How do you share sales insights with senior management?

1 Know your audience

Before you prepare your sales insights report or presentation, you need to understand who you are talking to and what they care about. Different senior managers may have different perspectives, priorities, and questions. For example, the CEO may be interested in the overall sales performance and growth potential, the CFO may be focused on the revenue and profitability, and the CMO may be curious about the customer feedback and satisfaction. Therefore, you need to research your audience's background, role, and goals, and align your sales insights with their interests and concerns.

2 Choose the right format

When delivering your sales insights, you may choose different formats, such as a dashboard, report, slide deck, or video. It's important to consider the purpose of your communication, the level of detail and complexity needed, the time and attention span of your audience, and the availability and accessibility of the format. Do you want to inform, persuade, or inspire your audience? Are you providing a lot of data and analysis or just a few key points and recommendations? How much time do they have to review your sales insights, and how engaged are they likely to be? Can you use the format easily and reliably? Can your audience access it conveniently and securely? By taking all these factors into account, you can select the right format for your message.

3 Highlight the main findings

When you share sales insights with senior management, it's important to capture their attention and interest quickly. To do so, you should highlight the main findings and insights that are most relevant and impactful. You can use a clear and catchy title to summarize the main message or theme of your sales insights, as well as visual aids such as charts, graphs, images, or icons to illustrate your data and insights. Additionally, bullet points, headings, and subheadings can help organize your sales insights into logical sections. Furthermore, colors, fonts, or symbols can emphasize the most important or urgent findings or insights. Lastly, stories, examples, or testimonials can make your sales insights more relatable and memorable.

4 Provide context and interpretation

Highlighting the main findings and insights is important, however, it's also necessary to provide context and interpretation for your audience. Explain why your sales insights matter, how they relate to the business goals and challenges, and what they imply for the future decisions. To do this, you can use benchmarks to compare performance or results to targets, competitors, or industry standards. Additionally, causal analysis, correlation, or attribution can be used to show how sales activities or factors affect outcomes or indicators. Utilize scenarios, forecasts, or projections to show how sales insights can influence future opportunities or risks for the business. Lastly, recommend suggestions or action plans that demonstrate how sales insights can help senior management achieve their goals or solve their problems.

5 Invite feedback and questions

Inviting feedback and questions from your audience when sharing sales insights with senior management is important for showing that you value their opinions and inputs, as well as for clarifying doubts and reinforcing your main message. Open-ended questions such as "What are your thoughts on this?" and prompts like "Do you have any questions about this?" can help you encourage your audience to share their views or ask for more information. Positive reinforcement like "Thank you for your feedback" and follow-up actions like "I will send you the full report by email" can also be used to acknowledge participation and engagement, as well as demonstrate commitment and responsiveness.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?