Salesforce reports are customizable summaries of data in Salesforce that help sales teams track performance, understand trends, and give sales leaders the ability to make more informed decisions.

In this article, we’ll explain how to share a report in Salesforce, why reports are important for different roles within a sales organization, and a better way to ensure that the data you’re using to create reports is accurate and up to date.

Let’s begin.

Why Is Sharing Reports in Salesforce Important?

Sharing reports in Salesforce is helpful for various roles within an organization, especially sales reps, sales managers, sales leadership, and C-suite executives.

For sales reps, Salesforce reports provide insights into individual performance metrics like revenue earned, win rate, or customer engagement levels so they can better identify areas for improvement or accounts to reach out to and then track progress towards their sales goals. 

Similarly for sales managers, Salesforce reports might contain the same performance or customer engagement metrics, but they will use this information to identify coaching opportunities or allocate resources to specific accounts that need cross-team collaboration. 

Reports can also provide a snapshot of where a manager’s team stands at any point in time so they’re able to rollup more accurate forecasts to their leaders.

Speaking of leaders, sales leadership and C-Suite executives also hugely benefit and rely upon Salesforce reports in most organizations. 

While they might not get as granular with specific deals as reps and managers, Sales VPs, CROs and other sales and revenue leaders use Salesforce reports to get a high-level overview of sales performance, market trends, and customer behavior that is crucial for their forecasts, strategic planning, and sometimes for identifying risks to high-value deals in the sales pipeline.

They also help leaders promote cross-team collaboration by sharing reports across departments like marketing or product to prevent silos and ensure everyone within the go-to-market segment of a company is on the same page. 

Increased transparency and collaboration makes aligning across departments easier, but can also improve the customer journey by using data from reports to better tailor marketing, sales, and product efforts to meet customer needs.

Step-by-Step Guide to Sharing Reports in Salesforce

Step 1: Navigate to the Reports Tab

• Log in to your Salesforce account.
• Click on the "App Launcher" (grid icon) at the top left corner.
• Type "Reports" in the search box and select "Reports" from the dropdown menu to open the Reports page.

Step 2: Access Your Report

• Locate the report you want to share. You can use the search bar if you have many reports.
• Open the report by clicking on its name.

Step 3: Move or Save the Report to a Shared Folder

• With the report open, click on "Save As" or "Save" if you haven't saved the report yet.

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• In the "Save Report" dialog, you'll see an option to choose a folder. Select a shared folder from the list. If you do not see an appropriate shared folder, you might need to create one or get the necessary permissions from your Salesforce administrator.

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• To create a new folder, click on "New Folder", provide a name, description, and sharing settings for the folder, and then save it. You need appropriate permissions to create new folders.

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Step 4: Set Folder Sharing Settings

• Navigate to the Reports tab again.
• Find the shared folder you used or created, click on the dropdown menu next to it, and select "Share".
• In the sharing settings, you can specify who has access to this folder. Options typically include roles, public groups, users, and so on. Configure these settings based on who you want to share your report with.

Step 5: Confirm and Communicate

After setting up the sharing settings, save your changes.

It’s a good practice to communicate with the users or teams who have been given access to the report, letting them know it’s available and how they can access it.

Additional Tips

• Review Permissions: Ensure that the users you're sharing the report with have the necessary permissions to view or edit the report, depending on their needs.
• Schedule Reports: Consider scheduling the report to be emailed automatically to the users at regular intervals if the information needs to be updated regularly.
• Use Dashboards: For a more visual representation, consider adding your report to a dashboard and sharing the dashboard following a similar process.

While the exact options and steps might slightly vary depending on the Salesforce edition and customizations your organization has implemented, this is the most common flow that should work with your setup.

Let’s now go over some challenges you may face:

4 Challenges of Sharing Reports in Salesforce

Be wary of these common challenges when it comes to report sharing in Salesforce:

1. Complexity of Salesforce's Sharing Rules

• Issue: Salesforce has a robust and complex sharing model designed to offer granular control over data access. However, this complexity can make it difficult to configure the correct sharing settings, especially for users without extensive Salesforce administration experience.
• Impact: Incorrectly configured sharing rules can lead to either excessive access or restrictive access, impacting data security and user productivity.

2. Data Overload

• Issue: With the ability to generate and share numerous reports, users can become overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data available, leading to information overload.
• Impact: Important insights may be overlooked, and decision-making can be hampered if users can't easily find or interpret the data they need.

3. Maintaining Report Relevance and Accuracy

• Issue: Business needs and data structures evolve over time, which can render existing reports outdated if they are not regularly reviewed and updated.
• Impact: Sharing outdated or inaccurate reports can lead to misguided decisions based on old or incorrect data.

4. Visibility and Inaccurate Data

• Issue: Despite being a powerful CRM, Salesforce is not the easiest tool for sales teams to record data and manage accounts in. It is also difficult for sales leaders to find the data they’re looking for to get a clear picture of specific deals and pipelines overall.
• Impact: Sales reps will often resort to recording data and managing accounts in tools that are easier to use, but disconnected from Salesforce like one-off note-taking apps, spreadsheets, docs, etc. This means that data doesn’t get into Salesforce so information is oftentimes neither accurate nor up-to-date cause visibility issues for reps and leaders as well.

Fortunately, there’s an easy way to increase visibility in Salesforce and avoid situations where you’re dealing with inaccurate data:

A Better Way to Ensure Data in Salesforce Is Trusted

Scratchpad is an AI powered workspace that drastically improves data quality in Salesforce. Because it’s specifically designed for the way sales reps, leaders, and operations work, it allows teams to work faster and collaborate better together without ever having to record data outside of Salesforce since it automatically syncs with the powerful CRM.

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By working in Scratchpad, sales leaders get better visibility because their Salesforce data is not only up-to-date and accurate, but more accessible and easier to digest.

Here are some key features that make Scratchpad such an effective tool:

• AI Sales Assistant: Auto-generate call summaries, notes, shareable video clips, and even required fields in Salesforce like next steps or for methodologies like MEDDIC.
• Command: A simple shortcut that lets you search and update any Salesforce field from anywhere on the web.
• Deal Rooms: Automatically create and manage Deal Rooms in Slack for better collaboration and visibility into all aspects of your deals at each stage ensuring faster sales cycles, smoother handoffs, and a better customer journey.
• No-Code Automations: Help your reps update Salesforce faster and give you and your sales leaders insights into gaps in your open pipeline.
• Deal Spotlights: Conditional Highlighting and Deal Spotlights let leaders and reps inspect entire pipelines in one place and gives them the ability to spot gaps or missing information in a certain deal at a glance. This leads to better visibility and proactive collaboration among leaders and reps to avoid missed opportunities and forecasts.

This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Scratchpad so if you’d like to learn more, schedule a conversation to see if it makes sense for your organization or simply try it out for free today.