The Evolution of Sales Reporting: From Spreadsheets to Advanced Analytics
Since the dawn of sales reporting, marketers have had a love-hate relationship with spreadsheets.
Whether you shudder at the thought of pivot tables or yearn for the days of Excel (we’re not here to judge), there’s no denying that sales reports have outgrown the limitations of manual data management.
Today’s sales reports run on advanced analytics so you can access sophisticated insights at a glance. But what are the most impactful dashboards for your strategy? And can you fully replace static spreadsheets with dynamic data?
4 Types of Advanced Analytics to Transform Your Sales Reporting
1. Attribution Reports
Manual attribution reporting can bring even the most resilient analyst to their knees. In the past, marketers were forced to export attribution data from various sources in an attempt to merge the results in a spreadsheet. Not only does this approach tend to produce conflicting information, it’s also incredibly tedious.
Advanced analytics presents a much more accessible, visual alternative to attribution modeling – especially when the reports in question are native to your CRM. From first touch to last touch, seek out a solution that empowers you with custom dashboards and actionable campaign insights.
2. Deal Velocity
Want to monitor how quickly prospects move through the sales funnel? Static spreadsheets just don’t cut it. Real-time insights linked directly to your CRM are a game-changer for deal velocity reports. With clear, visual dashboards, it’s possible to identify bottlenecks in the sales process and optimize your strategy.
For example, if your customers take a long time to respond at the proposal stage, this could indicate your messaging or cadence needs work. Or, if one lead source consistently produces an accelerated closed-won, it’s a good sign to invest further in that channel. Deal velocity reports also make it easier to forecast revenue, which simplifies decision making for your board.
3. MQL to SAL
Lead quality is an eternal bone of contention between sales and marketing teams. MQL to SAL reports bring clarity to this conversation by transparently tracking how many Marketing Qualified Leads become Sales Accepted Leads and, eventually, customers. Embed this dashboard in your CRM to improve visibility and foster better collaboration between everyone involved.
By pinpointing when leads are suitably qualified to pass to sales, marketing can allocate budget more effectively and ensure a more cohesive customer experience. And, with a better understanding of the end-to-end funnel, sales teams can focus on optimizing the lead handoff and follow-up process.
4. Revenue Reports
“Isn’t revenue one of the most spreadsheet-friendly types of reporting,” we hear you ask? In its most basic form, yes, sales and profit reports are relatively clear cut. But, with advanced analytics, you can extract so much more from your revenue data. The real value lies in identifying where your revenue comes from – whether digital channels or offline – so you can double down on the marketing tactics that drive the most ROI.
By tracking revenue goals in real time, you can take action to close gaps while campaigns are still in motion. At a more granular level, dynamic revenue reports also shed light on customer spending patterns that would otherwise require painstaking analysis in a spreadsheet.
Uncover Next-Level Sales Insights with Advanced Analytics
Centralized data, real-time tracking, and native CRM reports are the beginning of the end for the humble spreadsheet. Thanks to the evolution of sales reporting, we now have advanced analytics and custom dashboards so sales reports littered with #VALUE! errors are a thing of the past. As marketers, we wouldn’t have it any other way.
