Top 4 Sales Data Analysis Examples to Try With Your Own Data - (2024)

Sales performance is one of the critical metrics businesses track closely.

Why?

Conversion rate and revenue growth are the lifeblood of businesses. To keep track of sales performance closely, you need the best charts in business. Besides, you need charts that provide precise insights into the sales performance.

Yes, you read that right.

The tested and proven charts for sales data analysis include:

• Pareto Bar Chart
• Sentiment Trend Chart
• Double Bar Graph
• Progress Chart

Excel seems to be the logical tool to use for sales data analysis. However, the application lacks ready-made Pareto, Sentiment Trend, Double Bar, and Progress Charts.

Worry not!

You can supercharge Excel’s usability by installing a particular add-in. The add-in has ready-made and visually appealing sales data analysis examples for your data stories.

In this blog, you’ll discover:

• Top 4 Sales Data Analysis Examples
• What is Sales Analysis?
• Why Should You Analyze Sales Data?
• Types of Sales Analysis Charts
• Types of Sales Analysis
• How to Conduct Sales Data Analysis?
• Wrap Up

Top 4 Sales Data Analysis Examples

Before jumping right into the key topic, we’ll address the following question: what is sales analysis?

What is Sales Analysis?

Sales analysis involves analyzing sales data of a business over time.

Most companies have a weekly sales analysis, a monthly sales analysis, or a quarterly sales analysis. A well-executed analysis can help you understand areas to improve.

Every company has a sales target set at the start of a financial year. Sales staff can easily track their performance in real-time to improve in areas they’re failing. The sales and marketing department is always the rainmaker of any business.

We’ll address the following question in the coming section: why should you analyze sales data?

Why Should You Analyze Sales Data?

• Increase the Efficiency of the Work

The 5 types of business charts we’ll talk about can improve the productivity and efficiency of staff in your business. In other words, you can leverage data to predict risks, such as declining productivity.

Charts and graphs can help you track productivity metrics in real time. With a solid business analytics strategy, you can easily point out gaps and improvement areas in your workplace or business.

• Predict Your Customers’ Behavioral Changes

In today’s world, customers have a broader range of choices.

If your business is not aligned with the customers’ desires and expectations, you can easily find yourself in a downward spiral. Customers change their minds as they are continuously exposed to new information in their purchasing journey.

With the vast amount of data, it’s practically impossible for you to make sense of all the changes in the market.

One of the benefits of business charts is that it provides you with answers about the changing behavior of the market. You can easily point out significant shifts in tastes and preferences by using charts.

Timely awareness of customer behavior changes can be the decisive factor in the current competitive landscape. Keep reading because we’ll cover the top 4 sales data analysis examples in the coming section.

• Personalization of Business Offers

In the past, you could easily sell a standard set of products and services to customers.

Today’s market craves products and services that can meet their individual needs.

You can easily keep track of your target market’s tastes, preferences, and needs. You can leverage data from various attributions, such as social media and websites, to create a reliable persona for the market.

• Supports Decision-Making Processes

Most businesses are still betting on intuition rather than facts and data.

One of the key reasons for this could be a lack of access to quality data to back decision-making processes. Keep reading because we’ll address the following in the coming section: types of sales analysis.

Types of Sales Analysis Charts

Take a look at the table below

Notice the difference after visualizing the table above using Pareto, Sentiment Trend, Double Bar, and Progress Charts.

• Pareto Bar Chart

The visualization design empowers you to categorize occurrences based on their impact on a common strategic goal or objective. This visualization design aims to categorize key variables in your data based on their frequency of occurrence.

In other words, this chart provides you with in-depth and high-level insights into problems that require urgent attention and resources.

You can use a Pareto Chart (one of the sales data analysis examples), especially when you encounter multiple related problems or a common problem with numerous causes in your business. Pareto Chart is based on the classic 80/20 rule. The rule says that 20% of the causal factors result in 80% of the overall outcomes. For instance, according to the 1992 United Nations Development Program report 80% of the world’s total wealth is held by 20% of the population.

This easy-to-read chart prevents you from attacking the causes randomly by uncovering the top 20% of the problems, negatively affecting 80% of your overall performance.

• Sentiment Trend Chart

A Sentiment Trend Graph is one of the sales data analysis examples for demonstrating the trend of sentiments. The chart is amazingly critical, especially if your goal is to show the growth and decline of key variables.

The line curve in the chart shows the overall pattern and trend of a key variable over a specified period.

• Double Bar Graph

A Double Bar Chart (one of the top 4 sales data analysis examples) displays more than one data series in clustered horizontal columns. Each data series shares the same axis labels, so horizontal bars are grouped by category.

Bars directly compare multiple series in a given category. The chart is amazingly easy to read and interpret graphs, even for a non-technical audience.

• Progress Chart

A Progress Bar Chart is a visualization design that displays the progress made in a task or project. You can use the chart to monitor and prioritize your objectives, providing critical data for strategic decision-making.

The chart (one of the sales data analysis examples) uses filled bars to display how much of a planned activity or goal has been completed.

Keep reading because we’ll address the following in the coming section: types of sales analysis.

Types of Sales Analysis

• Sales Trend Analysis

The aforementioned methodology focuses on finding patterns in a specific timeframe.

Use this method to determine micro and macro trends. A micro-trend covers a particular line of product for a week or so, while a macro trend may track a range of goods for months.

• Sales Performance Analysis

This measures the effectiveness of a strategy by monitoring the team’s performance.

Aside from tracking sales per rep and other KPIs, the methodology requires a financial analysis based on revenue generated in a certain period.

Also, you can tailor the report to cover win rates, revenue growth, profit margins, and any other area of interest.

• Predictive Sales Analysis

This analysis type uses historical trends to anticipate future risks and opportunities. The sales data analysis example can help you mitigate threats.

• Sales Pipeline Analysis

The methodology mentioned above (one of the sales data analysis examples) entails monitoring consumers’ activities before they finalize a sale or abandon their shopping carts.

This report can help you uncover obstacles preventing users from completing their journey.

• Product Sales Analysis

Most businesses conduct product sales analysis to determine the best and worst-performing items.

• Sales Effectiveness Analysis

Sales effectiveness analysis monitors each of your sales staff’s performance with the goal of improving closing rates.

• Diagnostic Analysis

This methodology entails finding the causes behind sales trends to determine to optimize for more success. You can easily identify obstacles and develop plans of action.

• Prescriptive Analysis

Prescriptive analysis considers emerging trends and generates insights on how to handle different scenarios based on your data.

For example, you can use this analysis type to determine the customer demand for a particular product in a given month.

• Marketing Research

Market research (one of the sales data analysis examples) can help you uncover changing tastes and preferences in your niche. You can easily gather data by calling customers directly via phone or email. Insights gathered can elevate your competitiveness.
In the coming section, we’ll cover sales data analysis examples.

How to Conduct Sales Data Analysis?

Conducting sales data analysis is not a walk in the park, especially if you don’t have the right visualization tool.

Excel is a trusted data visualization tool because it’s familiar and has been there for decades.

But the spreadsheet application should not be your go-to Sales data analysis chart maker, especially if you want to harness high-level insights.

This freemium spreadsheet tool lacks ready-made and visually stunning sales analysis graphs, such as Pareto Bar, Sentiment Trend, Double Bar Graph, and Progress Charts.

We understand switching tools is not an easy task.

We’re not advocating you ditch Excel in favor of other expensive data visualization tools.

There’s an easy-to-use and amazingly affordable visualization tool that comes as an add-in you can easily install in your Excel ready-made sales analysis charts. The tool is called ChartExpo.

So, what is ChartExpo?

ChartExpo is an incredibly intuitive add-in you can easily install in your Excel without watching hours of YouTube tutorials.

With unique and amazing ready-to-go visualizations, ChartExpo turns your complex, raw data into compelling and easy-to-digest visual renderings that tell the performance review stories in real-time.

You’ll see the sales data analysis examples in the coming section.

Sales Data Analysis Example Creation in Excel:

This section will use Progress Chart (one of the sales data analysis examples) to display insights into the table below.

• Export the data above into your Excel.
• Head to the My Apps section to access the ChartExpo add-in.

• Type “Progress Chart” in the Search box.

• Once the Progress Chart shows, click the Create Chart from the Selection button as shown below.

• If you follow the steps above, and then edit the properties to add prefix (dollar sign) with data then your final chart should look like this (below).

FAQs:

What is the importance of sales analysis?

Sales analysis involves analyzing sales data of a business over time.

Most companies have a weekly sales analysis, a monthly sales analysis, or a quarterly sales analysis. A well-executed analysis can help you understand areas to improve. Sales staff can easily track their performance in real-time to improve in areas they’re failing.

What is data analytics in sales?

Data analytics refers to activities tied to data collection, cleaning, and presentation. You can leverage analytics to optimize your sales processes for more success. Data provides objective insights into what you should be doing to overcome or match your competition.

You can use analytics to craft data stories for stakeholders.

Wrap Up:

Sales performance is one of the critical metrics businesses track closely.

Conversion rate and revenue growth are the lifeblood of businesses. To keep track of sales performance closely you need the best charts in business. Besides, you need charts that provide precise insights into the sales performance.

Yes, you read that right.

The tested and proven charts for sales data analysis include: Pareto Bar, Sentiment Trend, Double Bar, and Progress Charts

Excel seems to be the logical tool to use for sales data analysis. However, the application lacks ready-made Pareto, Sentiment Trend, Double Bar, and Progress Charts.

We recommend installing third-party apps, such as ChartExpo, into your Excel to access ready-made sales analysis charts.

ChartExpo is an add-in you can easily download and install in your Excel spreadsheet.

The iconic visualization tool is loaded with ready-to-use charts to interpret sales data analysis examples, such as Progress Charts, plus over plenty of more visually appealing visualization designs.

• ChartExpo is cloud-hosted, which makes it extremely light. You have a 100% guarantee that your computer or Excel won’t be slowed down.
• You can export your beautiful, easy-to-read, and intuitive charts in JPEG, PDF, SVG, and PNG.
• ChartExpo add-in is only $10 a month after the end of the free trial period.
• ChartExpo has an in-built library with amazing easy-to-customize charts to provide a 360-degree view of your data.

Sign up for a 7-day free trial today to access easy-to-interpret and visually appealing, and ready-to-go sales analysis charts, such as Pareto and Sentiment Trend Graphs.