Daily Sales Report (DSR)

If something cannot be measured, it cannot be improved, said a quote. Continuous (daily) improvement is better than delayed perfection, said another.

Whether you are a sales manager or a small business entrepreneur, you need to measure and stay on top of sales-stats so that you take quick actions and right decisions to move forward in the direction of your goals.

If a dashboard is to a car, daily sales report (DSR) is to a sales function.

DSR is a very frequently used term in sales and a regularly reviewed report. Daily sales report (DSR) equips sales managers and sales representatives to look at daily sales metrics such as the number of deals closed, number of sales conversations made with customers, opportunities created, and a few more business-specific KPIs.

In a nutshell, DSR or a daily sales report paints a picture of your sales team for a given day.

Usually, daily sales report focuses both on efforts and the outcome. DSR focuses on the effort metrics such as the number of sales calls made for the day, emails been sent and meetings each salesperson scheduled and successfully conducted. In addition, they also focus on number of customers won, deal values achieved and targets met.

Setting up a well-defined DSR structure for your sales team will help you to make informed decisions on how and where to focus your sales efforts and resources.

DSRs, help you stay on track and ensures you are focused on goals and efforts.

A daily sales report enables a sales manager to,

•    Track how much time, each salesperson is spending on different sales activities in a day
•    Learn and understand how much each salesperson’s efforts are translating into real sales
•    Find whether each salesperson is achieving their productivity goals or not
•    Find ways to improve the process or help sales team members in achieving their productivity goals.

Through the daily sales report, you can obtain the metrics on the activities carried out by each salesperson. Based on your business, the sales activities may vary. For example the DSR for a trading business will be much different from a real estate firm or accounting firm.

Below are some of the common sales activities that are usually tracked in a daily sales report (DSR).

As a sales manager, you can directly influence these activities and drive your sales team to spend more time in the most effective sales activity.

Below are some of the common sales goals that are usually tracked in a daily sales report (DSR).

If you have the data of activities carried out on each day through daily sales report, you can analyze the quality and effectiveness of each activity towards the sales conversions.

As in every business, each of the customer categories needs different methods of selling and sales efforts. For example, not every deal can be closed by a sales call or a sales presentation. Selling to a large business needs a very different approach compared to selling to a small business or a start-up.

Using the data in daily sales reports (DSR), you could assess which sales activity is driving you more sales. A salesperson consistently sending out hundreds of promotional emails to customers and ending up in zero sales indicates that the specific emailing activity needs a review, re-think and an effective alternative method need to be in place immediately.

Understanding the efforts being invested by your sales team will help you to guide them much better. By analysing daily sales reports (DSR), you can also identify which sales team members need what kind of help to push sales further.

If you have defined productivity and sales goals for each sales team member, measuring their performance and achievement towards the goal is the ultimate benefit of a daily sales report.

From daily sales reports (DSR), you could visualize the progress of each salesperson and you can decide whether they could meet their target and achieve their goals during the rest of the days in the month.

By analyzing progress made every day, you can forecast sales that each of the sales team member can contribute. Extending this forecast to all your team members will help you to estimate the total sales, determine what opportunities need leadership attention, help and focus.

If something cannot be measured, it cannot be improved, can be re-stated as ‘if you can measure efforts & results through a daily sales report (DSR), you can improve your sales and business’.