3 Quick-and-Dirty Tips for Better Salesforce Reporting

Do you trust your Salesforce reporting? Do your reports have all the metrics you need? Are they easy to build, change, and drill into?

If yes, congrats! You’re a Salesforce wizard.

If you’ve ever struggled with a Salesforce report, though, you’re in the right place. Salesforce is a powerful tool, but even the most seasoned Salesforce admins and RevOps professionals struggle to get actionable insights out of their sales data foundation.

To save you time and help you get the most out of your CRM, here are 3 quick tips. You’ll learn how to get more out of standard and custom reports, optimize report filters for more insights, and leverage dashboards for better data visualizations.

By implementing these tips, Salesforce admins and RevOps professionals can enhance their reporting capabilities, make smarter data-driven decisions, and ultimately drive revenue growth.

Understanding the Basics of Salesforce Reporting

Salesforce reporting is a powerful feature of the Salesforce platform that enables businesses to create, manage, and run reports that provide insights into their sales data. At its core, the purpose of Salesforce reporting is to turn the raw data stored in your Salesforce system into actionable information that can inform strategic business decisions.

For instance, opportunity and account data can be mined for pipeline analysis or individual deal analysis. Similarly, rep performance data can be aggregated for sales performance analysis, which in turn, helps with sales performance management.

Salesforce reporting allows users to pull together data from different areas of the system, analyze that data in a variety of ways, and present it in a format that is easy to understand and act upon.

The Role of Salesforce Admins and RevOps in Reporting

Salesforce admins and RevOps professionals play critical roles in Salesforce reporting. As admins, their responsibilities include setting up and configuring the Salesforce system to ensure sales data capture is done accurately and consistently. Similarly, they have to make sure any Salesforce data sync or write back is working correctly. They also create the reports required by the business and ensure that the right people have access to these reports.

RevOps professionals, on the other hand, use the reports created by Salesforce admins to inform their operations decisions. They analyze the reports, identify trends and patterns, and use this revenue intelligence to make strategic decisions about sales operations, revenue generation, and overall business growth.

Salesforce admins set the stage for effective reporting, and RevOps professionals are the actors who use these reports to drive the narrative of business growth. This partnership is crucial for leveraging the power of Salesforce reporting.

The First Tip: Mastering Standard and Custom Reports

Standard reports are pre-built reports available in Salesforce that offer quick insights into various aspects of your business data. From account and Salesforce contact management to sales and marketing analytics, these details provide a wealth of predefined reporting options to cater to common business scenarios. They are readily available for use, simplifying the reporting process and saving time for users who need to quickly access and analyze data.

Exploring Custom Reports: Creation and Management

Despite the convenience of standard reports, sometimes you’ll have to dig deeper and create custom reports to analyze specific data. Custom reports in Salesforce allow you to define your own reporting parameters and tailor your reports to meet your unique requirements.

Creating a custom report starts with selecting the data sources. Then, choose the key metrics to track, apply the necessary filters, group the data, and set the format for your report. 

It may seem daunting at first, but it’s more intuitive than you might think. The resources on  Trailhead — Salesforce’s online learning platform — and guides on websites like Salesforce Ben and Admin Hero help a ton.

Benefits of Using Both Standard and Custom Reports

While standard reports are quick and easy to use, their pre-built nature is limiting. Custom reports, on the other hand, allow for precise, tailor-made reporting, giving you insights that are both detailed and directly relevant to your business needs.

Effective Salesforce reporting, therefore, lies in mastering the use of both standard and custom reports. Standard reports can serve as your first line of data analysis, while custom reports help you delve deeper into more specific aspects of your data like customer health for better churn analysis. Successfully combining these two types of reports will allow you to draw comprehensive, insightful conclusions from your Salesforce data.

The Second Tip: Optimizing Report Filters for Precise Insights

Report filters in Salesforce are essential tools for refining your data. They allow you to focus on specific segments of your data and eliminate any irrelevant information, leading to more targeted and accurate reports. By correctly applying filters, you can get a better understanding of various aspects of your business, such as customer behaviors, sales trends, and market opportunities, among others.

Steps for Configuring Report Filters

Configuring your report filters starts with identifying the data segments you want to focus on. For example, you might want to filter data by region, customer type, or product category. Once you've established the criteria, you can configure your filters directly in the Salesforce report builder.

The process typically involves selecting the field you want to filter, choosing the operator (for instance, "equals," "less than," "greater than"), and then defining the value or range you want to include. You can apply multiple filters to a single report for more complex data analysis.

Strategies for Optimizing Report Filters for Better Results

To optimize your report filters, you should first gain a thorough understanding of the fields in your Salesforce dataset and how they relate to your business operations. Consider which fields are essential for your reporting purposes and how they can be effectively filtered to yield the insights you need.

It’s also beneficial to use the 'or' and 'and' conditions in your filters to fine-tune your data extraction. For instance, you can use 'and' to filter reports that meet multiple criteria or 'or' to include records that fulfill at least one of several conditions.

Periodically reviewing and adjusting your filters is another useful strategy to ensure your reports remain relevant and useful as your business evolves. By applying these tactics, you can enhance your report filters and gain more precise insights from your Salesforce data.

The Third Tip: Leveraging Dashboards for Data Visualization

A Salesforce dashboard is a dynamic and visual display of your data, pulled from multiple reports. Dashboards consist of various types of components, like charts, tables, metrics, and gauges, each reflecting a comprehensive view of selected data. They are ideal for presenting complex data in a more accessible, aesthetically pleasing, and easily digestible format.

Salesforce dashboards offer real-time, at-a-glance insights into key business metrics, thereby facilitating quick understanding and decision-making. They can be customized to fit your specific business requirements and can be easily shared with different team members to encourage data-driven discussions and brainstorming.

Importance of Dashboards in Presenting Data and Getting Insights

Dashboards play an indispensable role in Salesforce reporting. By visualizing data, dashboards help users understand complex data sets, detect patterns, and extract actionable insights. That enables smarter selling tactics like signal-based selling and smart deal alerts, as well as better analysis into deal progression with methodologies like MEDDPICC.

Dashboards also assist in tracking business performance against predetermined goals and monitoring the effectiveness of different strategies. They provide an instant snapshot of activities in real time, helping with everything from better sales activity tracking to visualizations of sales commission structures and progress toward quota.

Best Practices for Creating and Using Dashboards in Salesforce

When creating dashboards in Salesforce, it's important to keep the following best practices in mind:

First, determine your objectives clearly. What do you want to achieve with this dashboard? Having a clear goal will guide you in selecting the relevant data and the best components to visualize it.

Second, ensure your dashboard is clean and user-friendly. Avoid overcrowding it with information. Stick to essential metrics that provide meaningful insights for your business.

Third, consider the audience for your dashboard. If different teams or members need different data, create multiple dashboards tailored to their needs. In Salesforce, you can create private dashboards or share them with specific team members.

Finally, regularly update your dashboards to reflect current data and trends. A static, outdated dashboard will not provide the real-time insights necessary for effective decision-making.

Mastering Salesforce dashboards not only enhances the aesthetic appeal of your reports but also significantly boosts the efficiency of your data interpretation and strategic planning.

Important Considerations in Salesforce Reporting

In addition to mastering reports, filters, and dashboards, there are other crucial considerations for Salesforce admins and RevOps professionals to ensure they are getting the most out of their Salesforce reporting.

Regular Review and Update of Reports

Salesforce reporting is not a one-time task. As your business evolves, so should your reports, to ensure they continue to deliver relevant insights. Regularly reviewing and updating your reports to reflect recent changes in your data, objectives, and strategic directions is a critical part of maintaining effective Salesforce reporting.

Training and Skills for Admins and RevOps Professionals

Salesforce admins and RevOps professionals should continuously improve their skills and knowledge in Salesforce reporting. This involves understanding the latest features and capabilities of Salesforce, learning advanced techniques for data analysis, and staying updated with best practices in Salesforce reporting.

It also means staying up to date on the latest in sales AI, like the top AI sales tools, innovations in ChatGPT for sales, and the latest sales chatbots.

Ensuring Data Quality and Integrity

The quality of your Salesforce reports heavily depends on the integrity of your data. Salesforce admins should ensure that they have proper CRM data hygiene first and foremost. This involves implementing rigorous data management practices, such as data validation rules, duplicate detection, and CRM data cleansing.

Let Salesforce Reporting Better Your Business

Salesforce reporting is a powerful tool for converting raw data into actionable insights. By mastering standard and custom reports, optimizing report filters, and leveraging dashboards, Salesforce admins and RevOps professionals can enhance their reporting capabilities, make well-informed business decisions, and drive business growth.

Success in Salesforce reporting goes beyond these three tips. It requires constant learning, regular monitoring and updating of reports, and careful data management. Don't be afraid to experiment with different reporting strategies and techniques to find what works best for your business.

Further Reading and Resources

For those who wish to further sharpen their Salesforce reporting skills, there are numerous resources available.

Salesforce itself offers extensive learning resources through Trailhead, its online learning platform. From beginner to advanced levels, Trailhead provides modules that cover all aspects of Salesforce reporting.

For additional insights and strategies, consider reading books and articles by Salesforce experts. Websites such as Salesforce Ben and Admin Hero are rich sources of guides, articles, and tips.

Various online learning platforms, such as Udemy and LinkedIn Learning, also offer comprehensive courses on Salesforce reporting. Most of these courses are accessible, even for beginners, and provide in-depth knowledge and practical skills that you can apply directly to your work.

Take full advantage of these resources, and don't stop learning. The more you know about Salesforce reporting, the better you can harness its potential to drive your business forward.