Sales call reports are a vital aspect of the sales process, providing a detailed record of interactions and insights necessary for optimizing sales strategies.

They may seem like mundane administrative tasks but are the key to unlocking sales potential and driving revenue growth.

In this article, we'll delve into the purpose and benefits of sales call reports, explore best practices for creating insightful and actionable documentation, and reveal how to leverage these powerful tools to enhance your sales team's productivity and performance.

Stay tuned!

The sales report is a document used during call businesses to gather all the information discussed during sales calls. This will provide a better understanding and ease the possibilities of creating strategies that perform great for your client.

It allows businesses to deeply catch the customers’ preferences and analyze the performance of individual sales reps.

Sales managers or sales representatives can use call reports during or after meetings to solve the client’s problems or pitch a product/service.

Each report will vary in length, range, and details, but generally, sales reports include the following:

• Client’s name and contact information
• Sales reps notes
• Call summary and purpose
• Follow up and more

The people who can use sales call reports are:

• Sales manager
• Sales team
• Clients

Overall, all working positions are involved with sales calls and similar processes.

The sales call report offers much more than a brief overview of the client and their expectations. This document is a helpful tool that guides an organization to master cold and discovery calls.

Let’s break down the overall benefits of sales reports:

Identifies Trends

Just as trends change, so must the sales strategy. Fortunately, sales calls give great timing to learn insights about industry trends and tactics to increase brand awareness.

As sales teams are constantly involved with prospects, you can use a sales rep to discover competitors and guide your business to closing more deals.

Improves Sales Training

Managers and supervisors can see comments and other elements to measure sales reps' performance when reporting sales calls.

This way, they can prepare tailored training to improve sections of the sales process. Maybe employees take too much time in the first part of their speech and don’t move forward. Hence, the manager can help the sales team members move clients through the sales funnel.

Only effective sales reports can be used as a reference.

Encourages Employees Learning Desire

To close a deal, a seller must have three things: knowledge, experience, and authority. And the only way to achieve any of those is through learning.

You can use sales performance reports and similar documents to grasp how your reps work. You can then prepare suggestions for additional training to help them close more sales while providing up-to-date knowledge.

Embraces Accountability

Compared to other reports, sales call documents are a door for supervisors and managers to see how well a representative develops on their job.

Employees can see how many calls they’ve made and other key information about their clients to close deals. This will make the entire company happy.

But sales call reports will also show you and your manager if you’re not doing your job correctly. Hence, the sense of accountability will increase the team’s productivity.

Analyzes Objections

Sale reports gather crucial information about your potential customer, including objections.

So, once you learn how they think and what they are afraid of, you can put effort into creating an offer that will make your service irresistible.

This is excellent for a follow-up, and after getting other relevant information, you can use it as leverage.

Reorganizes Sales Pitches

Most calls aren’t spontaneous; they are based on a pitch that companies use according to their experience dealing with customers over the years.

However, modern customers don’t want to be pitched at. They want to have meaningful conversations with people interested in their issues.

Fortunately, sales call reports help you close more appointments by giving insights into the client’s thoughts. This way, you can reorganize and edit your main speech and keep only the parts that matter.

Sales call reports have specific elements you must consider adding when you’re creating a document like this.

It’s essential to include them all to have a solid and legitimate information area for you and your managers.

Potential Client Information

This is the first thing you should include in a sales call report, especially for future reference. The information typically includes:

• Contact name
• Company’s name
• The person you’re talking to
• Phone number
• Email address
• Website

Prep Notes

Preparation notes will help you understand your client further. This is personal writing sales information that salespeople use to reinforce their pitches.

Some of the information you may include is related to what the client wants and their expectations.

Overall, the idea is that your staff can close deals faster.

Find the Call’s Purpose

You can’t just call people and expect them to hear a sales pitch. You must find a reason that interests them and then push forward through pain points and solutions.

And since you probably are doing cold calling, then it’s crucial you know your user persona. This will help you reduce friction when calling and increase call duration. Hence, better sales conversions.

Add Date, Time, and Duration

Including dates, times, and duration of your sales conversations on your report template will help managers understand and analyze performance indicators.

You can also use it to identify consumer behavior patterns. For example:

• At what times prospects are most likely to answer
• If it's better to make a discover call instead of a cold call
• How brief your phone calls are
• If prospects prefer face-to-face meetings over traditional calls

The idea is to provide insight and identify trends for your sales leaders.

Call Summary

The summary is how the report summarizes the call results. You will list here:

• Gaps
• Challenges
• Topics discussed

You should improve your report and open the path for a future call plan. Your manager will also use talking points to identify the competition and key insights about your prospect.

Follow-Up Information

The last element needed on your sales call report is the follow-up materials. This refers to all the extra information your supervisors may need to determine the rep’s performance.

This includes:

• Sales activity
• Sales goals achieved
• Call notes
• Cues
• Unsuccessful calls
• Uncover trends

Supervisors will use all these to create improvements if necessary.

Creating a sales call report is as a matter of finding a good template or creating your own document and introducing the data gathered from calls.

Here’s how to do it:

Record or Import Your Call Data

The first thing to consider is whether you’ll use old or new call information.

Based on that, you can record or import the necessary information and then add it to your sales call report template.

Ensure you have what you need, including:

• The client’s primary information
• Product trends
• Actionable insights
• Sales materials
• Verbal cues
• Additional notes

After that, you can pass the torch and evaluate what you got.

Analyze the Information

This step considers two points of view, the sales manager and the individual reps. Both will have to work together to analyze and include the gathered data in a sales call report.

Identify what you’re expecting to get from this audit and ensure you have all the relevant information.

Here’s what you can do as a project manager:

• Check the team’s sales
• Consider an organizational change
• Identify gaps in speeches
• Discover if there is an actionable insight
• Find out if representatives build rapport with customers
• Study if the staff is moving prospects through the sales pipeline

Since sales call reporting refers to showing you the results of making calls, you can know how your team performs.

You can also share the information with decision-makers if they want to make changes or develop a particular training program.

Now, here’s what you can get when analyzing the situation as a salesperson:

• Consider if you’re catching up with the different trends
• Measure if you’re getting the call’s important details
• Measure if you get favorable results from your calls
• Figure out the most effective times to contact (call date time)
• Figure out pain points and objections prospects are struggling with

As you can see, salespeople's obligations with the report slightly differ from the ones of a manager. But still, they complement each other to gather the most critical aspects of potential customers.

Add It to Your Reporting Templates

After having all the information, it’s time you write all the data into your report.

Ensure you use a simple template or create a readable document.

You can generate the report using productivity software like Microsoft Office 2021. When purchasing this suite, you can access Microsoft Excel or Word programs to create, edit and share your reports with a manager or team members.

Get your lifetime Microsoft Office 2021 license and create valuable reports that help your business and team to improve their productivity.

Now, you already know that call reports can help. But first, you need to make one.

So, if you don’t have time to prepare a highly intuitive document, here are a few templates we’ve found online to save you time.

Template #1

Free sales report template. Simple document to show basic information and call progress - Download Link

Template #2

Free sales call customer template. Great to showcase proposals - Download Link

Template #3

Sales call report template with sections to include a follow up date - Download Link

You should follow a few tips when filling out sales call reports.

Complete the Report After Each Call

It’s highly recommended that you fill out your sales call report after finishing a meeting call with a potential customer. This is because you have recent information and a better idea about what your customer wants from that call.

This is especially important when you contact tens of people daily and need the reports to be as accurate as possible.

Start Documenting Information For Your Manager

As a salesperson, you must gather proper information for your manager or supervisor. They will use it to make structural changes in your performance and help you improve speeches, contact, and the next steps with your calls.

You must take their suggestions and training into consideration and take the most value out of them.

Read the Report Before a Follow-Up Call

As you follow up with your calls, review your report to ensure you maintain the same conversation with your customer. This will allow you to avoid repetition and center on your client.

You can also use it to analyze previous information and use that in your favor to get more leads.

Use Microsoft 365 with Word or Excel

The last thing you could do to optimize your sales call reports is getting Microsoft 365 combined with your Microsoft Office lifetime license. This will allow you to share files online without having to download them.

You can also connect with other salespeople or managers in a single document and work together in real time.

Sales call reports, when done effectively, are a game-changer for sales professionals and businesses alike.

Take the time to understand and apply best practices in creating these reports to unlock valuable insights and boost your sales team's productivity.

Use the strategies outlined in this article to refine your sales call reporting process, fostering a culture of continuous improvement and data-driven decision-making.

Sales reports are an investment in your success. They pave the way for stronger relationships, higher conversion rates, and increased revenue.