15/11/2024, 09:14 Using a Sales Activity Report to Coach Your Sales Team
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CRM Sales Sales Managers
How to Use a Sales Activity Report to
Coach Your Sales Team
GUSTAVO BIANCO
Last updated on: October 28, 2024
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15/11/2024, 09:14 Using a Sales Activity Report to Coach Your Sales Team
To manage your sales team effectively, you need to have a clear view of their
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activities and performance. That’s exactly what sales activities reports provide to
sales managers.
Activity reporting is a proven technique sales managers can use to check up on
the performance of their teams against quotas and, in organizations that
motivate their reps through competition, how each rep is doing relative to one
another.
Keep reading to learn about sales activity reports and how sales managers can
use them to coach their teams toward their goals.
Table of Contents
What is a sales activity report?
What’s included in a sales activity report?
How do you create a sales activity report?
What are the benefits of CRM activity reporting for sales
coaching?
Case study: Using sales activity reporting for sales coaching
Best practices for optimizing your sales activities reporting
What is a sales activity report?
A sales activity report provides a detailed look at the sales activities that a sales
team has completed over a given period, such as phone calls, emails, and on-
site meetings.
This gives sales managers valuable insight into team performance and individual
sales rep efficiency.
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What’s Contact
includedsupport inina sales
Log activity
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A sales activity report includes a record of the actions a sales team has taken
over a given period. Some of the metrics that might be included in a CRMactivity
report are:
Any time one of your team members completes and logs an activity
A count of all logged sales activities by user and type
The number of logged activities compared to quotas for each activity type
Your team’s activity effort compared with a previous timeframe
The amount of time spent on each activity
Notes associated with any activity
How do you create a sales activity report?
0:00 / 0:06
The easiest way to report on sales activity is to use a CRM with built-in sales
tracking and reporting. A CRM like Nutshell automatically tracks your sales
activities, allows sales reps to take notes about activities, and produces reports
that make it easy to analyze results.
Nutshell’s robust reporting features allow you to pinpoint ways in which each of
your sales reps can achieve–and surpass–their quotas, which is exactly what you
need when coaching your sales team to greatness.
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Get advanced sales reporting with Nutshell
Nutshell makes it easy to track your sales activity with user-friendly,
customizable reporting and analytics features.
LEARN MORE
What are the benefits of CRM activity
reporting for sales coaching?
Pairing coaching with the insights of sales activity reporting is a powerful
combination. Here’s a look at some of the ways that sales activity reporting can
enhance how you coach your sales team.
1. Precision in coaching
Sales activity reporting is a microscope into your team’s daily actions. It provides
a granular view of who’s doing what, how often, and with what outcomes. With
this level of precision, coaching becomes a highly targeted endeavor. You can
zoom in on specific behaviors and actions, offering tailored guidance to help
each team member flourish.
2. Data-backed insights
Gone are the days of subjective coaching. Sales activity reporting brings hard
data to the coaching table. Coaches can back their feedback and
recommendations with concrete numbers, making the coaching process more
objective and credible. It’s not just about saying, “You need to make more calls,”
but showing precisely how many calls lead to conversions.
3. Built-in accountability
With sales activity reporting, accountability is built into the process. Team
members can track their own performance metrics, creating a sense of
ownership over their results. Coaches can then step in to guide and support,
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knowing that every team member is acutely aware of their contributions and
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areas for improvement.
4. Real-time course correction
In the fast-paced world of sales, timing is everything. Sales activity reporting
offers real-time insights, allowing coaches to provide immediate feedback.
Whether it’s addressing a missed opportunity, celebrating a milestone, or fine-
tuning a pitch, real-time coaching ensures that the team stays agile and
adaptable.
5. Personalized training
One size does not fit all when it comes to coaching. Sales activity reporting
reveals the unique strengths and weaknesses of each team member. Armed with
this information, coaches can design personalized training programs that
address specific needs, ensuring that every individual gets the guidance they
require to excel.
6. Celebrating wins and milestones
Recognition is a potent motivator. With sales activity reporting, coaches can
easily spot and celebrate wins, whether it’s a high-value deal closed or a record-
breaking number of calls made. Recognition boosts morale and sets positive
examples for the entire team to follow.
7. Performance benchmarking
Sales activity reporting enables benchmarking against key performance
indicators (KPIs) and industry benchmarks. This benchmarking empowers
salespeople to see how they measure up and what they need to do to reach the
next level, all under the expert guidance of their coach.
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Case study: Using sales activity reporting for
sales coaching
Nutshell customer Mike Dohrman, a vice president and sales manager at Gretna,
Louisiana-based Acme Truck Line, Inc., has found that activity reporting can
help drive collaboration and competition.
“We use [our CRM] mainly as a sales journal to provide transparency in the sales
function,” Dohrman says. “We have overlapping customers in different regions.
We have an outside sales group that does a lot of luncheons and meetings, and
we capture the sales calls in detail. Since I have the activity report, I don’t have
to spend time in meetings interrogating each of our 23 reps on how they did last
week. I can see how they did and I know exactly what I need to talk to them
about.”
The activity report is Dohrman’s go-to feature in Nutshell. The report tells him
exactly how each of his reps are progressing toward meeting quotas and other
goals and how the team and individual reps are performing for any time interval.
Dohrman can even drill down to see a rep’s performance with an individual
customer.
“If something interesting is going on with a specific customer, or if the rep is
spending an unusual amount of time with that customer, I don’t have to dig to
get that information out of the rep,” he explains. “It’s right there in the report for
both of us to see.”
CRM activity reports help sellers become more effective because they give their
managers the hard data necessary to provide actionable guidance and coaching
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—while keeping team meetings shorter and more productive so reps can spend
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more of their day selling.
Quality over quantity
Because Acme Truck Line’s sales team consists of outside sales reps who are
expected to be on the road frequently, Dohrman is not especially concerned with
how much time they spend at their desks. What does matter is the number and
quality of the calls they make over the course of the week.
“I’m not so much concerned about the time of day they make these calls,” he
says, “but if I think there are any issues with their time management skills, it’s
useful to know what days of the week they are, or aren’t, making calls. If
someone is kicking butt on Wednesdays but slacking off on Fridays, that might
be a concern, or it might not. That person might be calling on an area where
everybody takes a half day on Friday or something of that nature.”
Dohrman relies heavily on the detail section of Nutshell’s activity report. “I need
to see substance in the notes on the calls,” he insists. “If the rep just dropped by
to say hello, that’s not a sales call—that’s a doughnut run.”
Dohrman critiques not only his reps’ selling techniques but their note-taking as
well. “If I suggest five things I want them to ask during every sales call—what
size trucks, what lanes they’re using, that kind of thing—then I want to see the
finer points in the notes, so by the fifth sales call, I know everything there is to
know about the company,” he explains. “I may never been to that company, but
because it’s in the notes, I know all that. As a team, we all know all that.”
Effective call reporting comes more easily to some reps than others. “I explain it
like this,” Dohrman says. “The driver has to fill out a bill of lading. We know when
the goods are delivered and who accepted them. He brings us the bill of lading,
and we invoice the customer. It’s no different for the sales rep. You didn’t make
the sales call unless it’s in writing.”
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The knowledge management edge
Acme reps call on thousands of customers across the U.S., many of whom are
large, multi-site companies. A rep calling on one site may be in a position to
gather useful intelligence on that same company’s decision-maker at another
site in someone else’s territory. (See: account-based sales) Effective call
reporting, accessed through the CRM activity report becomes much more than a
sales management resource. It serves a knowledge
management function, allowing each rep to open doors for their peers.
“If you find out about an opportunity with a big company in their Brownsville,
Texas office, you don’t have to go to your sales manager to find out who calls on
that company at their headquarters in Colorado,” Dohrman says. “You can just go
to Nutshell, and that’s in the activity report with detailed notes.”
Related: Why ‘conscious collaboration’ is the key to sales success
Sales teams typically maintain a balance between this kind of collaboration and
performance-driving competition between reps. The system allows the sales
manager to set goals and quotas for each rep and the team. Those goals can be
used to fine-tune each individual’s performance and administer incentive
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programs. These incentives can be based not just on the ultimate sales numbers
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but on actions that management chooses to reinforce.
“If I see someone who is sending out way more emails and making way more
phone calls than they are actually calling on people, I can see that and advise
them on it,” Dohrman says.
The report is accessible to all team reps, who can see each other’s activity rates
and notes. Of course, Acme sales managers are much more interested in the
quality of the calls than in stoking competition between reps to see who can
send out the most emails.
Best practices for optimizing your sales
activities reporting
Now that you understand how sales activity reporting is a game-changer for
managing a sales team, let’s look at a few best practices to make the most of
CRM reporting to guide your sales reps.
Schedule regular sales coaching to target different metrics: Some metrics
are more meaningful when viewed from a close distance, and some from a
more long-term perspective. If possible, have regular coaching sessions with
your team on a weekly and monthly basis. Including short daily reporting
sessions can also help.
Know what to check on your daily, weekly, and monthly reports: Daily
metrics will often be activity-based, such as the number of prospects
contacted or the number of visits and follow-ups. Weekly metrics can include
the number of new leads acquired and meetings booked. On a monthly
basis, you can look at the number of won and lost deals and the close rate.
Each metric is valuable for coaching your reps when looked at from the
proper distance.
Continuously improve your methods and metrics: Be open to
troubleshooting your approach to the sales activity reports when applying it
to your coaching. Sometimes, the metrics you’re looking at aren’t actually an
indication of actual sales rep performance and could be something out of
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their control. Be open to feedback and adjust your reporting metrics and
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coaching methods as necessary.
Streamline your sales activity reporting
with Nutshell
To learn how your team can take advantage of Nutshell’s CRM activity report
feature, check out this video overview or our handy knowledge base article.
If you’d like to give Nutshell a try for yourself, just start your free 14-day trial
today!
This article is part of our Playbook for Managing a Sales Team.
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