💃 Actionable Salesforce Reports 🕺

Good morning, Salesforce Nerds! The quality of your reports determines the quality of your business.

👍 Good reports align with objectives, are insightful, and can even tell a story. Good reports are actionable 💯.

👎 Bad reports have weak context, waste your audience’s time, and tell you what you already know. Bad reports, at best, require further research to get to something actionable.

This is why your boss, stakeholders, or clients are always asking for “actionable reports!”

Whether your boss or your client knows what “actionable report” means is another matter 😜.

After reading this article, you’ll know what it means and how to do it 🙌!

WHAT IS IT?

What is an actionable report?

An actionable report is a report that gives your audience the ability to make effective business decisions. Plain and simple 🙌.

An actionable report will tell an executive-

1. Which managers/regions are running a tight ship.

2. Which salespeople are struggling.

3. Which product line needs a new marketing campaign.

Then, the executive can take action-

1. Promote that manager. Plan to implement this manager’s strategy and tactics in other regions!

2. Support that salesperson. Coach them on keeping up with their tasks and follow ups with their prospects.

3. Get with marketing to create new ads. Create compelling email headers and have a clear call-to-action.

ATTRIBUTES

What Makes an Actionable Report...Actionable?

A decent executive can a brain dump actionable report requirements for you.

OR…

You, a great consultant or admin, can create them because you understand what moves the needle.

Let’s skip the generalities, like actionable reports need to align to a business objectives- revenue goals, new logo growth, increasing lead conversion rates, etc.

So, what are some specific things that make a report actionable?

🗓️ Time Segments

• Week over week (WoW)

• Month of month (MoM)

• Year over year (YoY)

The ability to compare previous periods is powerful. It is necessary to identify patterns and trends. For example-

📏 Baselines/Benchmarks

Another comparison tool - baselines and benchmarks.

Forecasted or previous period sales compared to ACTUAL sales is a really good start to an actionable report.

📊 Attribute Segmentation

Sweet! You already have these!

• Lead Source

• Opportunity Stage

• Contract Status

But how are they being used in actionable reports? Examples include-

👀 Visual Cues

• Donut charts for Lead Source counts.

• Vertical bar graphs for product segmentation.

• Formatted text for summary reports.

Salesforce has plenty of options to visualize 🖼️ your reports!

Visuals are powerful because they can be instantly consumed, versus reading a multi-column summary.

📏 Easily Attributed to $$$

You need to always have the ability to explain a report through a financial lens. Revenue, expense, and return on investment 🤑.

This is a mindset 🧘‍♂️ as much as it is an actionable report requirement.

EXAMPLE

Actionable Salesforce Report Example

Consider a Monthly Sales Revenue Summary Report

This report provides a breakdown of monthly sales revenue by product category and geographic region.

Congratulations, you’ve effectively reported the news! But what to take action on 🤔?

You kinda can’t….you need to provide actionable elements-

🗓️ Month over month - Now your audience can see how the latest month compares to the previous months. They can see trends and patterns over a specific period of time.

📏 Baselines/Benchmarks - Understand how your actual sales compare to what your sales leaders forecasted. An example is that sales are up! But your headcount is also above baseline. The action could be to adjust the forecast based on a higher headcount.

Note- your baseline and benchmark figures probably live outside of your Salesforce org. For this reason, a Salesforce integration with Business Intelligence software is a popular solution for forecasting.

📊 Attribute Segmentation - You provide a supplementary report of Opportunities/Quotes with the status of “E-sig Sent” which shows a high-count of opportunities that are in the final stage before closed-won. The resulting action may be that you don’t take action, because deal progress is very strong and a wave of revenue is on the horizon 👀.

By adding these data points in, now your report looks like this-

• MoM Revenue

  • forecasted vs actual

• By Product

  • forecasted vs actual

• By Region

  • forecasted vs actual

• Plus, supplementary “Almost Closed-Won” report.

By adding these three elements to your reporting, you’ve gone from reporting-the-news to actionable reports 💪! Here’s what we mean -

💪 MoM gives you insights into patterns or trends in sales performance, giving leaders historical data that is the basis for good decision-making.

💪 Forecasted vs Actual tells your leaders exactly how they’re performing, compared to how they desire to perform. And whether your actuals are above or below forecast, you know the data points and reports that can provide the next layer of insights required to root cause.

💪 Additional segmentation = additional insights. By adding the “E-sig Sent” report, you are telling leadership that prospects are good for next month with the high count of nearly-completed deals.

SOME CONSIDERATIONS

Actionable Report Considerations

Here are 3 important considerations for actionable Salesforce reports-

1) More Than One Report

Multiple reports may be needed to define actions. No surprises here and Salesforce has dashboards for good reason 🙌.

So if you’re struggling to build that single, perfect chart, then don’t be afraid to create complimentary or supplementary reports that fulfills your audience’s ability to create action items.

2) Security, Accessibility, Visibility

Security, visibility, and accessibility for Salesforce reports may be a challenge in large orgs.

Complications like M&A, regionalized sales operations, or a culture of secrecy can impact your ability to create AND SHARE actionable reports.

For example, granular financial details may not be openly shared down to frontline users 🙈. Or a specific sales region may have exceptional scenarios that do not show up in reporting.

3) Change is Constant

This is a universal statement, but a good reminder it applies to actionable reports, too 🫡.

Conditions change. Attributes change. Economics change. And with these changes, so, too, will your reports need to change.

You may need to create net-new reports to manage a fresh go-to-market motion. Or add a sub-layer into geographical reports, like breaking your regions down to the state-level.

TAKEAWAY

Actionable or Bust!!

Actionable reports are effective reports. They cut through noise. They surface the “big thing.”

✅ Spend more money on marketing. Kill this product line. Hire more customer service reps.

❌ Ineffective reports take up space (and the time to create them). They litter your report folders. They aren’t even looked at by users.

And look, you don’t always get a say in which reports you make and which you don’t. But if you can show an actionable report against a 💩 report, you’re doing the business a huge favor.

You know who else benefits from actionable reports, besides execs? That’s right - you. The person making them must think like an executive to be effective.

As a Salesforce professional, you are an indirect beneficiary of actionable reports because you are exposed to their delivery. So, you’re basically halfway to the c-suite 😉.

SOUL FOOD

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