Sales data is everywhere. Finding it isn’t difficult.
The tricky part is knowing which numbers matter, what they’re telling you and how to use data in sales for smart, confident decision-making.
This guide covers all of it. You’ll learn about the types of sales data worth tracking, the best sales analytics techniques to use and how to put it all together to turn raw pipeline numbers into better forecasts, stronger team performance and more closed deals.
Key takeaways from sales data
Sales data, defined as anything you can measure in relation to the sales process, can either be internal or external information.
To effectively track sales data, spreadsheets can work for small teams – but manual data entry, no built-in automations and poor scalability will slow you down as your pipeline grows.
Test one variable at a time (follow-up timing, email templates, outreach cadence) to improve your sales process based on data.
Pipedrive centralizes your sales data, automates reporting and connects pipeline activity to revenue forecasting in real time – start a free 14-day trial and see what your data can do.
.
What is sales data?
Sales data definition: If you can measure something in relation to the sales process, that’s sales data.
While modern software like Cloud CRM solutions can help you collect this data, it’s important to learn how to read it to understand what it means for your business and where you can improve to better hit your sales targets.
With such an expansive sales data definition, it can be hard to know where to focus your efforts, especially if you also have to spend time selling.
With the right sales analysis tools, you can spot sales trends that will empower you and your team, providing better sales forecasts and actionable insights for the rest of the organization.
Types of sales data (and where they come from)
Sales data falls into two basic categories: internal and external.
You generate internal data through your own sales activity. It divides further into two specific types:
Activity data captures what your reps are doing. This might be calls made, emails sent, meetings booked, follow-up speed, etc. This data lives in your CRM and reveals the customer behavior that drives outcomes.
Outcome data captures the results of those activities – including deals won and lost, revenue generated, average deal size, sales cycle length and win rate by stage. You use this data for forecasting, target-setting and performance reporting.
External sales data comes from data sources outside your own sales pipeline. This includes firmographic and demographic data on your target accounts, market trend data and competitive intelligence. It’s helpful for qualifying leads and prioritizing outreach.
Most sales teams have more internal data than they realize. Typically, the challenge is collecting it consistently in a centralized location. High-quality external data requires deliberate sourcing.
What is a sales dataset?
A sales dataset is a structured collection of data points from your sales process, organized to reveal patterns and enable analysis.
In a simple format, a sales data example might look like this:
Even with a small dataset like this one, you begin to notice patterns. For instance:
Inbound leads seem to close faster than cold outreach
Sales referrals stick in the pipeline
The same rep is handling the two highest-value deals
These are meaningful observations that warrant further investigation.
A real sales dataset contains hundreds or thousands of rows with information pulled from multiple sources. The more complete and consistently structured your data is, the more reliable your analysis will be.
Key sales metrics to track
It’s important to focus on data that provides the most valuable information. Here’s our list of the most valuable sales metrics to look out for at the beginning of your sales data analysis journey:
Here are the key differences between a spreadsheet and a CRM pipeline.
Spreadsheets
There’s several benefits to using spreadsheets to gather data: they’re free (Google Sheets and Open Office), they provide a helpful real-time overview of your current sales operation and they can be programmed to automatically perform calculations on figures you input.
The downside? All data needs to be input manually. If you’d rather your team spent less time on data entry and more time prioritizing their best leads, then consider moving to a CRM with automated data collating.
If you’re only dealing with a small number of leads this shouldn’t be too much of an issue, but you need to be making sure that all interactions between your reps and your leads are being recorded in the spreadsheet—every email sent, every cold call made, every sales presentation, every follow-up call that wasn’t answered, etc).
CRM
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software presents a substantial step up over spreadsheet software in a number of ways. CRM software automatically records interactions with leads in your pipeline, saving your team time otherwise wasted on data entry and helping you make sure you never lose track of communications with your leads. Plus, with mobile app features and third-party integrations, CRMs expand the scope of what you can measure.
Were your automated email campaigns successful? How long was the average length of a successful cold call versus an unsuccessful one? Where are your most successful leads being generated?
Your CRM gives you reports on your winning sales patterns so you can reproduce and improve them.
On top of everything a spreadsheet can do, CRMs give you even more control of your data. Whether you’re reviewing your overall sales process for bottlenecks or looking at the most effective way to bring cold leads back into the pipeline, your CRM will have data to help.
Regardless of your software, once you’ve been collecting data for a few weeks you’ll have a pool of data, sales information and more you can draw from. The longer you keep reporting, the more data you’ll have and the more accurate it’ll be.
Sales Pipeline Spreadsheets
Pros | Cons |
| A good start for small teams. | Harder to keep data accurate across teams. |
| You can set up formulas and create basic graphs. | Performance struggles when there is a lot of data. |
| Gives a high level overview of the sales process. | Can struggle when more than one person is accessing it. |
Many people are familiar with the main spreadsheet tools. | No built-in automations |
| Easy to export data. | Harder to scale as your business grows |
| Free. | Not designed with sales pipeline management in mind. |
| Data can become corrupted. |
You’ve recorded your sales data—what now?
We’ve already looked at some of the simpler data, but now let’s look at how to analyze sales data that’s a little more complicated, but well worth the effort.
Likelihood of sales
When you’ve got sales data about the likelihood of closing a deal at each stage of the sales pipeline, you’ll be able to know at a glance your potential revenue for all the leads in your pipeline.
To determine how likely you are to close a sale, you’ll need to compare your successful deals against any you didn’t manage to close, and work out at which point you lost them.
Once you’ve collated your statistics, it’s time to use them to work out how likely you are to convert a lead to a closed deal in each section of your pipeline.
If over a week you had 30 leads enter your pipeline from cold calling, and of those leads you closed three deals, you know that a lead generated from cold calling has a 10% chance of closing. If during the same week you had five meetings lined up, of which two lead to a closed deal—you’d know you had a 40% chance of closing once a lead gets to that stage in the pipeline.
Once you have this data to hand, there’s plenty more you can work out. By assigning an estimated deal price to your leads, you can estimate how much revenue is in your pipeline, the customer acquisition cost (CAC) of each, and how likely leads are to move from one stage of the pipeline to another.
Sales forecast
A sales forecast is an incredibly useful tool for both your team and your wider company, as every teams’ budget depends on the revenue your team brings in.
Your sales forecast can be as simple as just using the data from your likelihood of sales—however, this generally only works if you know that the conditions affecting your team in the future will be the same as those affecting them now.
When creating a sales forecast, we recommend you combine your data from your potential sales with historical data and carefully estimate future revenue to account for differences in market conditions, as well as your business’s growth rate.
Depending on your industry, you might find that sales speed up over the winter months in the run up to the festive season—with historical data from previous years and months, you’ll be able to tell if this is normal for the season, or if an improvement you’ve made to your sales process is working. By knowing what’s happened before, you’ll be able to predict and account for variation, leading to more accurate forecasts and realistic goals for your team.
If your team has gone through a period of growth, then the old numbers might not apply. You’ll probably be dealing with more leads and you might be experimenting with a new sales structure or new tools.
When changing the scope of your sales process, you’ll want to use data you’ve gathered already, but you’ll need to account for everything else that can affect the numbers. Until you’ve gotten a few weeks’ or months’ data using the new method, there’ll be a certain level of estimation involved in the forecast, but accuracy can be improved by making sure you have a robust sales process that remains a powerful selling guide no matter the changes to your team.
Sales pipeline and reporting templates to get you organized
Here are the key differences between a spreadsheet and a CRM pipeline.
Spreadsheets
For small teams with few deals, a spreadsheet can be a viable starting point for sales data management, basic tracking and calculations.
There are several benefits to using spreadsheets to gather data:
They’re free (Google Sheets and LibreOffice)
They provide a helpful real-time overview
They can be programmed to automatically perform calculations
The downside? You need to input all data manually.
If you’re dealing with a small number of leads, this shouldn’t be too much of an issue. Make sure, however, you record all interactions between your reps and your leads in the spreadsheet – every email, cold call, sales presentation and unanswered follow-up call.
As you grow, however, you’ll quickly hit a spreadsheet’s limits. Even a single wrongly inputted number or inconsistency can throw off your entire pipeline reporting.
Spreadsheets also have no native connection between your data and workflows.
Here’s a quick summary of the strengths and drawbacks of using spreadsheets to track your sales pipeline:
Pros | Cons |
A good start for small teams | Harder to keep data accurate across teams |
Set up formulas and create basic graphs | Performance struggles when there is a lot of data |
Gives a high-level overview of the sales process | Can struggle when there is more than one person accessing it |
Many people are familiar with the main spreadsheet tools | No built-in automations |
Easy to export data | Data can become corrupted |
Free | Harder to scale as your business grows |
If you’d rather your team spent less time on data entry and more time prioritizing their best leads, consider moving to a CRM that automatically organizes data.
CRM
Using a customer relationship management (CRM) tool is a substantial step up over spreadsheet software.
CRM software automatically records interactions with leads in your pipeline, saving your team time they would otherwise waste on data entry and making sure you never lose track of communications with your leads.
Plus, with mobile app features and third-party integrations, CRMs expand the scope of what you can measure.
You can answer questions like:
Were your automated email campaigns successful?
How long was the average length of a successful cold call versus an unsuccessful one?
Where are your most successful leads being generated?
Your CRM provides reports on your winning sales patterns so you can replicate and improve them.
On top of everything a spreadsheet can do, CRMs give you even more control over your data.
Whether you’re reviewing your overall sales process for bottlenecks or looking at the most effective way to bring cold leads back into the pipeline, your CRM will have data to help.
Regardless of your software, once you’ve been collecting data for a few weeks, you’ll have a pool of data and sales information you can draw from. The longer you keep reporting, the more data you’ll have and the more accurate it’ll be.
With a CRM like Pipedrive, activities are automatically logged, deal stages update as your pipeline moves and your reporting reflects what’s happening in real time. It’s fast, clean data you can trust to help boost future sales.
How to calculate sales probability
Knowing your win rate at each pipeline stage is what turns your pipeline into a revenue forecast for new business.
To calculate the win rate, you’ll need to compare won deals against lost deals and identify when you lost them. Once you’ve done that with a significant number of deals, you’ll have a probability percentage for each pipeline stage.
Perhaps you generated 30 leads from cold calling in one week and closed three of those deals. That’s a 10% win rate from cold outreach.
If during the same week you had five meetings and two led to closed deals, your meeting-stage win rate is 40%. This is valuable information about where leads are converting and where they’re falling off.
Go further by assigning an estimated deal price to your leads and multiplying it by the stage probability to get your weighted pipeline value. Add customer acquisition cost (CAC) per stage, and you’ll also know how much it costs you for a deal to close.
Note: With Pipedrive, you can set custom deal probability or stage probability percentages. Your weighted revenue figures will then update automatically as deals move forward, so your forecast reflects your actual data, not a manual calculation.
Sales forecasting
A sales forecast tells your organization how much revenue to expect and when.The most reliable forecasts pull from multiple inputs, not just one:
Weighted pipeline data – your current open deals, adjusted by stage probability
Historical performance – close rates, average deal size and sales cycle length from previous periods
Seasonality – historical data based around predictable surges or slowdowns your industry sees at certain times of year
Team and process changes – a new rep or a new market can affect your numbers
Conditions are always shifting. A successful forecast accommodates for variability. Instead of treating current conditions as fixed, build your forecast to account for fluctuations across every area.
Pipedrive’s revenue forecasting view (above) breaks down your pipeline probability data according to rep, time period or pipeline.
How to use sales data to improve performance
While collecting a sales data list is a good start, you then have to know what to do with it.
Ideally, your goal is to use this data to identify where your sales process is breaking down and to fix it before it begins hurting profitability.
Identifying pipeline bottlenecks
Your pipeline is the easiest place to find problems because the data is already there.
Look at your stage-by-stage conversion rates and find where the drop-off is steepest – where a large number of deals go in, but don’t come out. That’s the place you want to analyze to see what the lost deals have in common and what the won deals do differently.
Pipedrive’s pipeline conversion reports show exactly how deals move (or don’t move) between each stage of the sales funnel, including average time spent and drop-off rate. If there’s a bottleneck in your process, it will show up here.
Here’s an example of how this might work: You’re looking at the results from your email follow-up stage and notice that when your reps follow up within a day of their cold call, the deal is twice as likely to close compared to when follow-up takes two days or more.
However, your reps are often still waiting two-plus days. This isn’t a data problem – it’s a coaching problem, and one that you can easily change. Bring up the subject in a sales meeting or even add a section on prompt follow-ups to your sales training.
Deal velocity matters, too. If deals are consistently being held up in one section, this warrants investigation.
Maybe your team needs to follow up more often. Are there too many decision-makers involved? Is the topic of pricing making conversation peter out?
While your data won’t always give you the reason why, it should tell you where to look.
Testing and optimizing your sales activities
Once you know where your pipeline is losing deals, you can run tests to fix it.
The right way to do this is to change a single variable, measure its impact on conversion and see how well it worked.
The timing and cadence of your communication are an easy place to start because they’re easy to isolate. If one group of reps follows up within 24 hours, another waits 48 and the first group consistently moves more deals forward, that tells you a lot.
Test outreach times the same way, with morning vs. afternoon calls or weekday vs. weekend emails. See whether the activity correlates with deals progressing to the next stage.
Pipedrive’s activity and email tracking reports let you correlate rep behaviors – like send times, follow-up speed or outreach cadence – directly with deal outcomes so you’re optimizing based on what’s actually working in your pipeline.
You can do the same thing with email templates. Set up workflows to A/B test subject lines, length and tone separately at each stage. Measure success by pipeline movement rather than clicks alone.
Lead source data matters, too. Maybe your CRM shows that inbound leads from a specific social media channel close at twice the rate of cold outreach. That’s more than just a marketing campaign insight. It tells your reps where to focus their time and tells you where to focus pipeline analysis.
The logic is essentially the same across all of these sales activities: form a hypothesis, run the test, check the conversion data and adjust.
The more consistently your team repeats this sales optimization cycle, the more valuable your sales data will become over time.
Why use Pipedrive for sales data
Gathering and understanding your sales data is only useful if you can act on it and share it with the people who need it most. Pipedrive’s sales data software lets you do both.
Pipedrive sales data analytics focuses on insights and custom reporting. There’s no need to export data into a separate spreadsheet and manually build reports. Instead, Pipedrive lets you create custom reports directly from your pipeline data.
Since the reports update in real time, you can feel confident you’re always working with the latest numbers. You can even generate reports using AI.
Revenue forecasting is tied directly to your pipeline. Because Pipedrive tracks deal probability at each stage, your forecast updates automatically as deals move, stall or close. You can view projected revenue at any time to make sure you’re on track with your sales goals.
Shareable sales dashboards allow different teams to see what’s relevant to them.
Your sales reps can view activity targets, your sales leader can see average deal size trends and your CFO can access projected revenue against target.
These shareable insights can be shared internally or externally, so everyone can see the data that’s most relevant to them.
Pipedrive in action: Canadian SaaS startup DashThis grew so fast that it became impossible to provide the customer experience it wanted clients to receive. So DashThis partnered with Pipedrive as its CRM. By integrating other tools, including Help Scout and Intercom, account managers can see every customer interaction to offer the best possible service, easily share information and assign tasks in their shared hub.
Goal-tracking helps you move from targets to reality. Take action by setting activities and benchmarks at the individual or team level. Pipedrive tracks actuals against them in the same view. When sales team performance dips, you’ll spot it early so you can course-correct.
With these capabilities, Pipedrive helps your sales data turn into decisions.
Final thoughts
With the right data and the right knowledge, sales success is far more achievable – and, importantly, measurable.
The final step is the right software. Pipedrive’s CRM helps you track sales data as leads travel through your pipeline.
With custom reporting, revenue forecasting and shareable insights, your entire organization can benefit as you learn how to analyze sales data and make it a regular part of your process.
Sign up for a free 14-day trial of Pipedrive to help your data inform your sales strategies.
