Sales gauge

5 Sales Dashboards to Drive Better Outcomes

What is the purpose of sales dashboards? What KPIs or metrics should they include?

In this article we share with you 5 types of dashboards and the metrics that can help you guide your team to success.

This includes:

  • Sales overview dashboard
  • Sales pipeline dashboard
  • Sales commission dashboard
  • Motivational scoreboards
  • Self-serve analytics dashboard

Some sales teams have all of these, while others choose a select few.

Either way, the main benefit of a sales dashboard is it provides you and your team with instant information about performance, processes and activities. Dashboards are role-based, so each team or user should be able to easily find the information he/she is looking for at the right level of detail. Better insight leads to better outcomes.

Let’s look at the different types:

Note: These are just examples. Every sales team should carefully select KPIs which are connected to their overarching goals and sales strategy.

Sales Overview Dashboard

The overview dashboard tracks actual and forecast sales compared to targets.  The target is the revenue budget or quota that you are trying to acheive this month, quarter or year.

The dashboard should provide information on different levels from company-wide through to region, team or individual. This ensures the leaders have the facts they need make decisions while managers have can monitor progress and better coach their team.

Some KPIs which are often included on ‘overview’ dashboards include:

  • Amount sold vs. budget
  • Amount  of revenue forecast
  • Number of opportunities
  • Top performers – value and percent of target acheived

The metrics are available for the current week, month or quarter, as well as for historic periods.

Sales Pipeline Dashboard

Sales reports on a dashboards

Sales pipeline dashboards help you understand where opportunities are coming from and how they are developing.

They provide current views of data, helping you track progress and ensure all possible opportunities are handled in the best way possible going forward. They also provide historic information, so you can look back to see how your pipeline (or multiple pipelines) is growing or shrinking, and use this data to generate even better results.

Sales pipeline dashboards often include:

  • Open sales by stage
  • Sales velocity metrics
  • Pipeline by close date
  • Pipeline fill versus requirements
  • Activity reports (e.g. number of customer meeting, offers sent etc.)
  • Number of opportunities without planned activity

Sales Commission Dashboard

Sales commission calculation

Commission dashboards calculate earnings based on the bonus structure and return the results on graphs and tables. Instead of doing manual calculations in spreadsheets, commissions are calculated automatically.

The dashboard tool should support you, whether you have a basic or flat commission model or have tiered calculations using advanced formulas.

A system administrator decides who can access the commission reports, the same way as other dashboards.

Commission dashboards can report and filter data for almost any time period or level:

  • Commission per category or org. unit
  • Sale commission per period
  • Earnings per person

Motivational Scoreboards

Scoreboards are specific types of dashboard which show the lstanding of a sales contest. Sales contests are a fun way to focus salespeople efforts around a common goal and boost activity levels.

The right kind of contest can be highly motiviting. The 4 most common formats include:

  • Individual – complete against yourself
  • Challenge – compete against others
  • Common goal – entire group work together towards specified target
  • Team vs team –  teams compete to see who reaches the target

When scoreboards are streamed to strategically placed TV screens or monitors, they can have an extra motivational effect and help to keep everyone involved.

To work effectively, each element of a scoreboard is carefully developed for maximum effect. This means:

  • Function and design is fit to purpose
  • Calculations are automatic
  • Information is updated dynamically

Self-service Dashboards

Self-service dashboards enable leaders and managers to run their own queries to company databases and navigate multiple layers of information – without needing technical skills.

System administrators manage user access, ensuring that users only see information they are authorized to view.

In the example below, sales managers can tap into order, purchasing or payment data to understand customer demand, optimize product mix, adjust pricing or identify cross-selling or upselling opportunities.

Here’s how it works:

  • select relevant filters
  • choose grouping
  • export results to other formats like Excel or Powerpoint

How to set up your dashboards

Now that you’ve seen some dashboards, you may be wondering what’s involved in building them.

There are many software tools on the market, but the general process is the same for all:

  • Define your KPIs and metrics
  • Connect to data
  • Build custom reports or adapt standard reports

Once you start tracking your most important KPIs, you can analyze the data to better understand what your doing well and where you can improve.

Would you like to know more about how to set up a dasbhoard for your business? Contact us

 

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