As business moves from traditional brick-and-mortar to e-commerce and online operations, business intelligence (BI) becomes invaluable for sales and marketing success.
Giant companies invest in BI dedicated tools for this reason, but for a small business purchasing such a tool will dig into your budget and most likely fail to pay for itself.
Luckily with a comprehensive CRM software you can run the needed analytics and create insight reports without additional tools.
CRM reports are a great way to track vital business data relating to customer interactions and stay on top of your sales pipeline.
But what exactly are they, and how can you use them to benefit your business? We will look at various CRM reports and how they can help you understand your customers better and gather business intelligence to close more sales.
Assuming you already have a CRM software, that’s where all your data is stored, including customer contacts, sales and marketing information- so you can easily do this. If you do not have a CRM for your business, consider booking a demo today to learn more about what Phalera can do for you.
Now, back to the topic.
What is a CRM Report?
A CRM report is a document that details customer interactions and tracks sales data.
This information is typically stored in a CRM (customer relationship management) system- a software application businesses use to store customer data and manage interactions.
CRM reports can be generated manually or automatically, depending on the features of the CRM system.
The automatically generated or canned reports already configured, generic industry-related analytics. If you want to go deeper, you can always go with custom reports to accommodate your particular business needs.
CRM reports often include customer contact information, purchase history, product preferences, demographic information, etc.
With this data, a business can segment customers into groups, understand their buying behavior, and create targeted marketing campaigns.
That kind of business intelligence becomes a critical cog in the digital marketing wheel, enhancing the lead scoring process and, eventually, closing more sales.
Types of Reports You Can Generate from Your CRM Data
Although every CRM tool is unique and offers innovative features for reporting, they all bring home data in three primary areas:
Sales – that includes revenue, pipeline, and sales goals data
Marketing – emails, social media, landing pages, and other lead generation campaign data.
Customer – demographics, buying patterns, interactions data.
Let’s look at some of the reports you can get from your CRM.
The Sales Funnel CRM Report
The sales funnel CRM is among the most popular reports run by marketers. It gives you a snapshot of leads in your funnel, available opportunities, and how many have been closed.
The report provides you funnel metrics of your sales process- you can gauge your ROI from different marketing channels and lead generation sources.
Some of the business insights you can draw from the sales funnel CRM report include:
• The leading source of sales deals such as phone, emails or in-person meetings.
• At what stage most leads grow cold.
The Sales Pipeline Report
The sales pipeline report lets you see all the ongoing deals and track their progress over time.
The sales pipeline report helps take a shot of your team and client performance.
It will show you the numbers and status of leads at every stage. You will know those progressing, those regressing, and pending.
The Profitability Report
The profitability report shows you which products are fast-moving. If you are offering a service, you can tell which customers bring the most revenue to your business and loyal customers.
With this report you can determine growth opportunities, the market trends and where to focus your business trajectory.
Forecast Sales Report
From the sales and marketing data, you can still generate a forecast sales report which shows the projected revenue in a period. Forecast reports draw data from analyzing the sales pipeline- the leads and deals in progress.
With this you can ascertain how much your business will earn in a specific duration.
Here are the insights you can draw from this report:
- The amount of revenue in the pipeline for the month.
- How many deals your team will close
- Sales goal projection-how much of the target the sales team will achieve with the ongoing activities.
Total Sales Report
It shows sales data by segmentation- product, team, customer, source to give an overview of total sales. The total sales report is handy as it offers a snapshot of the comparison between different sales reports.
Other report types you can generate from the Phalera CRM.
The Email Outcomes Report
Email outcomes reports show you the number of emails sent, their open rate, clicks, and how many resulted in conversions.
Email marketing remains the campaign with highest ROI for businesses, so this is one of the critical reports you should have.
Campaign Report
This report draws analytics from the marketing campaigns you are running in the business.
Besides this data, you will determine which channels perform better with every campaign.
For instance, product, seasonal/holiday, launch, promotional activities.
Lead Source Performance Report
Wouldn’t you want to know where the most quality leads come from?
Once you integrate the Phalera CRM to your business, you can create landing pages for your products, services and other conversion items.
That means data from these sources is tracked and stored, which you can use to generate a report on lead source performance.
How to Use CRM Reports for You Business
CRM reports can be used in several ways to benefit your business. Here are just a few examples:
Staying organized: A CRM report can help you keep track of customer interactions and follow up accordingly. That is especially useful if you have a large customer base or offer products or services that require ongoing support.
Understand your customers better: By analyzing CRM report data, you can gain insights into your customers’ buying behavior and preferences. The information will help to improve your marketing efforts and increase conversions.
Close more sales: By tracking the progress of each sale through the pipeline, you can identify any bottlenecks or areas for improvement. The insights from CRM reports will allow you to close more sales and increase your overall revenue.
Conclusion
Reports are a dime a dozen in the business world, but if you know how to utilize them correctly, they can be worth their weight in gold.
First you must know which information to include in your reports and how often to run them. If used properly, CRM reports can help you fine-tune your sales process and give valuable insights into your customers’ behavior.
Not sure where to start? Book a demo today to speak with one of our agents, explore all of the features of our software, and see how easy it is to use CRM reports to improve your business.
Click here to get started on making your CRM work for you .
