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Best Practices for Sales Dashboards

Best Practices for Sales Dashboards

Overview

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What is the goal of a Sales Dashboard?

A dashboard comes in handy if someone wants to get the most important information without searching all over. If done well, a sales dashboard is a quick way to keep track of sales data analysis. The convenience of a sales dashboard on the go is something even industry leaders can swear by!

A sales dashboard is mostly made up of information from important metrics. Despite their popularity, no two sales dashboards are the same. One dashboard can vary from another depending on what metrics are important to the company’s sales team.  

What metrics and trends are worth having on a dashboard?

Choosing what metrics to include is the most difficult step in building a dashboard. The metrics to include will largely depend on the goals that the company wants to track, key performance indicators, and its intended audience.

 These are some of the key metrics to have on a dashboard:

Leads by Source

Companies need to keep tabs on client numbers and characteristics. Usual sources are grouped by data from conferences, trade show booth meetings, website demo sign-ups, or referrals.

Open activities

The second most common metric across a dashboard is the to-do list. These are activities that have to be done to stay on top of your game in sales. Having the to-do list on standby helps to keep tabs on what actions need attention.

Open Cases

These are already engaged customers that are currently interacting with the company. Open cases provide a chance to close a deal and tend to be time-sensitive.

Open Opportunities

This one is for potential leads that turn to open opportunities. These are the next phase of attention for the company as they can easily proceed to open cases. Most open opportunities are contacts from potential leads.

Opportunities Past Due

Count opportunities past due as interested clients who were not contacted for one reason or another. Many opportunities past due are clients still in contact but are waiting for pending responses. If the number keeps piling, consider getting an extra hand around.Unsatisfied clients can quickly turn negative for the business.

Closed opportunities

This is the most important sales metric if revenue comes from commissions. These are closed deals that we reserved successfully. Taking note of this metric can help determine the sales capacity for the business. Likewise, it also helps understand trends and how they affect sales in the business.

Sales cycle

Usually represents the process a salesperson uses to convert a lead into a closed opportunity. Maintaining a record of sales cycle duration helps to measure the team’s effectiveness. High sales cycle figures could indicate a possible slouch in sales.

Sales Pipeline

This is a representation of where each potential client is on the sales pipeline. Use this information to understand sales progression and how to tailor messages for the clients.

Sales by closed date

Depending on your set requirements, sales by closed date show the date a sale was closed. Opting fora closed date sale record usually shows when sales are most effective. A sales streak is portrayed as a cluster of points. If repetitive, they can serve as a basis for understanding market trends.

Win/loss rate

A salesperson’s efficiency is a measure between closed and lost deals. The win/loss rate is the best indicator showing how much conversion occurs in the sale period. It is gotten from comparing how many deals were closed and how many were lost.

Adopting these metrics in a sales performance dashboard provides a tool for keeping up with the required data while staying informed on the sales team’s progress.

Best practices to maintain a sales dashboard

Having a sales dashboard is one thing; maintaining it is another. Despite popular belief, a sales dashboard needs constant attention to maintain its relevance. The dashboard isn’t intended to be fixed- it can always be tweaked to provide even better results and more convenience than the current version.

The following are the best practices in ensuring your sales dashboard is up to date.  

Update data frequently

Maintaining up to date information goes a long way in ensuring the dashboard stays relevant

Keeping the dashboard clean

Sometimes we can get leftover tabs for unused metrics. Clearing them helps maintain that organized look

Choosing relevant metrics

Perhaps the most underrated practice for a sales dashboard. Metrics sometimes become irrelevant, especially with changing systems. Adopting new relevant metrics helps keep up to date

Take a glance test.

You can try testing the effectiveness of your sales dashboard by doing the glance test. It entails seeing if the available information is viewable at a glance.

 

Who is going to use the dashboard?

Having an effective sales performance dashboard primarily depends on who will be using it. For instance, administrators keeping tabs need different sales dashboards from sales representatives.

The same department can often have different sales dashboard layouts to cater to different sales data analysis needs. Getting a suitable dashboard relies on knowing which information is useful for the occasion.

How to design a sales dashboard for the right audience

Attaining the right dashboard relies on understanding which characteristics are crucial. For instance, managers are most likely interested in overall revenue and general performance.In contrast, team leaders are generally concerned with the individual performance of their members.

There are several sales dashboard examples depending on their use case. Commonly used dashboards include sales opportunities dashboard, monthly sales dashboard, sales leaderboard dashboard, the sales product performance dashboard, deal performance dashboard, win/loss dashboard, sales performance by region, sales activities dashboard, performance overview sales dashboard, and the time-tracking sales dashboard.

Integrating a sales dashboard goes a long way in streamlining operations. Whether for personal or office use, a sales dashboard is an effective tool for keeping up with variables. As you configure your sales dashboard, make sure to reference our 5-step guide to designing an effective dashboard.

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