Region/Department/Territory for Last Year Against Quota
New Accounts and Contacts Salesforce Reports

The Example of New Accounts and Contacts Salesforce Reports

  • MQL to SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) Conversion
  • SQL to Proposal Conversion
  • Proposal to Close Conversion
  • Time per each pipeline stage
New-Accounts-Salesforce-Report

The Example of New Accounts Salesforce Report

Salesforce allows for diverse report analysis, with data grouped and displayed on dashboards. You can monitor:

  • The primary sources of Opportunities: from converted Leads or direct Accounts
  • The ratio of Converted to Unconverted Leads
  • Opportunities stagnant at specific stages
  • Comparison of Expected and Actual Campaign Revenue.
Activity Management Dashboard in Salesforce

The Example of Salesforce Sales Rep Dashboard in Salesforce with Expected vs. Actual Campaign Revenue Report

  • Pushed and Stale Opportunities for a 7/60/90 days
  • Most frequent reasons for Closed/Lost Opportunities
  • Open Opportunities without key fields populated
  • Age of Leads
Sales and Marketing Adoption Dashboard in Salesforce

The Example of Sales Manager Dashboard in Salesforce with Open Opportunities Without Key Fields Populated Report

  • Best-performing sales executives by Closed Won Opportunities
  • Number of newly created Opportunities
  • Open opportunities without key facts populated
  • The number of opportunities by priority
Sales-Managers-Key-Metrics-Dashboard-in-Salesforce

The Example of Sales Managers Key Metrics Dashboard in Salesforce with the Number of Newly Created Opportunities Report

  • Average Opportunity Size
Key-Performance-Indicators-Dashboard-in-Salesforce

One of the Best Sales Dashboards in Salesforce to Highlight Key Performance with Average Opportunity Size Report

  • Average period to close Opportunities
  • Average sales activities per day
  • Average time spent on the phone
  • Deal size vs. discount
Sales-Reps-Performance-Dashboard-in-Salesforce

Sales Reps Performance Dashboard in Salesforce with Sales Rep’s Activities’ Report

  • Hot Leads for 24/48/96 hrs
Stale-Leads-Deals-Reports-in-Salesforce

Stale Leads Deals Dashboard in Salesforce with Hot Leads Report

The mentioned metrics are just a starting point. You can customize them based on your specific needs. For instance, a commercial real estate broker might track ‘Deals by Property’.

Deals by Property In AscendixRE CRM

Deals by Property Report In AscendixRE CRM

Or Availabilities by Property

Availabilities by Property Report in AscendixRE CRM

Availabilities by Property Report in AscendixRE CRM

Unfortunately, most of such custom fields and objects like Properties, Availabilities, etc. are not available out-of-the-box in Salesforce.

To tailor these features, you can either buy industry-specific Salesforce add-ons, like AscendixRE CRM for commercial real estate , or seek professional Salesforce customization services.

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3 Best Salesforce Reports for Sales Managers

Now, we’ll show the three most used reports for sales managers and how they help to get the instant answers to the most burning sales-related questions and adjust the decisions accordingly.

 

1. The Productivity Report

The required data to build this report is the number of:

  • Outbound calls
  • Conversations
  • Voice mails
  • Emails
  • Customer meetings
  • Product demonstrations
  • Generated proposals in a given day, week, or month.

The productivity report compares actual results to set benchmarks, addressing crucial questions for sales teams and the entire business:

  • At which phase of the sales cycle is the sales rep above/below the productivity quota?
  • In which areas is the sales rep constantly ahead/behind and how it affects the next stage of the sales cycle?
How-to-Create-Salesforce-Dashboards-for-Sales-Managers

The Example of a Productivity Report in Salesforce

2. The Sales Pipeline Report

This report tracks prospects by their stage in the sales cycle. It lets sales managers monitor the number of prospects at each phase and observe their progression speed or if they drop off.

There are five typical pipeline stages:

Stage #1 – Decision-maker shows interest in the product or service

Stage #2 – Sales rep meets with a decision-maker

Stage #3 – Salesperson showcases product demo to a decision-maker

Stage #4 – Proposal Offered

Stage #5 – Sale Won or Lost

Sales-Executive-Dashboard-in-Salesforce

An Example of a Sales Executive Dashboard in Salesforce with a Sales Pipeline

3. The Sales Forecasts Report

This report allows sales managers to hold sales reps accountable for monthly deal targets and pinpoint opportunities needing special attention.

It helps project revenue and paves the way to the after-sale product/service delivery by answering questions such as:

  • In which month are the salespeople usually above/below quota?
  • Does the revenue typically decrease in any particular month?
  • How many accounts drop out or get added from one month to the next?
  • Does the rep have an easier/more difficult time achieving quota in one product line or another?
Forecast Dashboard-in-Salesforce

One of the Examples of Forecast Dashboard in Salesforce

How We Can Help Improve Your Sales Operations with Salesforce

If you don’t want to overcomplicate reporting experience in your organization, delegate all Salesforce-related challenges to our experts.

Here’s how we can assist with the customization of Salesforce reports and dashboards:

  • Our consultants can help structure and categorize the data within Salesforce, ensuring that it’s logically organized and easily accessible for reporting.
  • Our professionals can ensure seamless data integration to generate comprehensive reports that pull data from multiple sources.
  • We can design custom reports tailored to the unique metrics and KPIs relevant to the business.
  • Our experts can build interactive dashboards that provide a visual representation of sales and marketing data, making it easy to interpret essential sales metrics and make informed decisions.
  • To ensure that reports and dashboards are accurate, our Salesforce consultants can implement data validation measures and carry out periodic data cleaning. This prevents errors and ensures consistency and much more.
  • Do you still have questions about Salesforce reports and dashboards or need help with your Salesforce org? Book a free CRM consulting call.

Or you can go another way and use our pre-made app, Ascendix Search, for advanced searches, map-based results, or to edit multiple records at once.

We built the Ascendix Search app to upgrade your Salesforce experience and let you easily build granular lists of prospects to call. Interested? Request your free full demo!

Salesforce Reports and Dashboards for Sales Managers FAQ

What are Salesforce Reports and Dashboards?

Salesforce reports and dashboards are analytical tools within the Salesforce platform. Reports provide detailed data analysis based on specific criteria, while dashboards offer a visual summary of these reports, presenting key metrics and trends in an easily digestible format, enabling businesses to make informed decisions.

What are the Different Types of Dashboards in Salesforce?

In Salesforce, dashboards can vary based on the data they display and their intended audience, but fundamentally, they include:

  • Operational Dashboards: Focus on day-to-day operations.
  • Analytical Dashboards: Provide deeper analysis for data-driven decisions.
  • Strategic Dashboards: Aimed at tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) against strategic goals.
  • Tactical Dashboards: Help in monitoring department-specific metrics and performance.

How do I Access Reports and Dashboards in Salesforce?

To access reports and dashboards in Salesforce, navigate to the “Reports” or “Dashboards” tab in your Salesforce interface. If these tabs aren’t visible, click on the “App Launcher” (grid icon) and search for “Reports” or “Dashboards.” Here, you can view, create, and manage your reports and dashboards.

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