Key Terms
Sales Dashboard: A visual display that consolidates key sales metrics in one location, enabling quick performance assessment and data-driven decision making.
Win Rate: The percentage of sales opportunities that convert into closed deals, measuring core sales rep effectiveness.
Sales Pipeline: The visual representation of where prospects are in the sales process, from initial contact to closed deal.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): The total cost of acquiring a new customer, including marketing and sales expenses divided by customers gained.
Sales Cycle Length: The average time from first contact with a prospect to closing the deal, measuring efficiency of the sales process.
A sales dashboard is a central location displaying your most important sales metrics—like closed deals, revenue, win rate, and response time—so you can quickly assess performance and guide your next actions.
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.
What Is a Sales Dashboard and Why Do You Need One?
A sales dashboard is a convenient location to view all sales metrics most important to your organization. Think of it like a car dashboard—glance down, review key numbers, and guide your next actions.
Your car’s dashboard tells you how fast you’re going, how the engine is performing, how far you’ve traveled, and 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 similarly. 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 Do You Create a Sales Dashboard?
Choose a sales data analytics tool that offers data capture, collection, and dashboard management. If you already use a CRM or business intelligence tool, integrate with a dedicated dashboard provider.
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 tool, your best bet is to work with a sales dashboard provider.
Popular sales dashboard tools include: Monday, Datapine, Tableau, Pipedrive, Qlik, Klipfolio, and Outreach.
What Are the Best Sales Dashboard Examples?
Three common dashboard types: sales rep dashboards (individual performance), sales leaderboards (team rankings and competition), and sales performance overviews (organization-wide metrics and trends).
The best way to get ideas for your own dashboard is to look at real-life examples. A simple Google search for “sales dashboard examples” will present dozens of options with unique design elements you can use for inspiration.
1. Sales Rep Dashboard — Focuses on individual salesperson metrics like personal closed deals, response times, and pipeline status. Best for helping reps track their own performance against goals.
2. Sales Leaderboard — Ranks team members by key metrics to foster healthy competition. Displays comparative performance data like deals closed, revenue generated, or activity levels.
3. Sales Performance Overview Dashboard — Provides organization-wide view of revenue, pipeline health, forecast accuracy, and growth trends. Best for managers and executives monitoring overall sales health.
What Bottom-Line Metrics Should Every Sales Dashboard Track?
Track closed sales (deals won), total revenue (money generated), leads generated (pipeline input), and deals in pipeline (current opportunities) as your core bottom-line indicators.
1. Closed Sales — How many sales are your reps closing? How many deals closed today, this week, this month? 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? Revenue stats prove the value your sales reps provide and can serve as an early red flag that sales are declining or inefficiencies need addressing.
3. Leads Generated — How many leads are being generated by your sales team? If closed sales and revenue drop but leads remain high, you can better isolate the root cause of problems.
4. Deals in the Pipeline — How many deals are currently in the pipeline? This helps analyze pipeline effectiveness and provides groundwork for short-term sales projections.
What Sales Performance Metrics Reveal Rep Effectiveness?
Win rate (opportunities to closed deals), average deal size (revenue per sale), and time to close (deal velocity) reveal how effectively your reps convert opportunities into revenue.
5. Win Rate — One of the best ways to analyze core sales rep performance. What percentage of opportunities become closed deals? How does this change over time? When you change strategies, does win rate improve? Do some team members have higher win rates than others?
6. Average Deal Size — How big is the average deal? This metric determines how good your salespeople are at upselling, or helps you 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 work as efficiently as it could. Generally, organizations strive to shorten average time to close.
What Activity Metrics Measure Sales Productivity?
Response time, time spent selling, and follow-up rate reveal whether reps are actively engaging prospects. Deals are often won or lost based on speed of response.
9. Response Time — How long does it take for 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 slow response time ruin an otherwise sound sales strategy.
10. Time Spent Selling — Productivity metrics are valuable to track at a glance. Figure out how much time your sales reps spend selling rather than being held up in meetings or doing administrative work, and how productive they are overall.
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 leads? How quickly and consistently are those follow-ups unfolding?
What Strategic Metrics Guide Long-Term Sales Decisions?
Sales forecast accuracy, sales growth, customer acquisition cost (CAC), sales cycle length, and conversion ratios help you plan resources, set realistic targets, and ensure profitability.
8. Sales Forecast Accuracy — Your sales dashboard should build in your sales forecast so you can determine how accurate it is and make changes. Is your team on track to hit its quarterly objectives?
12. Sales Growth — How are your sales growing over time? Depending on your needs, review sales growth throughout the week, month, or over years. Are you reaching your growth objectives?
13. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) — Landing sales is always good, but it’s not a guarantee of success. If your CAC is too high, it could jeopardize profitability of the entire operation. Keep this as low as possible while maximizing closed sales.
14. Sales Cycle Length — How long is your sales cycle on average, and how does it typically unfold? The better you understand customer patterns, the better you’ll be able to serve them.
15. Various Ratios — It’s also useful to measure different ratios. What is your lead to opportunity ratio? What about leads to closed sales? Different organizations will have different priorities here.
How Can You Track Email Performance in Your Sales Dashboard?
The average professional spends up to 73% of their workday on email. EmailAnalytics tracks email response time, volume, and patterns to identify bottlenecks.
Once you see how powerful a dashboard can be, you’ll want one for everything—sales, marketing, and 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 use email daily?
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 time. From there, you can make critical organizational changes to improve productivity, close more sales, and boost morale.
Want to see what it’s like? Sign up for a free trial today!
Frequently Asked Questions About Sales Dashboards
Jayson is a long-time columnist for Forbes, Entrepreneur, BusinessInsider, Inc.com, and various other major media publications, where he has authored over 1,000 articles since 2012, covering technology, marketing, and entrepreneurship. He keynoted the 2013 MarketingProfs University, and won the “Entrepreneur Blogger of the Year” award in 2015 from the Oxford Center for Entrepreneurs. In 2010, he founded a marketing agency that appeared on the Inc. 5000 before selling it in January of 2019, and he is now the CEO of EmailAnalytics and OutreachBloom.
