10 Powerful Sales Performance Reports in Salesforce

It is surprising how little effort often goes into measuring closed won deals.

I guess that after all, what’s happened has happened.

In most businesses, much more focus, energy and effort is directed towards the sales pipeline compared to won deals.

But wait a moment.

We can learn from the past.

In other words, we can get insights from historic sales performance that helps turn more deals in the current pipeline into closed won opportunities.

It’s just a question of looking in the right places for those insights. That’s what this blog post is about.

So, here are 10 dashboard charts and reports that analyse closed won opportunities. They give you information on past sales performance that you can apply today to increase revenue.

  1. Closed Won by Month and Territory (or salesperson).
  2. Closed Won Opportunities by Customer Type.
  3. Closed Won Deals by Account.
  4. Won Deals by Product (or Product Family).
  5. Average Size of Closed Won Opportunities.
  6. Opportunity Conversion Rates.
  7. Closed Won Deals by Campaign.
  8. Sales Stage Metrics on Won Deals.
  9. Stage Movement Report for Won Opportunities.
  10. Sales Stage Velocity on Won Opportunities.

In this blog post I’ll show you exactly what I mean by each of these 10 won opportunity reports and how to use the information to drive sales performance.

Before we start:

What exactly do we mean by a closed won opportunity?

A closed won opportunity is a sales deal that has reached the final Stage in your sales cycle. There is a firm commitment to purchase by the customer and the opportunity has reached a probability of 100%. Some sales organisations use terms other than closed won (e.g. booked); either way, no further sales effort needs to take place on this opportunity or deal.

Let’s examine the reports that measure these closed won deals.

1. Closed Won by Month and Territory / Salesperson

This is the place to begin for analyzing closed won opportunities and deals. It’s Chart #1 on our list of 12 Must-Have Salesforce Dashboard Charts.

In this first example, we show closed won opportunities for the current financial year. The chart and underlying report give immediate feedback on sales achieved for each territory.

Dashboard chart shows closed won opportunities for the current financial year by territory. Dashboard chart shows closed won opportunities for the current financial year by territory.

All other things being equal, the chart tells us that we need to identify ways to increase revenue in the West Territory.

Those with large sales teams should have a dashboard for each territory that then summarizes the information at an individual level. A good way to do this to use a dashboard filter.

Businesses with smaller sales teams – and territory managers – will want to display the information by individual salesperson on the dashboard chart.

Salesforce dashboard chart shows closed won opportunities by salesperson.

We can use the chart to identify potential areas for improvement.

For example, in the individual salesperson chart, Dave Apthorp is the top performer.

Can Dave’s experience and know-how be shared across the team? Can he help Shaun increase his sales performance? Are there other coaching, training and support activities that will boost Shaun’s figures?

Before starting that process however, there are other dashboard charts and sales metrics we can use to analyse closed won opportunities.

This additional information will help us be more specific and targeted in delivering coaching and other sales enablement activities that will increase revenue.

 

2. Closed Won Report by Customer Type

Generally, it’s quicker and cheaper to sell to existing customers.

However, in order to grow, every business needs to sell to a combination of both existing and new customers.

So, we need to understand whether we have the right mix in our business. That’s based on our companies’ growth strategy, of course.

The Closed Won by Customer Type dashboard chart tells us the mix of sales revenue between new and existing customers.

Dashboard chart shows Closed Won Opportunity Report by Customer Type Dashboard chart shows Closed Won Opportunity Report by Customer Type

The chart shows that we have a strong weighting towards existing customers.

Is this a good thing?

Only the growth strategy relating to our business can tell us that. However, having this information about closed won deals means that we can make judgements that will inform our future sales and marketing approach.

Pro Tip:

Create a workflow rule in salesforce that updates the Account from Prospect to Customer the first time an opportunity is won.

3. Closed Won by Account

In many businesses there is one customer that contributes a disproportionate amount of revenue. In other companies, sales revenue spreads more evenly.

In either case, knowing your largest 10 customers by closed won deals is essential to implementing your key account management strategy in salesforce.

This dashboard table provides that information.

Report in dashboard table shows Closed Won Opportunities by Account

The same table can be used to show the top 10 customers for each Territory or salesperson. This is a great input in defining the key account strategy at a local level.

In our example the University of Arizona contributes nearly twice as much revenue as the next customer. Probably everyone already knows that is the number one customer.

But it’s likely that there will be less consensus on the other top customers. The closed won by Account dashboard table gives us the hard facts. Use this information to drive account management at the company, territory and salesperson levels.

4. Closed Won Report by Product

This dashboard chart shows how our closed won revenue splits by product family or product category.

Pro Tip:

Most business that use Salesforce should use Products on Opportunities. This blog post gives you more detail on why that is: Bring Your Opportunities To Life With Products.

Closed Won Report by Product Closed Won Report by Product

The chart shows that Generators dominate closed won revenue in our business.

Can revenue be increased for other product categories? It’s likely we want to drill down to the underlying report and see the closed won product information by salesperson, territory and customer.

Then we can initiate specific, targeted management interventions to boost revenue for other products.

We might also want to get further insight by looking at the average deal size. Let’s look at that next.

 

5. Average Closed Won Deal Size

Analyzing closed won sales by average deal size gives insight for identifying salesperson development needs.

This is especially the case if we add additional information to the dashboard chart that digs below the initial surface.

For example, let’s say that the number of supplementary or add-on products sold alongside the main products influences average deal size.

Report shows Average Closed Won Deal Size Report shows Average Closed Won Deal Size

In this case we have grouped all products into two categories: Core and Optional.

Doing this means we can easily see that the three salespeople have similar average deal sizes in when it comes to core products.

But Dave is selling significantly more Optional products.

This means his overall average deal size is nearly 50% bigger than the next person. This is likely to have a big positive impact on Dave’s total sales for the year.

For full advice on the average deal size metric and how to apply it to increase revenue, read Why You Need To Measure Average Deal Size.

 

6. Opportunity Conversion / Win Rate Report

Opportunity conversion rates (or win rates) compare the ratio of closed won to closed lost deals for a given time period.

Tracking win rates by company, salesperson, customer type and marketing campaign gives great insights that can help drive revenue.

I recommend tracking opportunity win rates in two ways: by Count and by Value.

That’s what the example chart below shows. It’s the company level win rate by the number and value of opportunities.

Opportunity Conversion / Win Rate Report in Salesforce Opportunity Conversion / Win Rate Report in Salesforce

In the first two months, the win rate by Amount was higher than the win rate by Count. This means we successfully closed a higher proportion of larger opportunities.

In September the position reverses. The win rate by Count is higher. This means we closed a higher proportion of lower value opportunities.

Are the September figures due to a short-term change in pricing strategy? Did we experiment with changes in remuneration and commission structures? Is the trend attributable to marketplace dynamics?

Of course, drilling down to customer type, territory and salesperson level will give us further insight.

The key thing is that now we are aware of this trend through the dashboard chart. This means we can investigate further and take action to influence the future sales approach and strategy.

For complete guidance on using Conversion / Win Rates in salesforce review How To Use Opportunity Conversion Rates For Superior Results.

7. Closed Won by Campaign

A key purpose of many marketing campaigns is to produce sales-ready opportunities.

Those opportunities need to convert successfully into closed won revenue. So, we naturally want to know the effectiveness of each Campaign in generating new business.

The Closed Won by Campaign chart tells us this. It shows the revenue arising from each marketing Campaign.

Closed Won opportunity report by Campaign Closed Won opportunity report by Campaign

The Spring Trade Show and User Conferences were the two marketing campaigns that yielded the most closed won revenue.

This means the chart is an important tool for gathering the information that will influence future marketing and business development strategy. It gives great insight into the campaigns that we should continue, expand or stop.

Remember that the lead management and conversion process is critical here. If Leads convert without creating an Opportunity, then potentially the data for this valuable metric is lost.

Review this blog post for advice on lead management and conversion steps including downloadable process diagrams.

 

8. Key Sales Metrics for Closed Won Deals

Here are two powerful metrics that we can use to compare won opportunities with deals still in the funnel.

They give us insight on the quality of the pipeline and help identify deals that have a high risk of slipping from one month to the next.

The two metrics are:

  • Number of Close Date month extensions.
  • Age of the opportunity.

An example:

Let’s say that on average, won deals had slipped from one month to another 1.5 times whilst they were still in the pipeline.

And let’s also say our metrics show that the average sales cycle on won deals is 90 days.

Here’s an example of this information in a chart.

Report on key Sales Metrics for Closed Won Deals Report on key Sales Metrics for Closed Won Deals

For example, it shows that the average sales life cycle for closed won deals is 90 to 100 days (left axis). The average number of times a closed won deal moved from one month to the next is around 1.5 (the line on the chart).

However, knowing these metrics on won deals means we can apply more scrutiny to the sales pipeline.

For example, let’s say we have a pipeline deal that has been open 150 days and the close date has moved from one month to another 3 times.

This means it’s way above the average on these two metrics.

Are we confident it is still a viable deal?

We only know that by having a closer look at the opportunity. However, using these metrics means we can more easily and quickly identify deal in the funnel that may be unreliable.

For much more on using these key metrics (including instructions on exactly how to get them into your own Salesforce environment, use this blog post:

3 Killer Pipeline Metrics That Highlight When To Be Sceptical

9. Stage Movement for Closed Won deals

The opportunity stage movement report and dashboard chart give valuable information on how our deals arrive at the Closed Won opportunity Stage.

The chart shows the ‘From’ and ‘To’ opportunity Stage movement. In this case, the ‘To’ is filtered to include only the Closed Won stage.

Stage Movement report for Closed Won deals Stage Movement report for Closed Won deals

This is real-life data taken from a customer example.

The chart shows that 5 opportunities moved directly from Prospecting to Closed Won. 11 deals moved from Negotiation to Closed Won.

The first value, the one with no ‘From’ Stage, means that 3 deals entered Salesforce directly at the Closed Won Stage.

What can we infer from these numbers?

A disproportionate number of deals jumping from early Stages to Closed Won may mean that salespeople are not maintaining the accuracy of their pipeline opportunities.

It may also mean that deals are deliberately held back until the salesperson is confident of a successful outcome. Sandbagging, in other words.

This means sales managers are missing out on valuable pipeline visibility.

We might also want to know why some deals avoided all pipeline stages. There entered the system immediately as won opportunities. Was the deal done in a single phone call? If not, we again had no sight of the deals whilst they were in the pipeline.

Either way, the dashboard chart is giving us useful insight into the transition of opportunities into Closed Won revenue. Further analysis, at the territory or salesperson level may identify specific trends that will help to boost sales revenue and pipeline visibility in the future.

Incidentally, you can also get great insight into Closed Lost opportunities using a version of this report. In other words, the report shows where deals are leaking from the sales funnel. More information on that report here:

How To Plug A Leaking Funnel In The Right Place

10. Sales Stage Velocity on Won Opportunities

All the reports we’ve looked at can be created as standard in Salesforce. Many are already included in our free GSP Sales Dashboard.

However, here we’re talking about something different: Sales Stage Velocity.

In other words, information about how long both won and lost deals spend in each Opportunity Stage before closing out.

Here’s an example from a customer:

Sales Stage Velocity report on Won Opportunities

Let’s be clear:

This information is only gathered by using a coded solution. Get in touch to talk to use about this.

What is the chart showing?

The sales cycle for Closed Lost deals is longer than for Closed Won. In part, that’s probably because won deals have more urgency. Plus, of course, we all hang onto lost deals longer than we should in the hope that something might happen soon.

It’s only in the Negotiating Stage that the sales cycle is shorter. That’s probably because we get kicked out of the deal quickly when it gets to that stage!

Now let’s take an example of two salespeople. Peter and Jenny.

Peter has a win rate of 23%. Jenny’s opportunity win rate is 37%.

Look at their sales stage velocity:

Peter is rattling through the early stages of the sales cycle. His boss may be pleased to see that he gets his proposals out quickly. But Jenny takes her time.

That pays off in a superior win rate and more speed in the later stages.

As I say, get in touch if you’d like this type of analysis in your own business.

 

Over To You

The past is the past.

But students of history know there’s much that can be learned from the past.

Begin using these 10 closed won opportunity reports to examine your successful deals today for insights that will increase sales tomorrow.

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