They say that 'information is power'. When you're a Salesforce client you are going to have the option of creating many, many reports that can show you information on your business. The key to viewing this information is to consider,

a) what you can learn from it, and

b) what you can do with it?

Here are five reports that we recommend all our clients use as standard.

1. Closed Sales v Target

If you are working in sales, then you should be aware of your closed sales revenue every minute of the day. The report 'Closed Sales v Target' enables each sales professional to see how far or close they are from hitting their monthly target in real - time. The date range of this report can be toggled to reflect a sales target over weekly, monthly, quarterly or annual targets.

2. Sales Pipeline by Stage

When you are looking at the sales target (above) and wondering how you are going to close the gap between the target and your current sales position, the next report that you look at will be the Sales Pipeline by Stage report. This report will quickly show a sales professional each deal that they have closing within the relevant time period, usually the current month.

A well-maintained sales pipeline will enable the salesperson to see the opportunities that are categorised as 'Closing' or 'Developing". These stages, representing the bottom end of the sales funnel is where the revenue is likely going to come from to help hit the sales target

3. Sales Leaderboard

If you are a sales manager you'll want to provide the sales leaderboard report to your team so that their natural competitiveness spurs them on to bigger monthly numbers. On the other hand, if you are a sales professional in a team, you'll want to know what is your colleagues (or rivals?) are achieving in comparison to you.

4. Return on Investment

The RoI report is a marketing report that calculates the return that the business is achieving from its investment in online, inbound marketing activity such as Google Adwords, Facebook or LinkedIn advertising. The RoI report will automatically calculate the revenue that has been achieved directly from leads that originate from each advertising platform, and then calculate, based on the monthly ad spend, the return on investment per ad channel.

This report is vital in helping small business owners to understand where to concentrate their advertising budget so that they generate the highest returns

5. Sales Activities 

As a sales manager or business, you'll want to know the reasons why a salesperson isn't hitting their target numbers each month. The Sales Activity report will allow you to look into the work that is being done in the pre-sales area. This is typically concerned with the number of phone calls, meetings, and proposals that are being generated by each team member.

As a sales manager, you'll know that there are key ratios that exist in your sales process. These rations will show you the average number of sales calls that are required to create enough opportunities to hit sales targets each month.