A Deep Dive into Sales Pipeline Reporting: Key to Unlocking Sales Opportunities

Your sales team may be working tirelessly to turn potential customers into closed deals to generate revenue for your organization. But if you don’t have a clear picture of how these deals are progressing through the sales pipeline, you run the risk of making poor decisions, wasting resources, and missing out on sales opportunities.

Sales pipeline reports are the key to gaining visibility into your sales process. These reports offer valuable insights into your sales pipeline, helping you make informed decisions and optimize sales performance.

In this post, we will cover the following:

• What is a sales pipeline report? 
• What does a sales pipeline report tell you?
• What are the steps to build a sales pipeline report?

What does a sales pipeline report tell you?

A sales pipeline report provides a snapshot of deals moving through your sales process. It highlights the stage of each deal, the number of deals in each stage, potential pipeline value, and other key metrics for assessing sales performance. With this information, sales managers can spot areas of improvement, make accurate sales forecasts, and improve sales efficiency.

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Here are some crucial metrics covered in a sales pipeline report:

1. Number of sales-qualified leads (SQLs)

Sales-qualified leads are potential customers that have met an organization’s sales qualification criteria. 

This metric reflects the health of your sales pipeline and the effectiveness of your lead generation strategies. It also indicates whether your sales team has sufficient leads to achieve the revenue target. 

2. Total number of opportunities by stage

Opportunities are qualified leads that have a good chance of converting into paying customers. They include businesses that have requested a demo or meeting, received a proposal, or negotiated a deal.  

The total number of opportunities by stage is calculated by adding deals in each sales pipeline stage, from the qualification stage to the closing stage. This metric helps you know whether you have enough opportunities to achieve your revenue goals.  

3. Pipeline value by stage

Pipeline value by stage represents the monetary value that can be realized by the successful conversion of opportunities at each stage of the sales pipeline. It is calculated by adding the potential revenue that each opportunity represents at each sales pipeline stage. 

This metric offers insights into revenue distribution across different stages of the pipeline, helping you focus your efforts on high-potential areas. It also reflects the overall value and health of the sales pipeline.

4. Pipeline coverage per rep

Pipeline coverage per rep measures the monetary value of potential deals in a sales rep’s pipeline compared to their individual revenue target.  

To calculate pipeline coverage per rep, divide the sales rep’s pipeline value by their revenue target and multiply the result by 100. 

This metric helps you monitor the progress of your sales reps toward their assigned sales goals. With this insight, you can identify which of your sales reps will likely meet, exceed or miss their revenue target.

5. Average sales cycle per rep

Average sales cycle per rep refers to the average time it takes a rep to move a lead from initial contact to deal closure. It is calculated by summing up the sales cycle duration for each deal closed within a specific period, then dividing the result by the total number of deals closed.

This metric provides insights into the efficiency of each rep, enabling you to reward top-performing reps and provide training to low-performing reps. 

Sales managers can leverage conversation intelligence solutions to analyze the sales team's conversation and gain insights to improve team productivity. With these solutions, they can glean the winning tactics of best-performing reps and share them with low-performing reps, ultimately shortening sales cycles and improving close rates.

7. Close rate

The close rate, also known as the win rate, measures how many opportunities become successfully closed deals within a specific timeframe. 

To calculate your close rate, divide the number of closed deals by the total number of opportunities, and multiply the result by 100. You should also calculate the close rate for each sales representative.

This metric tracks how effectively your sales team and individual reps convert opportunities into successful deals. With this insight, you can evaluate your sales performance and improve your strategy. 

Avoma Revenue Insights track opportunities' progress through the sales pipeline by leveraging critical data from your CRM, helping you prioritize deals with the highest potential. 

8. Pipeline velocity

Pipeline velocity indicates the speed at which leads move through the sales pipeline and convert into closed deals. 

Pipeline velocity is expressed in monetary value, and is calculated by multiplying the total value of opportunities by the average close rate and dividing the resulting figure by the average sales cycle length.

The average sales cycle length is determined by aggregating the sales cycle duration of each deal closed by the sales team and dividing the value by the total number of deals.

Pipeline velocity represents the average money that flows through the sales pipeline over a specific period, giving you insight into the overall productivity of your sales team. A high velocity indicates that you should maintain consistency in revenue generation, while a low velocity indicates that you should fine-tune sales tactics to achieve the desired revenue growth. 

Sales leaders can use conversation intelligence solutions to learn actionable insights to improve objection handling, reduce sales cycles, and close deals faster.

9. Deal engagement

Deal engagement refers to the level of interaction between sales teams and prospects throughout the sales process. A key indicator of deal engagement is the number of total scheduled meetings or calls with qualified leads or prospects within the current or the following week. It is calculated by adding the planned meetings of all the sales reps during the week.

This metric is a real-time indicator of sales teams’ engagement levels in lead nurturing and deal closing. It reflects the individual sales rep's ability to build relationships to advance leads and sales opportunities through the pipeline to closure. 

Steps to build a sales pipeline report 

Before building a sales pipeline report, you need to clearly define your sales process and the criteria for each stage of your sales pipeline. After classifying pipeline stages, you can follow the steps below to build a report that meets your organization's requirements.

1. Gather data from the sales pipeline

The first step in sales pipeline reporting is systematically collecting and aggregating information from each pipeline stage. This step ensures that your pipeline reports are based on accurate and complete data, empowering your sales team to make informed decisions.

You need to collect data such as total leads, opportunities, deal values, and other relevant metrics. The objective is to compile a comprehensive dataset that can be analyzed to generate insights about sales efficiency, pipeline health, and team and individual performance. 

You can gather and integrate data from the various applications and tools your organization uses for sales and marketing, such as CRM, marketing automation platforms, and analytical tools. 

2. Tailor the report to your audience & goals

Before you analyze the data, you need to define the purpose and audience of your sales pipeline report. Different audiences have different needs, and identifying your audience can help you customize your report to include the most relevant and impactful metrics.

For example, senior executives may want to view high-level data such as total pipeline value, number of opportunities and others.  

In contrast, functional heads such as marketing and sales leaders will be more interested in granular data such as pipeline coverage per representative, sales opportunity amount per representative, and lead-opportunity conversion rate. 

Tailored reports help your different audiences make informed sales-related decisions, enabling the organization to achieve its revenue goals. 

3. Organize the data

Data organization refers to arranging data in a logical and structured way for meaningful analysis and interpretation. 

Organizing data for sales pipeline reporting involves categorizing leads and opportunities based on stages, deal value and timeframes. An organized database enables businesses to generate accurate reports and derive actionable insights to guide decision-makers in the right direction. 

4. Analyze sales activities at each stage

After organizing your data, you need to examine the interactions, progress and outcomes at each pipeline stage, from lead generation to deal closure.

You can review KPIs at each stage, such as pipeline value, total number of leads, opportunities, conversion rate, and time to close, to gain insights into your sales pipeline efficiency.

This stage-by-stage analysis enables you to determine what action you need to take — whether you need to allocate resources more effectively, implement team coaching to improve sales reps’ performance, or fine-tune your sales tactics to improve your conversions.

Analyzing sales activities at each pipeline stage is integral to maintaining a healthy sales pipeline and maximizing conversion opportunities.  

5. Sales forecasting 

A sales pipeline report adds predictability to the sales forecasting process. Analyzing certain dynamics and KPIs in the sales pipeline report makes it easier to generate sales forecasts with greater accuracy.

For example, the pipeline value by stage helps you assess the potential revenue you can generate from your pipeline. Also, the average sales cycle per rep and close rate help you determine how many deals will close within a specific timeframe, enabling you to project future revenue. It allows you to set realistic targets and optimize your resource allocation.

Forecasting sales with real-time information from sales pipeline reports provides better visibility into future revenue generation, enabling you to quickly adjust your sales strategy and optimize sales performance.

6. Visualize the data

Sales pipeline reports include numerous data points and metrics that can overwhelm audiences. To help your audience make sense of the data, you need to present it in an easy-to-understand format using visualization. 

Data visualization transforms raw data and information into visual elements like graphs, charts and summaries. Visualizing data in your sales pipeline report enables your audience to understand trends, patterns and insights at a glance.

Data visualization elements such as charts or timelines aid your audience’s understanding of key metrics like lead-opportunity conversion rate, close rate, pipeline coverage and others, making it easier for relevant stakeholders to identify bottlenecks and improvement areas.  They also facilitate effective communication and alignment across teams, ensuring everyone is working toward a common objective. 

7. Report on sales opportunities

A report on sales opportunities is a vital component of a sales pipeline report. It shows the value, status and conversion probability of sales opportunities. This information helps sales leaders and other stakeholders to identify opportunities at risk and allocate appropriate resources to improve the conversion potential. 

The report also provides insight into the quantity and quality of opportunities at various stages of the pipeline, enabling businesses to measure their progress towards their sales target and forecast their revenue more precisely.

8. Review and refine

After preparing your sales pipeline reports, you must review and double-check them to ensure accuracy and completeness. You need to verify that the data sources and calculations used to populate the report are correct, and that there are no discrepancies or abnormalities.

You also need to proofread the report for any ambiguities or errors that may lead to confusion. 

The sales pipeline report should be clear, accurate, and comprehensive so that it can guide the sales team and other stakeholders to make informed decisions and achieve the revenue goals.

Generate better sales pipeline reports with Avoma 

Instead of manually creating sales pipeline reports, you can use Avoma's intuitive platform to automate the process. Avoma integrates with popular CRM and marketing tools to capture data from all stages of the sales process, enabling you to have a comprehensive and accurate view of your sales pipeline more seamlessly. 

With Avoma’s deal intelligence feature, you can get a real-time view of deals across the pipeline stages. It provides insights into the pipeline health, indicating deals at risk that need attention. The detailed insights on conversations, activities, and deal stage progression ensure you stay on top of every opportunity and close more deals faster. 

Avoma’s AI Forecasting Assistant also helps you build more accurate revenue forecasts for your sales pipeline reports. Using conversation insights and real-time pipeline data in your CRM, the tool automatically calculates revenue forecasts, eliminating the need for subjective estimates that are often inaccurate. It also provides a comprehensive forecast report that shows your pipeline movement within a given period and alerts you to at-risk deals that need your attention. 

With Avoma, you can easily monitor the health of your pipeline and achieve your revenue targets consistently.