Lead generation reporting

A useful lead generation report shows how many genuine enquiries arrived, what happened at assessment and which earlier enquiries progressed to customers. Keep submissions, enquiries, sales decisions and customer outcomes separate; each answers a different question.

Build the report around decisions

Start with the decisions readers need to make. Marketing may need to know whether an offer attracts relevant requests; sales may need to see enquiries awaiting assessment; a business owner may need to see whether earlier enquiries became customers. Give each question a defined measure and time frame.

Agree on stage meanings with the people who handle requests. An acknowledgement or assignment is not sales acceptance. An open opportunity or proposal is not a won customer.

Label the unit and date

Decide whether each figure counts submissions, distinct enquiries, people, organisations or opportunities. A person may submit twice about one project, while one organisation may have several separate projects. Link repeated submissions to their underlying enquiry without losing new details.

Group new enquiries by the date received. Show their later outcomes as at a stated review date. A separate activity view can show decisions made this month about older requests; do not add those decisions to this month's new-enquiry total. Show cases still awaiting assessment beside any rate calculated from decided cases.

Keep source evidence visible

Label the source field used in each comparison, such as campaign information captured with the request. Keep it separate from a person's stated introduction. Use “unknown” when the chosen field has no reliable value. Do not treat a platform source label as proof of how a buyer first heard about the business.

Record the date any source rule changes, and apply the rule consistently when comparing periods. Do not assign unknown enquiries to a campaign merely because it was active when they arrived.

Describe the reporting environment

A CRM can bring customer interactions and data from several touchpoints into one dashboard. Make clear whether the report draws on CRM records, analytics events or both, rather than presenting them as interchangeable views.

The interactions represented may come from a website, telephone, live chat, direct mail, marketing materials or social media. Naming the channels included helps readers understand what the report can represent and where its view may be incomplete.

CRM systems can support management of prospects, leads, existing customers and sales pipelines, as well as analytics and reporting. Identify the customer or pipeline view behind a figure so readers can interpret it in the context of the report’s stated unit and stages.

Reconcile before interpreting

Analytics and ad platforms report activity according to their configuration. Treat platform measures as distinct from received requests and assessed outcomes unless you can reconcile them to those records.

Trace a sample from a recorded event to the received request and its assessment. Show missing links and definition differences. Where the figures cannot be reconciled, present the platform measure under its own label. Keep names, email addresses and free-text requests out of ordinary analytics event data.

When reports use customer data, businesses should publish a clear privacy policy explaining how that data is handled and be aware of the relevant privacy laws. Keep the shared report focused on the measures needed for decisions, rather than reproducing detailed customer records.

End with a decision

For a material change, show the count, denominator, comparable period and what the records do or do not explain. A rise in submissions with flat accepted enquiries warrants inspection of the requests, exclusions and assessment backlog before changing an offer. Record each agreed action with an owner and review date.