How to Create a Sales Pipeline Report

Optimize Your Productivity with a Sales Pipeline Report

What is a Sales Pipeline Report?

A sales pipeline is an organizational tool meant to help Account Executives organize ongoing deals so they can take a systematic approach to working on deals and moving them toward closing. 

But in practice, sales pipelines can often be more about appeasing management than boosting an Account Executive’s productivity.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. With an understanding of the right data to track, why its important to track, and how to use the data, Account Executives can harness the power of sales pipeline reports to better understand their ongoing deals and more effectively organize their days and weeks to close more deals.

Below, we detail the data that should be tracked in a sales pipeline report and why.

The Data to Track in a Sales Pipeline Report

A sales pipeline report should provide you a clear snapshot of your sales activities so you can clearly understand where your deals sit and how you should move them along.

To that end, the following data points should be tracked and visualized:

• Total number of opportunities in your pipeline

  • Track how many opportunities you’re working on. If it feels like too light of a load, work to prospect more. If it feels too bloated, work to qualify out opportunities so you can focus on the deals most likely to close.
• Total value of opportunities in your pipeline

  • This metric is the expected revenue of all opportunities in your pipeline added together. 
• Pipeline coverage ratio

  • Traditionally called pipeline coverage, this metric tells you how many times greater the value of your pipeline is than your quota. It’s a crude metric but can be helpful for quickly understanding if your pipeline is too slim or too bloated. 
  • Equation: Value of opportunities in your pipeline with close dates this period / quota for this period
• Total number of opportunities by stage

  • Break down your opportunities by where they sit in the sales cycle. If you have too many opportunities stuck in one stage of the sales cycle, it’s a sign that you should revisit those opportunities and see what you can move along. 
• Total value of opportunities by stage

  • This metric helps you understand how much revenue is coming down the pipeline and when it might close, so you can update your weekly commit accordingly. 
• Historic winning percentage by stage

  • Often a statistic tracked by operations teams, the historic winning percentage of opportunities by stage can help you develop a more intelligent pipeline analysis. More on this in the next metric.
• Predicted attainment for the quarter

  • Predicted attainment for the quarter is a more powerful and accurate metric than pipeline coverage. Using modern sales software, reps can simply connect it to their CRM and receive fine-tuned predictions of what their sales number for the quarter is predicted to be. Based on this metric, it can inform reps on how to organize their time before the end of the quarter to optimize their likely attainment. 
  • A crude version of this metric can be calculated by multiplying the historic win rate by stage by the value of opportunities in that stage and adding the resulting outputs together.
  • Patri Rev Fit AI is a revenue intelligence platform that will automatically calculate your predicted attainment when you connect it to your CRM. Better yet, this feature is even included in its free version. Learn your predicted attainment for the quarter with the click of a button here.
• Conversion rate by stage

  • How successfully are you moving opportunities from one stage to the next? Compare these numbers with your peers to understand where to focus efforts to improve your sales process.
• Propensity to win for each opportunity

  • Ideally, reps should be able to track the likelihood that they will close any given deal, though this is a difficult statistic to calculate. However, modern revenue intelligence software, like Patri Rev Fit AI offers the capability to accurately forecast the propensity to win for each opportunity.
• ICP Fit Score for each opportunity

  • An ICP Fit Score  is a metric that quantifies the ICP  fit of each opportunity in your pipeline. The resulting score informs sellers about the likely fit, interest, and serviceability of prospects. 
  • Patri Rev Fit AI is the only software on the market that currently offers the ability to calculate ICP Fit Scores. Learn more about ICP Fit Scores and their impact on increasing propensity to win here.
• Meaningful interactions with each opportunity

  • Tracking how many meaningful email exchanges, phone calls, meetings, and demos have been held with stakeholders can help give a sense to management of the work you’ve been performing on a deal. When tracked over time, it can also help inform how likely a deal is gaining momentum or when it’s falling off. 

How to Put Together a Sales Pipeline Report

Above, we listed eleven data points that a sales pipeline report should track. But how do you actually compile these eleven data points into an easy-to-understand report?

Generally speaking, you have two options here: create custom reports in your CRM and compliment them with a custom-designed spreadsheet that will convert the raw data into the format you need, or implement software that will take care of the work for you. Below, we detail the pros and cons of each option.

Create Custom Reports in Your CRM & Compliment Them with a Spreadsheet

Your CRM has almost all of the data you need to calculate the metrics discussed above (save for Propensity to Win and ICP Fit Scores). However, just because the data exists doesn’t mean it’s easy to access, transform into meaningful insights, and share with others.

The benefit of utilizing your CRM to calculate the majority of the metrics above is that your company likely already pays for a CRM and might even have CRM administrators who can help create the custom reports you need to generate the data for your pipeline report. 

The downside is that calculating some of the above metrics can be complicated and will almost necessarily require a CRM administrator’s time to create and maintain the report. 

In addition, many of the metrics will end up spread out in different reports and dashboards, making a holistic view difficult to create. 

Finally, some of the above metrics, like predicted attainment, can only be generated by downloading your CRM data, running it through a customized spreadsheet, and generating a corresponding output.

But despite its many frustrations, generating a sales pipeline report in a CRM is a good first step to getting a handle on your pipeline and finding ways to make it valuable to you. 

Implement Software to Help You Monitor, Progress, and Clean Your Pipeline

The alternative to relying solely on your CRM for pipeline reporting is to utilize modern revenue intelligence software that can quickly and effortlessly create reports and visualizations that will track all these essential metrics and more.

The benefits of utilizing revenue intelligence software are significant and many. First, all it takes is the click of a button to connect your CRM, enabling deep insights with nearly no user effort. Second, unlike native CRM reports, software designed specifically to help Account Executives monitor, progress, and clean their pipeline doesn’t require customization to generate the information that you need. With the right software, you can see the progress of all of your opportunities on a single screen. Quickly and intuitively understand your likely quota attainment and the top ways to intervene to improve your standing. Determine the ICP fit score of every opportunity so you don’t waste time chasing bad fits. And track your progress over time to demonstrate your impact to your manager.

Of course, the downside of implementing modern revenue intelligence software is its cost, both in terms of budget and the time it might take to learn a new system. But if revenue intelligence software can help you close even one additional deal, it is often well worth the investment. And, many revenue intelligence platforms, like Patri Rev Fit AI, offer freemium models that allow you to see firsthand whether they’d be worth the cost of implementing across the team. 

Receive a Free Sales Pipeline Report with the Click of a Button

Want to generate a powerful sales pipeline report without needing to set up custom reports in your CRM and elaborate spreadsheets? 

Patri RevFit AI generates powerful, compelling, and intuitive sales pipeline reports with the click of a button. Patri RevFit AI is a revenue intelligence platform that makes pipeline management intuitive, powerful, and proactive. Powered by machine learning, Patri RevFit AI automatically analyzes your opportunities and assesses their propensity to win, their relative fit for your company’s selling profile, their likely close date, and the most impactful next steps you can take to move the deal along. At a higher level, Patri RevFit AI will also predict your likely quota attainment and utilizing a partnership with ChatGPT, provide intelligent insights and next steps for how to move your deal forward.

Patri RevFit AI visualizes the health of a user’s pipeline, including their likely quota attainment, their strongest and weakest deals, and AI-generated deal insights.

Patri RevFit AI helps users do the following:

• Clean your pipeline quickly and easily
• Quantify the health and winnability of each opportunity
• Identify low-probability opportunities and flag them for additional qualification
• Produce AI-generated next steps to help you move your deals toward closing
• Generate a visually appealing report that you and your manager can use to understand your progress on opportunities
• Predict likely close dates, helping salespeople make more accurate commitments
• Utilize machine learning to output predicted attainment for the quarter

Want to generate your sales pipeline report with Patri RevFit AI?

Try RevFit AI for free or speak to a product expert if you want to learn more.

With instant AI-powered revenue intelligence for every team and every opportunity, you can identify the deals and actions that will make or break your quarter, refine your forecast, and focus resources solely on what will help you win.

Try Patri RevFit AI Free