Essential CRM Reports for Sales & Marketing CRM: Boost Your Insights

In today’s data-driven world, understanding the metrics behind your sales and marketing efforts is essential for growth and success. However, simply collecting data isn’t enough—what truly matters is how you use it. This is where CRM reporting in tools like HubSpot comes in. By transforming raw data into actionable insights, CRM reports and dashboards enable businesses to uncover trends, optimise strategies, and align their sales and marketing teams. Whether you’re tracking the health of your sales pipeline, analysing marketing campaign performance, or identifying hidden correlations, HubSpot’s reporting tools help you tell a compelling story about your business.

Table of Contents

1. What Is CRM Reporting?
2. Why CRM Reporting Matters: Understanding the Story Behind the Data
3. The Importance of Data Hygiene: Writing a Clearer Story
4. HubSpot Dashboards: Bringing the Story to Life
5. What Can Managers and Team Members Do with Their Own Reports?
6. Custom Reports: Discovering New Narratives
7. Lets Make the Most Out Of Your Data, Book a Call
   
   

What Is CRM Reporting?

CRM reporting is the process of collecting, analysing, and presenting data from your CRM system to gain insights into your business’s sales, marketing, and customer relationships. A CRM report transforms raw data into meaningful information, helping businesses track progress, identify trends, and make informed decisions.

CRM reports are essential for understanding customer behaviour, evaluating the success of marketing campaigns, and optimising your sales pipeline. By leveraging these insights, sales and marketing teams can refine their strategies and align their efforts to achieve shared goals.

Types of CRM Reports

1. Pipeline Reports: Monitor deals at various stages in the sales pipeline, identifying where leads drop off and opportunities for improvement.
2. Activity Reports: Track sales activities like calls, emails, and meetings to measure team productivity.
3. Sales Forecast Reports: Predict future revenue based on historical trends and current pipeline data.
4. Marketing Effectiveness Reports: Evaluate the ROI of specific campaigns and channels.

CRM reporting is more than just numbers—it’s about uncovering the story your data tells. These reports highlight correlations and trends that may not be immediately apparent, offering actionable insights to drive growth and improve customer satisfaction.

Why CRM Reporting Matters: Understanding the Story Behind the Data

Data tells a story—a narrative that reveals the successes, challenges, and opportunities within your business. In this story, reports and dashboards serve as the book, presenting the data in a way that’s easy to interpret and act upon. With HubSpot, sales and marketing teams can dive deep into this story, uncovering correlations, identifying trends, and making informed decisions that transform their strategies. Every piece of data in your CRM system contributes to a bigger picture. CRM reports help you see that picture clearly, connecting the dots between customer behaviour, team activities, and business outcomes.

Uncovering Hidden Correlations

Reports reveal patterns and correlations that might not be immediately obvious. For example:

• A marketing campaign generates a high number of leads, but reports show they don’t convert into deals. This insight might prompt a review of lead qualification criteria.
• Sales reports reveal that deals sourced from a particular channel have shorter sales cycles and higher close rates, highlighting an opportunity to allocate more resources to that channel.
  
  

Tracking Customer Behaviour Trends

Customer behaviour changes over time, and understanding these trends is essential for staying ahead of the competition. HubSpot’s dashboards help teams monitor:

• Shifts in buying preferences or customer needs.
• Seasonal variations in engagement or purchasing activity.
• The effectiveness of different marketing messages over time.

"Every report tells you a story of how well or how bad something is doing in your business, whether its marketing campaigns, tracking source of leads, conversion rates or Sales Rep's performance.
One good report can clearly show you which marketing campaign is making you money and which one needs to be cut off.
Two good reports is enough to tell you if your Sales Rep is performing below or above their target and helps to see trends over time."

Anna Drogon - Head of Projects, AutoMateNow

The Importance of Data Hygiene: Writing a Clearer Story

Imagine trying to read a book filled with missing pages or smudged text—it’s frustrating and incomplete. That’s what it’s like to work with dirty data. Data hygiene ensures your CRM data is accurate, complete, and ready to support meaningful insights.

How to Maintain Data Hygiene

1. Audit Regularly: Review CRM data for duplicates, outdated information, and incomplete fields.
2. Standardise Data Entry: Ensure names, emails, phone numbers, and job titles follow consistent formatting.
3. Leverage HubSpot Dashboards: Use data hygiene dashboards to highlight records that need attention, such as missing customer data.

Data Dashboards: Bringing the Story to Life

HubSpot dashboards are dynamic tools that transform raw data into visual insights. Infinitely customisable and user-friendly, these dashboards allow sales and marketing teams to track performance, identify trends, and adjust strategies in real-time.

Dashboards for Marketing Teams

Marketing dashboards help teams evaluate the success of their campaigns and ensure data hygiene. Key dashboards include:

1. Lead Generation Dashboards: Track the number of leads generated by specific campaigns and their conversion rates.
2. Engagement Metrics Dashboards: Monitor email open rates, click-through rates, and social media interactions.
3. Customer Behaviour Dashboards: Identify which marketing messages resonate most with different audience segments.

Dashboards for Sales Teams

Sales dashboards provide valuable insights into the sales pipeline and team performance. Examples include:

1. Pipeline Reports: Visualise the health of the sales pipeline, including deals at each stage.
2. Deal Source Analysis: Discover which sources generate the highest revenue.
3. Sales Activity Reports: Track calls, meetings, and emails to ensure consistent effort from sales reps.
   
   

"For a business that has low visibility of their sales processes, its worth starting by tracing Saes Reps activities and deals which can be easily achieved with 2 dashboards. One for Sales Manager to look at the whole team, and one for each individual Sales Rep was to look at their own activities and deal, with weekly targets."

Anna Drogon - Head of Projects, AutomateNow

What Can Managers and Team Members Do with Their Own Reports?

CRM reports aren't just there for the powers that be to see whats going well, or not so well. Reports empower middle managers and team members to take action, identify opportunities, and track progress effectively.

For Managers:

• Monitor Team Performance: Review sales activities and results to ensure the team is meeting targets.
• Identify Bottlenecks: Use pipeline reports to find delays or inefficiencies in the sales process.
• Set Data-Driven Goals: Base objectives on trends and insights highlighted in reports.
  
  

For Marketing & Sales Team Members:

• Track Individual Progress: Review personal sales activities and outcomes to identify areas for improvement.
• Prioritise Opportunities: Use reports to focus on high-value deals or leads.
• Improve Customer Engagement: Leverage customer behaviour insights to tailor interactions and close deals faster.
  
  

Custom Reports: Discovering New Narratives

HubSpot’s custom reports allow businesses to delve deeper into their data, uncovering new narratives that standard reports might not reveal.

Examples of Custom Reports

1. Sales Funnel Analysis: Understand where prospects drop off and refine your sales process to improve conversion rates.
2. Marketing ROI Reports: Calculate the return on investment for individual campaigns and channels.
3. Customer Retention Reports: Track repeat purchases, churn rates, and the lifetime value of customers.

Lets Make the Most Out Of Your Data, Book a Call

HubSpot’s reporting tools and dashboards empower sales and marketing teams to unlock the full potential of their data. By maintaining clean data, uncovering correlations, and identifying trends, businesses can make informed decisions that drive growth.

Your data tells a story—make sure it’s one worth reading. Book a call with AutomateNow today to learn how we can help you craft your narrative with HubSpot’s reporting and dashboards. Together, we’ll help you unlock insights that transform your business.

Frequently Asked Questions