A pipeline report is an important tool for sales teams in any industry. It lets you keep tabs on how many potential deals you have in the funnel. That information offers insight into the current and future health of your sales organization and how it may impact the production needs and finances of your business.
In this article, we’ll dig deeper into what a pipeline report is, why you need one, and what you should include in yours. We’ll also introduce you to monday.com’s powerful Work OS, which can help you generate pipeline reports and manage other sales processes.
What is a sales pipeline report?
A sales pipeline report is a visual representation of the various sales prospects you have and where each of them are in the buying process. With this data, the report provides an overview or forecast for revenue in upcoming sales. Based on available data, the report also shows the health and potential growth of your business. The sales pipeline represents all stages of the cycle, from getting a lead to closing a deal, so you can see at a glance what type of volume you have at every stage..
Why use a sales pipeline report?
Using a sales pipeline reports helps you track the status of potential prospects and monitor the progress of a sales team based on the performance of each individual employee. Using the information in the sales pipeline report, you can reallocate resources as necessary to support staff successfully closing more sales and provide assistance or guidance to those who appear to be underperforming.
But the sales pipeline report provides information that’s valuable outside of the sales silo, too.
Businesses with solid sales pipeline reporting can better forecast upcoming revenue and make plans to scale up to meet the demands of large deals.
Knowing what data to capture and include in your pipeline reports helps support these benefits.
What should you include in a pipeline report?
Several elements are common and important for pipeline reporting. Make sure the metrics below are included in your reports so sales leaders have the tools they need to optimize processes and make data-backed decisions.
Number of opportunities
Include the number of opportunities across all sales stages, including any new deals, deals sent, and signed contracts. Having an accurate measure of the number of opportunities in your sales pipeline and how that number changes over time is a good indicator of the health of your business. For optimal performance, the number of opportunities in your pipeline should steadily increase over time.
Deal size
Deal size helps you understand the value of your current sales pipeline. To determine the value, add all the sales in the pipeline together to get the sum of your current and prospective sales. You can then divide the sum by the number of opportunities to find out the average sales size in your pipeline.
It’s important to have this metric in the pipeline report to assess whether sales staff are chasing deals of adequate size to be worth their time. If a sales rep is consistently working on deals that are 50% less than the average deal size, for example, they may be missing critical opportunities to maximize revenue.
Average sales cycle
Including the average sales cycle timeline in a pipeline report is important because it shows sales leaders how long it takes each team member to close a deal. Measuring and tracking how long sales cycles take allows a sales manager to see when that cycle is shorter, meaning a sales rep is closing deals more quickly. When this occurs, they can hone in on what is being done to try and increase the speed of the sales process overall within the company.
Sales activities
Sales activities on a sales pipeline report indicate all actions taken by members of the company’s sales team, in all pipeline stages, in an effort to close deals. Ideally, the sales activities metrics should be high across the entire department, indicating efficiency and productivity. Sales activities can include calls made to prospects and emails sent.
Close rate
Your sales pipeline report should include a close rate — or win rate — which is the percentage of prospects that the sales team successfully turns into conversions within a specified timeframe. Each team member likely has a target number of deals they are seeking to close within each week or month. However, the number of wins that indicate success varies by industry.
Deals lost
An accurate and useful pipeline report should also make note of deals lost during the sales cycle and why these deals were unsuccessful. A pipeline report that indicates which sales reps lost deals and looks at the reason behind these metrics provides a bigger picture of potential pain points for the company so leadership can work to make changes.
Having all this data is great, but you also need a way to organize it, communicate about it, and work on efforts related to it. A comprehensive Work OS provides the tools you need to do that.
Managing your sales pipeline on monday.com
Using monday.com’s Work OS as a management tool for your sales team is easy with customizable templates and all your documentation and reporting consolidated in one place. All of your files are shared among the selected team members and are accessible from anywhere in the world via the cloud.
Make use of our templates and assign specific tasks or deals to individual sales representatives so each team member is accountable for their work. Once you assign deals or tasks to an individual, they and sales leaders can receive automatic notifications and email updates about the status of the task and any approaching deadlines.
The automated reporting and notifications on monday.com help everyone keep up with sales tasks more efficiently.We’ve got a sales pipeline template to help you track all the data relevant to upcoming deals. But we also have plenty of other templates to help you manage sales and other critical processes for your business.
Templates related to sales pipeline reporting
At monday.com we offer a selection of customizable templates for use across multiple industries that make it easier for your team to stay on track and communicate in a digital space. Sales teams can use our templates to generate pipeline reports and more.
Sales Pipeline Template
The monday.com Sales Pipeline Template helps capture leads, track sales, and manage contacts all in one place. Using the template to fill out sales data helps your team forecast revenue based on your current and past deals. The columns in our template help create a visual representation of your sales pipeline by showing which tasks your team is working on and what their status is. You can change the status to complete or in progress, or customize columns to meet specific CRM reporting needs.
Sales process template
Our Sales Process Template helps team members keep track of leads and where each one is in the sales process. Customize the template by creating a column for your leads, a column where you assign a sales rep to the lead, and a subsequent column indicating where that lead is at in the process. You can also note where that lead is located in the world with a clock that shows their local time, so your team is aware when it’s a good time to contact them.
FAQs about pipeline reports
Find out what people are most frequently asking about the sales pipeline and pipeline reports online.
Why is a pipeline report important?
A pipeline report is important because it provides an overview of all deals, including their value, at any given time. The pipeline report layout is easy to understand and helps salespeople conveniently track deal status and meet sales targets. With the data available in the report, team managers can access how sales staff are performing and where changes need to be made to boost revenue.
What is the difference between a pipeline and a forecast?
A sales pipeline is an overview of all available sales opportunities your team currently has, from deals that are about to close to newly identified leads. The pipeline report provides a detailed picture of what each team member is working on and tracks all stages of the sales cycle.
Conversely, a sales forecast is a snapshot of the sales process that uses available data to predict what your revenue will look like within a specified timeframe. Focusing too heavily on forecasting and overlooking the sales pipeline creates an unrealistic idea of your company’s financial health. Your sales forecast only includes deals you know you’re closing, whereas your sales pipeline accounts for all aspects of the process, providing a better overview of how your business is performing.
Power your sales pipeline with monday.com
Managing a sales pipeline requires knowing where each prospect is in their journey so you can assign the right resources to shepherd them further through the funnel. That process includes lots of details and potentially fast-moving deal flows that demand collaboration and communication.
monday.com offers data repositories and other tools you need to keep up with sales channels at any pace.
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