Sales dashboard – do you need one and which one should you choose?

Sales dashboards are almost elementary for every business. To find out if you need a sales dashboard, in this article we look at the following:

• What is a sales dashboard?
• What does a sales dashboard contain?
• Benefits of a sales dashboard
• Which sales dashboard should you choose?
• Factors to consider when choosing a sales dashboard

What is a sales dashboard?

A sales dashboard is a tool used to visualize and monitor sales data. It is a graphical representation of key performance indicators (KPIs). The aim is to give teams and managers a quick overview of the status of goals and sales analytics. Dashboards enable users to track key metrics in real-time and make data-driven decisions. Sales dashboards are especially used in B2B sales, as B2B companies typically have a larger sales team.

What does a sales dashboard contain?

A typical sales dashboard should show KPIs for the sales effort. Exactly which KPIs the dashboard should show can depend on several things such as how long a sales process you have, the focus of the sales effort – in general, we see many have a sales dashboard that contains the following:

1. Sales figures: Total sales, sales per region, sales per product, sales per employee.
2. Sales goals and KPIs: Percentage achievement of goals, pipeline status and forecasting.
3. Top performing products or employees: Shows top performing products or sales people.
4. Customers and leads: New leads, conversion rate, customer satisfaction, customer lifetime value.
5. Geographic data: Sales broken down by region or country.
6. Marketing data: Effectiveness of marketing campaigns, ROI on marketing activities.
7. Offer status: Number of open offers, closed offers and expected number of offers closed.
8. Feedback and customer reviews: Customer reviews and feedback, net promoter score (NPS).

The above KPIs on your sales dashboard can help create a motivating culture that works towards growing your business.

Benefits of a sales dashboard

A dashboard has many obvious benefits, such as the motivation it gives the team to see the status and celebrate wins as soon as customers are closed. In addition to these benefits, sales dashboards also come with the following advantages:

1. Real-time monitoring: Ability to track sales performance in real-time, helping to make quick decisions.
2. Greater transparency: Provides a clear overview of KPIs, helping to identify strengths and weaknesses in the sales process.
3. Efficient reporting: Automates reporting processes, saving time and reducing errors compared to manual reports.
4. Data-driven decisions: Help managers base their decisions on data instead of assumptions and hunches.
5. Goal tracking: Makes it easy to track whether sales goals are being achieved.
6. Increased productivity: By visualizing important data, salespeople and managers can quickly see where to focus their efforts.
7. Improved sales strategy: Provides insights into sales trends and the effectiveness of different strategies, helping to fine-tune and improve sales strategies.
8. Motivation and instant celebration: Can act as a motivational tool by showing individual and team performance against targets and quotas.

A well-designed sales dashboard is therefore an invaluable tool for any sales organization looking to optimize their performance and achieve better results.

Which sales dashboard should you choose?

Choosing a sales dashboard depends on several factors, including your size, needs, budget and existing tech stack. Here are some popular options:

1. Your CRM dashboard: Choosing your CRM system as your sales dashboard can be the obvious choice, as it pulls the data directly from the same system, easily and efficiently. Many CRM systems are designed to provide a report on, among other things, sales status and sales efforts – like HubSpot, for example, has HubSpot Sales Hub.
2. Plecto: Plecto is a Danish company that specializes in delivering dashboards for sales and more. With Plecto, you can view sales efforts and status in real time and celebrate deals won or meetings booked in an effective way to grow your performance culture. Plecto is easy and user-friendly to set up – you can read more about Plecto here.

Features to consider when choosing a sales dashboard

When considering a sales dashboard, there are several things you need to consider to make it a success. Below we have gathered some of the considerations you should make / the criteria you need to make sure your sales dashboard fulfills:

1. Integration: Make sure the dashboard can integrate with your existing systems and tools.
2. Ease of use: It should be easy to use and adapt to your specific needs.
3. Scalability: Choose a solution that can grow with your business.
4. Price: Consider both initial costs and ongoing costs.
5. Support and training: Make sure support and training is available to help you get the most out of the tool.
6. Features: Consider which specific features are most important to your business, such as reporting, visualizations, real-time data updates, etc.

Meet some of our sales management experts

Kasper Bjerggaard

Kasper is Co-founder of Radiant and has extensive experience in B2B sales across the verticals; Finance, Professional Services, Tech and SaaS. Kasper has and is involved in the strategic and tactical aspects of sales processes and with a practical experience he bridges the gap between strategy and execution in sales processes.

Christoffer Tofte

Christoffer is a Partner at Radiant and has a very broad and professional background in B2B sales. Christoffer has helped tailor sales processes for some of the country’s largest companies and startups. Here is a selection of tasks he solves within sales processes:

• Understanding the sales process from lead to deal
• Optimizing the sales process based on data
• Building, executing and continuously optimizing sales processes