Every business expects to generate sufficient sales revenue so that it can cover all its expenses and get a net profit. Because of this, many business owners and their sales teams should watch the rise and decrease in sales closely.
This has to be done consistently on the month on month or quarter on quarter basis. For this comparison and analysis, it is essential to have sales figures within a text body or a method by which only numbers are compared. However, reading only numbers can be difficult for everyone, which is why representation is used. It is used because it is practical to convey proper sales data in a precise manner. This is the reason why sales charts are developed.
Definition:
The sales chart is a visual representation of the sales data for a given period. Usually, the sales chart represents comparisons of sales data for a specific period, or particular customer, for one specific product or as a comparison with other products or period.
There are many ways to use a sales chart, depending on the information required.
Sales Chart as a Graphing Tool
The sales charts can be created using many tools. There is a static chart, as well as dynamic charts. Dynamic charts are interactive and animated created with the help of the user interface. These applications help to create a chart and then rotate and revise the elements of the chart in real-time.
There is also an option of representing the chart in 2-D or 3-D and converting the chart from one type of graph to a different one. On the contrary, the static charts can be developed using Excel, Access, or PowerPoint, and they have limitations for display.
Types of Sales Chart
There are many types of sales charts available for use. It is crucial to determine what data you want to present, and accordingly, you can select the relevant size chart. Following are few of the commonly used types of sales charts:
1. Annual Sales Analysis
In annual sales analysis, the overview of company sales is presented, and the performance of the company in the past year is depicted. The study also shows what steps are required for the coming year, and the mission and vision of the company are kept in mind while deciding targets and setting goals. Everything from the financial statement of the company is covered in annual sales analysis.
This also includes inputs from the sales team, marketing team, CFO, and other relevant departments. The dashboard can be divided into monthly sales with the name and division of the customer along with the region and the name of the sales representative.
2. Budget Analysis
Budget analysis dashboard is an interface that is used by many financial analysts to obtain a quick view of the budget and the detailed forecast at a glance. The sales manager can analyze charts and graphs and also can forecast the future with the help of budget analysis.
The sales can be divided by the products into different states and cities, and a summary of actual vs budget and sales vs budget can be provided.
3. Total sales customer wise
The total sales can be provided in the dashboard along with with the customer wise split. This dashboard represents the total sales and amount due from the customer and can be obtained periodically that is on a monthly basis or quarterly as required.
Customer wise sales are also essential to determine the average business per customer, and the organization can compare the business which is obtained for a particular period from a specific customer and analyze the reasons for the growth or decrease in the business.
4. Customer Acquisition cost
Customer acquisition cost is one of the critical KPIs in which every company keeps track of. Customer acquisitions can help you gain a lot of data in your business. It is expected to maintain this customer acquisition cost as low as possible. Still, if you have CLV high than that of competitors, then you can win by affording a high Customer Acquisition cost.
For example, if you have a website that has digital products of different prices, then you can set up your marketing funnel and email marketing to boost your CLV, and you can spend more on Facebook and Google.
Customer acquisition cost is an essential factor that should be evaluated with other KPIs.
5. Performance of Sales Rep
Employee activities or business activities can do the measurement of the performance of a sales representative. The sales chart designed for measuring the performance of the sales representative has different variables, and the targets of the company are set against which the performance of the employee is measured.
If the company has given any other activities to be performed to the sales representative, then those activities are also measured against the performance, and the cumulative value is determined. In most of the cases, a rank or a number is given to the performance of the employees against which important decisions like increment, appraisal, promotion, and, if applicable, demotion or termination of the employee.
6. Sales Cycle
This sales chart depicts the amount of time required for accounts to go through your sales funnel. The time is determined as an average time from identifying the opportunity to close the account or getting the order. The shorter the sales cycle, the better it is for the company, so this graphical representation is determined to compare the performance of different sales managers and representatives.
You need to ensure to keep a lookout of the size of your deals and track the CLV of the prospective customers. You may find that some sales managers take a long time to close the deals than others. The sales growth graph is an essential sales chart in the organization, which will help to gain more clarity on particular orders and customers.
3 Tips for a professional Sales chart
The primary objective of the sales chart is to determine the status of sales in the organization. A sales chart can provide a pulse check for the organization and forms an essential report on which many important decisions can be taken. This is why making a sales chart more presentable and professional is crucial.
Following are a few tips to make a professional Sales chart:
1. Clean and simple layout
Sales charts are going to depict many numbers. Using too many colours in graphs and charts can create complications for the person who is trying to understand the sales chart. The colours can also be distracting for the data in the Sales chart and can be challenging to understand.
Using appropriate filters in the chart is essential so that relevant data can be shown, and the non-relevant data can be excluded from the sales chart. A useful suggestion is to keep the sales chart in the top left corner of the dashboard.
The use of light colours rather than dark colours is also good for the sales chat. Drawing too many lines and incorporating too much data in a single chart can also be very difficult not only for the creator of the size chart but also for the management who is trying to understand it. Rather than that, it is suggested to use multiple charts if necessary, to depict the data.
2. Apply Calculations
Use of appropriate calculations can be helpful and time saving for everyone. The team members can be benefited from the calculation because they do not need to worry about counting the numbers to give a monthly growth figure. Calculations are also useful when someone has to calculate only a particular area or a specific part of the sales chart.
For example, in a customer wise sales chart, which depicts the business of customer yearly or monthly, if someone wants to calculate the percentage of business given by the customer for a particular period, then calculations come in handy. It is expected that all possible important values are pre-calculated in the sales chart to provide a better understanding of the sales.
3. Make the sales chart and its dashboard accessible and specific
The sales chart must be available by everyone in the organization, especially the decision-makers and the top management. Although they may not require the entire data and the customer-wise evaluation, they’ll need to know a holistic view of the condition of sales in the organization.
Contents of a Sales chart
While there are several ways for presenting the sales chart, most of which are described above, there are simpler alternatives as well, which are used to depict the data in the sales chart as well as a bar chart or a pie chart. Small businesses or front-line sales rep who have minimal data to show, use these methods.
This information of the sales can be given to the management with the help of these simple graphs as well—histogram is another way of presenting specific sales over some time. A line graph is to determine the sales volume and the acquisition of new customers, and the scatterplot can also be used to determine the relation between two variables like many salespeople and sales volume.
Most of the time, the design of the sales chart is dependent on the content and the information that is to be conveyed. For example, the sales chart can have sales activities, and its characteristics and salesperson attributes of every sales territory, and this data should include sales revenue per person and sales volume. Including so many variables makes the sales chart exhaustive, and various filters have to be applied to highlight the relevant information.
