How to Create the Ultimate Sales Dashboard (+7 Best Tools)

Sales dashboards are frequently misunderstood – and misused – by sales team leaders and business intelligence pros.

That’s why I wrote this guide to creating the “ultimate” sales dashboard – with a list of the most important metrics to track.

Ready? Let’s jump right in!

What Is a Sales Dashboard?

A sales dashboard is a convenient location where you can view all the sales metrics that are most important for your organization.

Think of it like a car dashboard. Your car’s dashboard tells you how fast you’re going, how the engine is performing, how far you’ve traveled, and (in modern vehicles) whether everyone is buckled up. It’s a convenient place where all the most relevant, important information to the driver is contained.

Sales dashboards work in a similar fashion. You should be able to glance down, review some quick numbers, and use that information to guide your next actions.

What’s important is that you have accurate information on the most valuable metrics for your organization.

How to Create a Sales Dashboard

How do you go about creating a sales dashboard?

Your best bet is to choose a sales data analytics tool that offers a bit of everything, including data capture and collection and sales dashboard management.

If you’re already collecting data using an existing CRM platform, ERP software, or another business intelligence (BI) tool, your best bet is to work with a sales dashboard provider.

Here are a few well-known ones:

1. Monday
2. Datapine
3. Tableau
4. Pipedrive
5. Qlik
6. Klipfolio
7. Outreach

Sales Dashboard Examples

The best way to get a better idea of how sales dashboards work (and get some ideas for how to create your own dashboard) is to look at real-life examples of dashboards for sales.

A simple Google search for “sales dashboard examples” will present you with dozens, if not hundreds of sales dashboard businesses – all of whom have unique design elements and dashboard ideas you can use to make your decision (or inspire your own sales dashboard).

Here are a few examples I found that I like:

1. Sales rep dashboard

Image source

2. Sales leaderboard

Image source

3. Sales performance overview dashboard

Image source

15 Important Metrics to Track in Any Sales Dashboard

The exact metrics you display in your sales dashboard should depend on your needs and the people viewing it. For example, your sales reps, sales managers, partners, and investors will all want to see different things.

However, these are some of the most important sales metrics to track in any dashboard:

1. Closed sales.

How many sales are your sales reps closing? How many deals were closed in the past day? In the past week? How many have been closed so far today? It’s possibly the most important bottom-line figure for your sales department, so it’s usually at the top of a sales dashboard.

2. Total revenue.

Your team may have closed several deals, but how much revenue has been generated from those deals? Revenue stats are a great way to prove the value your sales reps are providing – and it can serve as an early red flag that your sales are in decline, or that there are inefficiencies in your organization to iron out.

3. Leads generated.

How many leads are being generated by your sales team? If you notice a drop in closed sales and total revenue, but the number of leads being provided is still as high as ever, you can better isolate the root of the problem.

4. Deals in the pipeline.

How many deals are currently in the pipeline? This can help you analyze the effectiveness of your pipeline and give you the groundwork to make short-term sales projections.

5. Win rate.

Win rate is one of the best ways to analyze the core of your sales reps’ performances. What percentage of your opportunities become closed deals? And how does this number change over time? When you change strategies, do you see a higher win rate? Do some team members have higher win rates than others?

6. Average deal size.

How big is the average deal? This can be a great way to determine how good your salespeople are at upselling. Or you might use it to learn more about the buying habits of your best customers.

7. Time to close.

In sales, bottom-line numbers aren’t everything. Your win rate might be high, but if it takes too long to close a deal, your organization may not be working as efficiently as it could. Generally, most organizations strive to hasten this process and shorten the time it takes to close an average deal.

8. Sales forecast accuracy.

Your sales dashboard should be able to build in your sales forecast – so you can determine how accurate it is and possibly make changes. Is your team on track to hit its quarterly objectives?

9. Response time.

How long does it take for your sales team members to respond to emails or phone calls? Deals are sometimes won or lost based on how quickly a sales rep can act; don’t let a slow response time ruin an otherwise sound sales strategy.

10. Time spent selling (and other time metrics).

Productivity metrics are also valuable to track in a sales dashboard. At a glance, you can figure out how much time your sales reps are spending selling (rather than being held up in meetings or caught doing administrative work) and how productive they are.

11. Follow-up rate.

The art of the follow-up is critical in most sales environments. Are your employees doing a good job of following up with their leads? How quickly and how consistently are those follow-ups unfolding?

12. Sales growth.

How are your sales growing over time? Depending on your needs, you might review sales growth throughout the week, the month, or over the course of years. Are you reaching your growth objectives?

13. Customer acquisition cost (CAC).

Landing sales is always a good thing, but it’s not a guarantee that your business is on the path to success. If your customer acquisition cost (CAC) is too high, it could jeopardize the profitability of the entire operation. You’ll want to keep this as low as possible while maximizing your closed sales.

14. Sales cycle length.

How long is your sales cycle, on average, and how does it typically unfold? The better you understand your customers’ patterns, the better you’ll be able to serve them.

15. Various ratios.

It’s also useful to measure a number of different ratios. For example, what is your lead to opportunity ratio? What about leads to closed sales? Different organizations will have different priorities here.

Once you get a taste of how powerful and effective a dashboard can be, you’ll want a dashboard for everything. For sales. For marketing.

For email?

Yep, email too. The average professional spends up to 73% of their workday on email. Do you have any idea how much time you’re spending on email? Or how your team members are using email on a daily basis?

EmailAnalytics has the answers. Set it up for your account or your employees’ – then get access to dozens of metrics, like average email response time and number of emails sent and received over a given time period. From there, you can make critical organizational changes to improve productivity, close more sales, and maybe even boost morale.

Want to see what it’s like?

Now’s the perfect time – you can sign up for a free trial today!