In the words of Max Levchin, the co-founder of PayPal, “The world is now awash in data, and we can see consumers in a lot clearer ways.”
Looking at the massive influx of startups in the global market, sales teams are now faced with growing pressure from business executives to gain more customers and increase revenue growth for the organization.
To meet these targets, sales reps have to work with data to gain insights into their customers, analyze their actions and manage their sales performance – which is where sales dashboards come in.
The use of data in present-day sales management provides sales managers and business executives with valuable insights into customer behaviors and trends to enable them to make more informed, data-backed decisions.
Imagine if you have to manually generate hundreds of leads weekly, qualify and follow up on them while still managing your existing customers – that screams burnout and will not yield any good results.
In this guide, we’ll give you an expansive overview of what a sales dashboard is, including tips on how you can create the right dashboard for your teams.
Table of content
- What is a sales dashboard?
- What are the benefits of a sales dashboard?
- What should be included in a sales dashboard?
- How to create a sales dashboard?
- Tips for creating your sales dashboard?
- Sales dashboard examples
What is a sales dashboard?
A sales dashboard is a sales app that presents a visual representation of sales data. It gives sales managers and business executives access to up-to-date sales data, sales team performance, and sales KPIs as well as monitors the sales process in one central place.
Dashboards are a fundamental tool for businesses looking to improve sales performance and productivity, increase revenue and enhance business growth.
A more interesting fact about dashboards is that they give you actionable insights into your sales activity – where you can view all your sales calls, emails, lead conversion rate, sales growth, and the average lead response time.
With loads of work and daily targets that sales reps have to meet, working without sales dashboards would be counterproductive and only make them lose out on potential sales.
Imagine analyzing large sales data sets manually, doing this will undoubtedly increase the chances of making errors that can mess up the sales data. However, with a sales dashboard, you can monitor and organize your sales metrics into visual graphics.
Using a sales dashboard no doubt saves you time and eliminates the possibility of burnout and errors in sales data gathering and reports.
Sales managers and reps are the primary users of sales dashboards – sales reps can see their performance metrics, while sales managers can view the sales process as a whole. Explore some sales-related guides, sales funnel templates, sales qualified leads, B2B sales process and sales outreach tools.
What are the benefits of a sales dashboard?
A sales dashboard is a valuable tool in sales that enables sales teams to streamline the sales process and help sales reps track their key performance indicators (KPIs) to give room for better planning and execution.
Although there appears to be more emphasis on the importance of sales dashboards to sales teams, it is also a valuable tool for marketers and business executives. As a result, we will be sharing the importance of sales dashboards to the sales, marketing, and executive teams in the following;
1. Develop data-driven strategies for profit-making
Sales dashboards provide business executives with up-to-date data on sales performance and insights on their customers to help them make better decisions on strategic ways they can grow the company.
When leaders have accurate data on previous strategies that have worked and haven’t worked, they can make data-driven decisions on the ways the company can make profits and grow.
2. Improve internal communications
The information and insights generated from a sales dashboard will help business executives communicate their subsequent plans and strategies with the departments and stakeholders without creating any internal conflicts.
3. Save cost, time, and labor
A sales dashboard helps business executives to save costs on some of the tasks that would have been performed manually. By automating some of the sales tasks, sales dashboards can save time and effort by allocating other duties to the team while they automate other functions.
Aside from this, using a sales dashboard will also help employees be more effective and resourceful at work.
4. Monitor sales performance
The sales dashboard presents insights into how the sales reps and the company is performing. You can only improve what you measure, and so without tracking their sales performance and customer progression in the sales funnel, they won’t be able to develop data-driven strategies on how they can generate more revenue.
5. Achieve their KPIs
KPIs are set rules that an organization develops to help it achieve its business objectives. Sales dashboards show sales representatives their individual KPIs to help them plan their schedule and personal strategies to achieve and possibly exceed their KPIs.
Sales managers can also monitor the performance of their sales reps and plan accordingly on ways they can all work together to achieve the common goal.
6. Improve sales team alignment with marketing teams
If you have been very conversant with developments in sales, you would know by now that for sales teams to achieve their goals, they have to collaborate with the marketing team to align their plans and strategies to close deals.
The sales dashboard shows how leads are added to the sales pipeline and the marketing campaigns that helped generate the leads.
With this information, sales teams can work with the marketing teams to develop integrated marketing strategies on how they can generate more leads and improve profit.
7. Develop better marketing campaigns
Marketing teams in every organization are responsible for creating content and strategies that would increase brand awareness, generate leads and increase revenue. Sales dashboards present visuals on how sales leads are added to the pipeline and track how they progress from leads to sales qualified leads and eventually become customers.
When marketers monitor the performance of their campaigns and the types of leads they generate, they can use the data to improve their strategy to achieve better results.
What should be included in a sales dashboard?
Sales dashboards help you view your activity-based and result-based metrics. You can customize your sales dashboard to present the metrics that are relevant to you. However, some of the common metrics to include in modern sales dashboards include;
- Sales by region
- Sales to date
- Sales per rep
- Average purchase value
- Lead conversion rate
- Sell-through rate
- Quote-to-close
- Opportunities
- Sales target
- Average order value
- Deals in the pipeline
- Follow-up rate
- Lead response time
How to create a sales dashboard?
A sales dashboard can be created differently to fit the unique goals of every organization. Organizations need to research the best sales dashboards that are best suited for their business goals before committing to any.
To guide you on the steps to take to create a sales dashboard, we have identified the following steps for you to follow;
Step 1: Identify the sales metrics you need to track
For your sales dashboards to measure and provide you with the right insights, you have to ensure that you set up the right metrics to track.
To identify the important metrics for your team, consider reviewing your team’s goals to determine which metric will help team members to improve their day-to-day workflow.
Some of the crucial questions to help you determine the right metrics for your team;
- Which metrics are used and reviewed by executives, sales, and marketing teams?
- What are your KPIs?
- Are there existing metrics that are regarded as more important than others?
- Do you have multiple sales teams within your organization’s sales department?
After identifying your metrics, it is also important to outline the KPIs that will be measured with the sales dashboards, which we have provided below;
Two (2) sales KPIs to focus on in your sales dashboard?
1. Result-based KPIs
The result-based KPIs measure sales performance based on the results they generate. These KPIs focus on the output of sales activities. Result-based KPIs measures the following;
- The number of deals that the sales team is nurturing.
- The percentage of deals won vs. deals lost.
- How much revenue do you expect from each sales deal?
- The length of time it takes to close the deals.
- Total revenue generated across a specific time frame.
- How close are the sales teams to achieving the required sales?
- How long does it take for sales reps to respond to leads and new inquiries?
- Follow-up rate.
2. Activity-based KPIs
The activity-based KPIs measure sales performance based on the amount of work or output they are required to perform. They measure;
- How quickly a sales representative responds to leads?
- How many emails do they send?
- How many calls do they make?
- How many follow-up calls and emails do they send.
Step 2: Identify how you will be using the dashboard
A sales dashboard can be used in many ways to achieve various objectives. As explained in the earlier part of this guide, several teams and persons use dashboards to monitor performance and track activities.
You must identify why and what your team will be using the sales dashboard for – will the dashboard be used by sales managers to monitor the activities of the reps? Or will it be used by sales reps to track their progress? You will have to decide this and include it when creating dashboards.
For a guide, you can consider the following;
- Who will be using the dashboard?
- How will they be using it?
- What information will they want to see?
Step 3: Select a sales dashboard provider
Once you have determined what you will be using the dashboard for, the next step is to find and choose a dashboard that you can use.
Some of the sales dashboards that you can choose from include;
- Sloovi Outreach: this allows you to add thousands of sales leads, prioritize tasks and create sales reports from insights.
- Klipfolio: this allows you to use and combine data from your CRM and other services to create dashboards.
- HubSpot: this allows you to create reports and a dashboard for your team.
- Zoho Analytics: this allows you to track KPI metrics by creating a custom report.
Step 4: Add data to the dashboard
After you have successfully integrated CRM in your dashboards as explained in step three (3), the next step is to add data from your CRM and other data sources into your dashboard to track sales performance, identify top-performing sales reps, and create sales forecasts and reports, etc.
Step 5: Build reports for the sales dashboard
This is the final step, where you create reports of your activities and performance. You can use sales dashboards to view daily, weekly, or monthly performance or get insights on lead generation and their progress in their sales cycle.
You can select from a wide range of charts to visualize your sales data. Depending on the data used, dashboard charts can show you the following;
- Compare values – compare sales from lead generation
- Compose various sales activities
- Track monthly revenue growth.
Tips for creating your sales dashboard?
Now that you know the steps to take when creating your sales dashboard, it’s also important that you note some helpful tips to consider when creating your dashboard. They include;
Be Consistent
Consistency is key when creating your sales dashboards. Considering the number of tasks you can perform with the dashboard, ensure that you stay consistent when generating functions in the dashboard to help you track the right values every month.
Consider consistency in the following;
- Naming structures for your metrics, KPIs, teams, etc.
- Icons and visual elements.
- Date, time, and other text-based formats.
- Choice of color.
Use a clean layout
Considering that a dashboard visually represents metrics, KPIs, and other valuable functions, you must choose a simple, clean, and functional layout that will make it easy for everyone to view and track their activities.
Try not to make the interface too busy or too colorful. Organize the elements in grids if necessary to present the data better.
Minimalism is key
Try to keep the data sets to a minimum, don’t overdo it so it can be easy for every user to understand the data better. Include a maximum of six (6) to ten (10) data points as a rule of thumb so that every dashboard user can easily understand the data – you don’t want to confuse your team members by adding too much data to the dashboards.
Visualize properly
Considering the efficiency and functionality of a dashboard – to perform various tasks and view different milestones, you must visualize accurately for others to view and analyze the data and metrics properly. There are several ways to visualize on dashboards;
1. Line charts – to visualize trends and compare values.
2. Pie charts – to allocate numbers or percentages to values or metrics.
3. Bar charts – to present differences or growth rate of metrics or KPIs.
4. Pivot tables – to lay out exact numbers across categories and values.
5. Indicators – to provide snapshots of the performance of a metric.
Sales dashboard examples and templates
A Sales dashboard is an important sales tool used by sales teams to track and measure the sales activities that are crucial to achieving their goals. It is a key indicator of success.
Some of the examples of a sales dashboard that you can use for your sales team include;
1. Sales performance dashboard
The sales performance dashboard presents the overall team’s performance – how best they achieve their KPIs.
Who uses it: It is mostly used by sales managers and business executives.
What does it do? It provides an overview of your team’s performance, revenue generation, and current deals in the sales pipeline to focus on the right activities and manage accordingly.
Important KPIs and Metrics: customer lifetime value, lead generation, lead conversion, the value of the pipeline, and sales growth.
2. Sales pipeline dashboard
The sales pipeline dashboard tracks the progress of the teams and company by looking at how you get leads and manage them in the pipeline.
Who uses it: It is mostly used by sales reps, marketing reps, and sales managers.
What does it do? It provides a birdseye view of your progress and lets you know if you have the required pipeline to achieve your sales goals.
Important KPIs and Metrics: Lead conversion, lead sources, amount of pipeline, and open leads.
It tracks every sales team member’s level of productivity – shows how many activities are performed to achieve the sales goals.
Who uses it: It is mostly used by sales reps and sales managers
What does it do? It provides insights into the overall activities of the sales team.
Important KPIs and Metrics: Sales reps recent activities, the status of leads, and current tasks.
4. Upcoming tasks dashboard
It updates salespersons on the daily or weekly activities they need to work on.
Who uses it: It is mostly used by sales reps.
What does it do? It updates sales reps about their assigned tasks and upcoming ones.
Important KPIs and Metrics: Upcoming tasks and current activities.
5. Sales leadership dashboards
The sales leadership dashboard provides a sales manager and reps an overview of the team performance by measuring the revenue generated, sales deals won or lost, new customers, and sales-related activities performed by each sales rep.
Who uses it: The sales team uses this tool.
What does it do? This sales dashboard example helps sales managers and individual sales reps to monitor and track the performance of everyone on the team.
Important KPIs and Metrics: Deals won and lost by a rep, revenue generated by each salesperson.
6. Product performance dashboards
As the name implies, the product performance dashboard helps sales reps to sell their products. It is mostly used by sales teams that sell multiple products.
Who uses it: it is mostly used by sales teams.
What does it do? It provides updates on the performance of products and campaigns.
Important KPIs and Metrics: product performance, incremental sales, point of purchase, and cost of goods sold.
7. Top-performing customers dashboard
This dashboard helps business owners and sales managers to identify customers and customers’ accounts that have generated the best revenue.
Who uses it: it is used by Business owners and sales managers.
What does it do? It identifies customers that are bringing in the best revenue.
Important KPIs and Metrics: Top-performing accounts, recently closed deals, and account value.
8. Forecasting dashboard
This dashboard provides an overview of how sales and revenue increase or reduce within a given period.
Who uses it: used by sales managers and business planning team members.
What does it do? It provides insights into expected future revenue.
Important KPIs and Metrics: Current deals by pipeline stage and current pipeline value. Check out some related guides, B2B sales, SaaS sales, and tech sales.
Sales Dashboard FAQs
1. What is a sales dashboard?
It is a visual representation of sales performance and data.
2. Who uses a sales dashboard?
Sales managers, sales reps, marketing reps, and business executives.
3. How is a sales dashboard important to sales?
It helps streamline the sales process, monitor activities, and prioritize deals.
In conclusion
Sales dashboards are visual sales reports that show an overview of sales team performance, customer generation, and revenue growth during a specific period. They automate sales tasks and help the sales teams to save time and effort and improve productivity.