The Top 5 CRM Reports Every Founder Should Build on Day One

One of the easiest ways to slow down your go-to-market motion is to ignore your reporting infrastructure until it’s too late. You don’t need a RevOps hire or a full Salesforce instance to start right, but you do need the right CRM reports in place from day one.

At Foundations, we’ve helped dozens of startups scale their sales systems. The ones that grow fastest don’t just sell well. They measure what matters early.

Here are the 5 reports every founder or sales leader should build in their CRM before deals start flying.

1. Lead Volume Over Time

You can’t improve what you’re not tracking, and lead volume is where every GTM motion begins. This report gives you visibility into how many net-new leads are being added to your CRM over time.

But it’s not just about volume. It’s about consistency, quality, and ownership.

What to Track:

• New leads by week: Gives you a real-time sense of top-of-funnel activity

• Leads by channel/source: Identify what’s contributing most (e.g. cold outbound, website, events, referrals)

• Leads by owner: Who’s sourcing and adding the leads?

• Rolling 30- and 90-day averages: Smooths out spikes or quiet periods

• Quarter-over-quarter comparisons: Tells you if your lead engine is improving or plateauing

Why This Matters:

Early-stage companies often assume they have a pipeline problem, when in reality, they just haven’t added enough new names to their CRM to run a real process.

If your weekly lead volume is inconsistent or declining:

• Your outbound team may be unfocused or underperforming

• Your ICP may be too narrow, or your list-building strategy needs refinement

• You’re likely setting reps up for burnout, too much pressure, too few opportunities

On the flip side, high lead volume with low conversion could mean:

• Poor qualification criteria

• Bad list quality

• Misalignment between messaging and ICP
  
  

This report is your early warning system, a way to measure whether your go-to-market motion is generating enough activity at the top of the funnel to support your revenue goals.

Pro Tip:

Benchmark your lead volume against your sales goals.
If your average close rate is 10% and your sales target is $500K per quarter, reverse-engineer how many leads you need to hit that number.

Lead volume isn’t just a metric, it’s a lever.
When you watch it closely, you can spot problems before they hit your pipeline.

2. Rep Activity and Outreach Efficiency 

Once you’re adding leads to your CRM consistently, the next critical question is:
What’s your team actually doing with those leads?

This report gives you visibility into rep-level effort and efficiency, so you can distinguish between motion and momentum.

What to Track:

• Number of calls made per rep per day/week

• Number of emails sent

• Social touches (LinkedIn DMs, comments, connection requests)

• Conversations held (calls lasting longer than X minutes or emails replied to)

• Meetings booked

• Meeting-to-opportunity conversion

• Time from first touch to booking (speed to connect)
  
  

You can segment by:

• Rep

• Campaign or list

• Persona or industry

• Source channel
  

Why This Matters:

Early-stage teams often default to activity volume, assuming more = better. But that’s only true if the activity is targeted, timely, and delivered well.

A few key patterns to watch:

• A rep making 100 calls but booking 1 meeting likely has a list or messaging issue

• A rep sending 50 personalized emails and booking 5 meetings is doing something worth replicating

• One rep consistently slow to follow up after inbound leads? That’s where revenue is leaking
  
  

This report helps you:

• Coach better, you can see whether reps are struggling with outreach, follow-up, or objection handling

• Spot high-performers, not just by closed revenue, but by early activity trends

• Make smarter hiring decisions, are you understaffed or underutilizing your current reps?
  
  

What Great Looks Like:

• Outreach consistency: Daily or weekly activity benchmarks are met

• High connect-to-meeting ratio: Reps aren’t just “busy,” they’re converting

• No one’s hiding in the CRM, everyone is visible and coachable

• Feedback loop: You use this data to adjust messaging, cadence, and targeting over time
  
  

Pro Tip:

Pair this report with lead source data.
You might find that one rep crushes it on cold calls, while another excels on warm inbound. That insight lets you route leads based on strengths, not just territory.

Activity without context is noise.
But activity + efficiency = pipeline predictability.

3. Opportunity Source Report 

Not all leads are created equal, and not all pipeline is worth the same. The Opportunity Source Report helps you answer a crucial question:

Where are your actual opportunities coming from, and which sources are turning into revenue?

This report shifts your focus from top-of-funnel volume to bottom-line impact. It's one of the most important reports to install early because it gives you channel clarity, and that clarity leads to smart prioritization.

What to Track:

For every opportunity created in your CRM, you want to assign a clear source attribution. At minimum, track:

• Source Type

• Cold email

• Cold call

• LinkedIn/social outbound

• Inbound form fill (e.g. contact us, demo request)

• Paid media

• Organic content (SEO, blog, video, etc.)

• Events or trade shows

• Partnerships or referrals

• Customer or internal referrals

• Number of opportunities by source

• Conversion rate to closed-won by source

• Average deal size by source

• Sales cycle length by source

• Win rate by source

Why This Matters:

At early stages, most founders are spread across too many channels. Without tracking opportunity source data, you risk:

• Overinvesting in channels that feel busy but don’t convert

• Ignoring “slow” channels that actually generate larger or faster-closing deals

• Making hiring decisions (like BDRs vs. paid media) on gut instead of data

This report helps you move from guessing to knowing.

Patterns to Watch For:

• Are cold outbound leads converting, or just generating noise?

• Is your “best” lead source also your most expensive or slowest?

• Are inbound leads consistently smaller or larger than outbound-sourced ones?

• Do some sources lead to more multi-threaded, higher-value deals?
  

Let’s say:

• You generated 60% of your opportunities through cold outbound

• But 80% of your closed-won revenue came from referrals
  That’s a signal. Not necessarily to stop outbound, but to recognize the impact-per-source and double down where efficiency is highest.
  

Pro Tip:

Don’t wait until you have 100 deals to track this. Set it up from day one. Even 5–10 opportunities per source will start to show patterns.

Also, align your lead source tracking with your opportunity source tracking. If a contact fills out a form and then books a call from a cold outbound rep, make sure the attribution reflects origin, not just ownership.

What Great Looks Like:

• Every opportunity has a clearly defined source

• You regularly review source performance during pipeline or forecast reviews

• You use this data to influence your budget, hiring, and channel testing

• Your sales and marketing teams are aligned on what’s working and why

4. Pipeline Conversion Rates

Every founder wants a predictable sales motion, but most aren't tracking how opportunities actually move through the funnel.

That’s what this report is for.

Pipeline conversion rates tell you how well each stage of your process is performing. It shows you where deals are dropping, where reps are getting stuck, and where to focus coaching, messaging, or enablement work.

Without this, you’re not managing a pipeline, you’re watching a scoreboard with half the lights off.

What to Track:

Start by mapping your current sales stages. A simple version might look like:

1. Discovery / Intro Call

2. Qualified Opportunity

3. Demo or Presentation

4. Proposal Sent

5. Negotiation / Final Review

6. Closed-Won or Closed-Lost
   
   

Then measure:

• Stage-to-stage conversion rates

• Average time spent in each stage

• Drop-off rate per stage

• Win rate from each stage

• Velocity by source or rep
  
  

You want to see:

• Where deals consistently stall

• Which stages are high friction

• If reps are pushing deals forward too fast, or not fast enough
  
  

Why This Matters:

A healthy pipeline has clear motion. If deals are sitting in stages for weeks, your process is broken, or your team doesn’t have a reason to advance the deal.

This report gives you the insights you need to:

• Fix messaging breakdowns (e.g. post-demo, they don’t see value)

• Coach more effectively (e.g. why is one rep advancing 70% of deals to proposal, and another only 30%?)

• Identify “happy ears” (deals that feel warm but aren’t moving)

• Forecast more accurately (not all pipeline is created equal)
  
  

Patterns to Watch For:

• High drop-off between discovery and qualified
  Could mean your leads are poorly targeted or reps are overqualifying
  

• Long time in demo stage
  Could suggest unclear value, no urgency, or ineffective follow-up
  

• Lots of proposals sent but few closed
  Likely a pricing objection, misalignment on value, or proposals being sent too early
  

• Deals jump straight from discovery to proposal
  A sign that reps are skipping steps to move fast, but closing slow
  

Pro Tip:

Use conversion rates not just to analyze performance, but to create stage-based probabilities for forecasting.

Example:

• If your "Proposal to Closed-Won" conversion is 40%, and the deal is $10K, the expected value in your forecast is $4K
  This is how modern sales teams forecast with confidence, and how founders can finally predict revenue in real terms.
  
  

What Great Looks Like:

• Every deal is advancing with clear next steps

• You review stage performance weekly or biweekly in pipeline reviews

• Coaching is tied to where deals are dropping, not just close rates

• Your sales motion becomes data-driven, not personality-driven

5. Closed-Lost Reason Report

Most founders obsess over why deals are won.
But you’ll often learn more from the ones you don’t close.

The Closed-Lost Reason Report surfaces exactly that. It’s a structured way to gather insight from every deal that didn’t convert, so you can fix what’s broken, refine your positioning, and close faster next time.

This report moves you from "We lost the deal" to "We know exactly why, and what to do about it."

What to Track:

For every opportunity marked as Closed-Lost, require reps to log a reason. This should be a mandatory field in your CRM.

Start with a standardized dropdown:

• No Budget

• No Urgency

• Wrong Fit / ICP Misalignment

• Lost to Competitor

• Chose to Do Nothing

• Internal Timing / Project Delay

• Went Dark

• Pricing Objection

• Stakeholder Misalignment

• Other (with open text required)
  

Then report on:

• Frequency of each reason

• Lost reasons by rep

• Lost reasons by opportunity stage

• Lost reasons by deal size, industry, or source

• Change in reasons over time
  
  

Why This Matters:

Without this report, you’re guessing at why revenue isn’t growing.

This insight helps you:

• Refine ICP targeting, are you talking to the right people?

• Improve qualification, are deals entering the funnel that never had a shot?

• Adjust pricing or packaging, is price killing deals, or is it value perception?

• Tune your pitch, are you losing to “do nothing” because there’s no urgency?

• Improve rep performance, are some reps over-discounting or pitching too soon?

Most importantly, it tells you where revenue is leaking, and gives you clear evidence to fix it.

Patterns to Watch For:

• High volume of “went dark”
  → Signals weak follow-up, no urgency, or deals being pushed forward prematurely
  

• Frequent “no budget” or “price too high”
  → Could mean poor qualification, mismatched value messaging, or misaligned packaging
  

• Lots of “chose to do nothing”
  → May indicate weak pain discovery or failure to build a strong business case
  

• High “internal timing” or “delays”
  → You may need to build better close plans and multithread decision-makers
  

Pro Tip:

Revisit this report monthly. Pull 10–20 lost deals and review them with your sales team. Ask:

• Was this reason accurate?

• Could we have uncovered this earlier in the process?

• How could we have prevented this from entering the pipeline?
  

This not only sharpens your team, it feeds directly into better qualification, cleaner forecasting, and stronger close rates.

What Great Looks Like:

• Every lost deal has a reason attached

• Reps are consistent and thoughtful in logging why

• Leadership reviews these patterns regularly and uses them to improve

• You close fewer bad-fit deals and more right-fit ones

• Your sales cycle shortens over time as bad leads are filtered out faster

Final Thought: Reports Aren’t Just for RevOps, They’re for Revenue

You don’t need a complex tech stack or a data team to build clarity into your sales motion. You just need the right reports,  the ones that give you visibility into what’s working, what’s not, and what to do next.

Set these five reports up early, revisit them often, and use them to make decisions that drive actual revenue,  not just dashboards that look good in a board meeting.

Clarity scales. Start there.