By Nadia Bulcourt – August 28, 2023
Updated February 16, 2024
In the business world, assessing the effectiveness of sales strategies is crucial to a company’s growth and success. That’s where the Sales Activity Report comes in. This document provides a detailed overview of a company’s sales performance over a given period.
It enables analysis of sales, key performance indicators, market trends and much more. With a well-developed sales activity report, companies can make informed decisions and implement effective strategies to improve their results.
But are these reports useful, or are they just another document? With Elisabeth Beauregard, Jean-Charles Spanelis, CEO of Finelis, explains the true importance of the sales activity report in the commercial landscape.
Hello Elisabeth. Thank you for taking part in this new live interview on the sales activity report. It’s true that we both enjoyed having an exchange last time about sales outsourcing, recruitment and so on. And one thing led to another, and we said to ourselves “why not tackle a subject that’s close to your heart, which is the activity report?”.
And since we’ve been working together, you’ve also been quite involved with Finelis on organization and process issues. So how do you create a sales activity report that’s always optimal for customers?
For me, it’s an ever-evolving, never-ending challenge. I think we all dream of one day having our reporting done at the touch of a button. But we realize that reporting evolves with trends, the market, new uses… So, you must constantly update your reporting.
It’s true that reporting is a vast subject, sometimes disparaged by some of us. I don’t know who hasn’t complained one day about the time spent producing it, saying “What’s the point of all this stuff?”. I’m in favor of activity reports, but under certain conditions.
The report is only useful if it serves the person who produces it, otherwise it’s neither meaningful nor interesting. If, in addition to the customer, this data is used to improve, understand one’s own actions or guide one’s actions over the following week, the sales report becomes an interesting tool. It is useful both to the person who creates it and to the person who receives it.
Regarding your professional experience, which has been very rich in different environments, what changes have you seen in sales activity reports? Is it still more or less the same?
In the end, it always takes time. Have you seen any changes, or perhaps the way managers look at things, over time? What’s your opinion on this?
Today, the more tension there is in a company or a market, the more the activity report becomes a subject. Indeed, reporting is reassuring. It will demonstrate what we’re doing, even if the results aren’t up to our expectations, and so on.
When things are going well, perhaps we don’t ask ourselves any questions – wrongly, in fact. Because it’s also interesting to see what works. It gives us confidence, and we gain in value…
Isn’t the very purpose of reporting to be collaborative? In theory, the sales activity report can be produced by anyone, including the salesperson, the sales manager, and the director. So, overall, it speaks to the whole sales department.
But as you said, when things are going well, when contracts are being signed, when meetings are going well, etc., there’s not much to say between these different players. They communicate with each other quickly and, overall, they understand each other.
So, in the final analysis, isn’t reporting a useful tool precisely for communicating with other teams, starting with marketing, the product team and others who are not involved in sales?
In fact, reporting has several uses, including the one you mentioned, which for me is to help inform and communicate. As such, it helps to explain what we’re doing to other people, whether it’s our manager, or as you say, other teams within the company. It’s important.
A sales activity report also enables you to monitor your business. As I was saying, the person editing it can see how it’s evolving, what went well or not so well, and so on. Of course, it also allows you to make assessments and analyses, but of course not every week, otherwise it’s a bit of a hindrance. Another useful aspect of an activity report is that it keeps a record of the company’s history, which can be used as a decision-making aid (for action choices, action plans, etc.).
It all depends on the objectives you’ve set yourself. Indeed, if you don’t define the purpose of a report and who it’s intended for, I don’t see how you can define a frequency.
As far as balance sheets and activity reports are concerned, which contain all the analyses of changes in customer base, markets, business sectors and products sold more or less frequently, I don’t really see that happening on a weekly basis. On the other hand, the number of calls, the number of appointments obtained, the number of mailings – it might be wiser to draw up a weekly or even daily report.
In short, you don’t want to produce a report whose data can’t be used, and which, in the end, is of no use to anyone.
At Finelis Coaching, we do everything we can to minimize the time spent by sales reps on reporting, and maximize the time spent communicating with customers and prospects. To put it simply, as the objectives are set by the sales manager who will receive the report, and shared with the salesperson, the frequency of activity reports can be defined in advance.
It’s important to know what data we need to feed the objective. Once we’ve determined the need for this or that information, we also need to know where it’s available: in the CRM or not? Does it require searching in several different media?
And so, is it acceptable to spend several hours a week preparing a report to the detriment of actual sales time? Are there ways of extracting the information as simply as possible, even if it means cutting and pasting?
Who will distribute it? Is it just going to be the sales manager? The contributor will be responsible for structuring it and defining how it will be implemented.
Writing a sales activity report is an exchange. After all, there are many complex issues involved:
So before launching any reporting, you really need to get together and talk about all this, and get everyone to agree on access to information, the time spent… Well, that’s often not what companies do.
The salesperson’s role in this case is to explain where and how he or she should look for information to produce a report. He determines how much time has been spent, and makes recommendations for improvement, both for himself and for the other person.
The behavior to be avoided is to fill in the report without conviction, without motivation and thinking that it’s useless anyway. In fact, in general, the information that emerges from an activity report can help the salesperson to improve.
How do you assess whether all those nice sales reports are working, both in form and content? How do you know that the team has done its job properly and that those who received the report are satisfied?
Should there be regular feedback sessions to make sure that everything is running smoothly, or is it still better to give things time and perhaps have regular calls?
Finally, how should we view the success indicators of these reports, which are ultimately important?
Internally, if the sales activity report remains on the desk of the manager without him mentioning it, or if it evokes only a single piece of data, its usefulness is somewhat truncated, if not non-existent.
How is this report used? When I send it out, do I get external feedback or not? And firstly, is this report useful to me? If I don’t do anything with it in the first place, because I don’t have the right data or don’t feel like looking too hard, then the report won’t do me any good.
If it’s intended for the customer, the first feedback is to ask if the report is understandable, does it seem clear? Does it contain the expected elements?
A big thank you Elisabeth for all your insides on this topic of sales reporting because it was short but intense and rich with lots of information! I’d also like to add that when I started working with Elisabeth, she helped us with our reporting issues. So, I invite you all to improve, to move forward on this and to contact Elisabeth or myself to discuss it.
As a result, the sales activity report proves to be an invaluable tool for any company wishing to optimize its sales management. By providing an in-depth analysis of performance and trends, it enables managers to make informed strategic decisions.
At Finelis Coaching, we’re here to support you in developing and optimizing your sales activity reports, to help you achieve your business objectives.
Don’t let your data lie dormant, contact us today to take full advantage of your business potential.
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