Sales dashboards: examples, vendors, & how to get started

Sales teams today face numerous challenges, from managing complex pipelines to meeting ambitious quotas in competitive markets.

By leveraging data effectively, sales orgs can identify sales pipeline opportunities, overcome obstacles, and otherwise drive informed decision-making.

One of the easiest ways to do this is by leveraging sales dashboards, which can provide a centralized, real-time view of key metrics that helps everyone across the revenue side of the organization stay on track and remain focused on what matters most.

Sales dashboards: What & why

A sales dashboard is a visual representation of key sales metrics and performance indicators, offering a centralized, real-time view of data. 

Sales dashboards help sales leaders understand the health of their pipelines, track team performance, and identify opportunities for growth. For sales teams, dashboards simplify goal tracking, highlight areas of improvement, and ensure alignment with organizational objectives.

Dashboards aren’t a one-size-fits-all. Having different sales dashboards tailored to specific roles is critical for success because executives, leaders, and team members all need unique insights to make informed decisions.

• For sales leaders, dashboards provide a high-level view of pipeline status, quota attainment, and revenue forecasts, enabling them to identify risks and allocate resources effectively.

• For sales teams, individual reps can use dashboards to monitor their own performance, track progress against targets, and focus on high-priority tasks.

• For business executives, dashboards offer critical insights into revenue trends and sales efficiency, empowering them to align sales goals with broader strategic objectives.

No matter the role, sales dashboards are a vital tool for driving success and maintaining a competitive edge in today’s data-driven business landscape.

How to create a sales dashboard

Creating an effective sales dashboard starts with understanding the specific metrics and goals that are most important to your organization. Follow these steps to build a dashboard that empowers your team, aligns with your business objectives, and sets the stage for smarter decision-making.

1. Decide on the sales metrics you want to track

The first step in setting up a sales dashboard is deciding on the key metrics you want to track. 

These metrics should align with your organization’s goals and reflect what’s critical for assessing performance and driving growth. 

‍Common metrics include:

• Lead conversion rates
• Revenue generated
• Quota attainment
• Win rates
• Average deal size
• Sales cycle length

Whatever you decide, it’s important that the metrics are adjusted to the needs of your sales team, along with leadership and executives, so they can access the most relevant data to make informed decisions. By focusing on the right metrics, your dashboard will offer actionable insights and help steer the team toward their goals.

2. Define how your team will utilize the dashboard

Once you’ve decided which metrics to track, the next step is to figure out how often your team will use the dashboard. At this point, it’s important to consider how different roles — sales reps, managers, and executives — will interact with the data. 

For example, reps may use the dashboard to monitor their daily performance and pipeline status while sales managers might focus on team-wide metrics, like conversion rates and quota attainment. Executives, on the other hand, might use it to gain insights into overall revenue trends and forecasting on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. 

By defining clear use cases for each user group, you can ensure that the dashboard is built to meet each user’s specific needs, making it a powerful tool for increasing productivity and alignment across the team.

3. Select a provider for your sales dashboard

When selecting a provider for your sales dashboard, it’s important to choose one that fits your team’s needs, budget, and technical capabilities. 

While larger organizations might benefit from more comprehensive, specialized dashboard tools, smaller teams or those with limited budgets might be best off using Google Sheets and Zapier as a cost-effective solution. This approach allows you to automate data collection and create customizable dashboards without needing to invest in expensive software. Oftentimes, your main CRM provider or sales system has built-in dashboard functionality which can be customized to your needs or piped into other places like Tableau or Domo.

Regardless of the solution you choose, make sure you select one that integrates seamlessly with your existing systems and provides the flexibility you need to track metrics effectively. For this reason, it may be worthwhile to rope engineering into the conversation. Some teams also hire outside consultants to set the dashboards up rather than using internal resources because those folks may not have the necessary expertise and may be drawn away from their real day jobs.

4. Import data into the dashboard

Once you’ve selected a dashboarding solution, it’s time to import the relevant data. This involves connecting your data sources — like your CRM, marketing platforms, and sales tracking tools — to the dashboard, ensuring that all important metrics are automatically updated in real time.

Depending on the dashboard tool you’re using, you may need to configure integrations or use APIs to streamline data flow. If you’re using a more manual approach, like Sheets and Zapier, you’ll need to set up automated workflows to pull data from various platforms and populate the dashboard.

Ensuring data accuracy during this step is crucial since incorrect or outdated information can undermine the effectiveness of the dashboard and lead to poor decision-making. By automating data imports, you can ensure that your dashboard always reflects the most up-to-date performance metrics.

We highly recommend running a data cleaning exercise prior to importing the data. Encourage your team to ensure that the CRM and other tools are updated and accurate… or else! (Just kidding — but they should be motivated to ensure accuracy.)

5. Create reports based on the sales dashboard

Once your sales dashboard is set up and populated with data, the next step is to create reports based on the insights it provides. These reports should meet specific needs — like tracking performance over time, analyzing conversion rates, or forecasting future revenue.

By using the data visualized on your dashboard, you can generate reports that help you identify trends, spot issues, and measure progress toward goals. These reports can be shared with the sales team, managers, and executives to drive informed decision-making and ensure alignment across the organization. 

In reality, you can’t expect a busy executive to click around a dashboard and try to understand what they’re looking at. By having automated sales reports sent to them, with the details in the dashboard, you can make everyone happy and successful. 

Sales dashboard examples

Now that you have a better idea of why sales dashboards are important and how to set them up, let’s examine four examples of sales dashboards to give you a better idea of how different metrics and visualizations can improve sales performance across your organization.

Sales activity dashboard

A sales activity dashboard focuses on tracking the day-to-day activities and efforts of the sales team, which helps managers and reps measure productivity. 

It highlights key actions taken by team members, ensuring that sales processes are followed and goals are met consistently. This type of dashboard is essential for understanding how sales reps are spending their time and where adjustments might be needed to drive better results.

A sales activity dashboard might include:

• Number of calls made
• Emails sent and responses received
• Meetings scheduled and attended
• Follow-ups completed
• Opportunities created or updated

Sales pipeline dashboard

A sales pipeline dashboard provides a visual representation of the stages each deal is in, helping sales teams track progress and identify where to focus their efforts.

It allows managers to monitor the health of the pipeline, forecast future revenue, and identify bottlenecks or opportunities for improvement. This dashboard is essential for understanding which deals need attention and ensuring that sales reps are moving leads through the pipeline efficiently.

‍A sales pipeline dashboard might include:

• Number of opportunities at each pipeline stage
• Value of deals in progress
• Win rate by stage
• Average deal size
• Time spent in each stage of the pipeline

Sales leader dashboard

A sales leader dashboard is designed to give sales managers and executives a high-level overview of the team’s performance and sales health. 

It aggregates key metrics across the sales team, providing insights into how individual reps are performing, how the team is progressing on goals, and the overall sales forecast. This dashboard helps sales leaders make data-driven decisions, identify areas for coaching, and adjust strategies to maximize sales efficiency and success.

A sales leader dashboard might include:

• Total sales revenue vs. targets
• Team performance vs. quotas
• Top-performing reps and their metrics
• Sales cycle time and conversion rates
• Forecasted revenue for the upcoming period

Executive sales dashboard

An executive sales dashboard provides high-level insights into the overall performance of the sales organization, helping C-suite executives and senior leaders make strategic decisions. It focuses on critical metrics that reflect the company’s sales health, growth trends, and revenue forecasts. 

This dashboard allows executives to identify potential risks and opportunities for improvement across the organization.

An executive sales dashboard might include:

• Total revenue and growth year-over-year
• Sales performance vs. business objectives
• Sales forecasts and pipeline health
• Profit margins and deal profitability
• Customer acquisition and retention rates

Sales dashboard providers

By now, you have a pretty solid idea of the power of sales dashboards. Next, we’ll explore some of the top sales dashboard providers on the market today that can help your organization track and visualize sales performance. 

Salesforce

Salesforce is a powerful CRM platform that offers robust sales dashboard capabilities, providing real-time insights into sales performance, pipeline health, and revenue forecasting. With customizable reports and visualizations, Salesforce helps sales teams and leaders monitor key metrics and make data-driven decisions to optimize sales processes.

HubSpot

HubSpot is a comprehensive CRM and marketing automation platform that includes intuitive sales dashboards designed to help teams track performance and optimize their sales processes. With customizable reports and visualizations, HubSpot allows sales leaders to monitor key metrics like deal stages, revenue forecasts, and team activity.

Zoho

Zoho is another CRM that provides robust sales dashboard capabilities to help teams track and analyze sales performance. With customizable charts and reports, Zoho enables sales leaders to monitor key metrics like lead conversion, pipeline stages, and revenue growth, allowing for data-driven strategies and performance optimization.

Geckoboard

Geckoboard is a user-friendly dashboard tool that helps sales teams visualize key metrics and track performance in real time. With easy-to-customize dashboards, Geckoboard enables sales leaders to display data from various sources, offering insights into pipeline health, sales progress, and team performance for better decision-making and alignment across teams. 

Klipfolio

Klipfolio is a powerful dashboard tool that allows sales teams to track key metrics and performance indicators in real time. With its customizable and interactive dashboards, Klipfolio integrates data from multiple sources, enabling sales leaders to monitor things like pipeline progress, sales goals, and team activity to make informed decisions.

Tableau

Tableau is a leading data visualization tool that enables sales teams to create interactive and detailed dashboards for tracking key performance metrics. With its advanced analytics capabilities, Tableau is best suited for the enterprise and helps sales leaders gain insights into sales performance, pipeline trends, and forecasts.

Databox

Databox is a performance management tool that offers customizable sales dashboards to help teams track key metrics and visualize their progress in real time. With integrations across various data sources, Databox lets sales leaders monitor pipeline health, revenue performance, and team activity, providing actionable insights they can use to lead their team to better outcomes.

Google Sheets + Zapier

Dealing with a tight budget? Together, Google Sheets and Zapier provide a cost-effective solution for creating custom sales dashboards for smaller teams. By automating data flows between various tools with Zapier and syncing them to Google Sheets, teams can create personalized dashboards to track key sales metrics — like lead generation, sales pipeline progress, and conversion rates — without the need for complex software. 

Sales dashboard tips

Unfortunately, you can’t just add a sales dashboard into your team’s arsenal and expect amazing results overnight. Follow these tips to increase the chances you can unlock the full potential of dashboards and help your team get to the next level.

Implement sales dashboards into existing meetings

By implementing sales dashboards into existing meetings, you can ensure your team stays aligned and remains focused on the most important metrics. By reviewing the dashboards regularly during meetings, you can quickly identify trends, address challenges, and celebrate wins in real time. 

Use clean layouts that teams (and executives) understand

If your team isn’t able to understand what a dashboard is saying, what good does it do? Using clean and simple dashboard layouts makes it easier for both teams and executives to interpret the data quickly and accurately. A well-organized dashboard helps users focus on key metrics without feeling overwhelmed, leading to more effective decision-making and alignment.

Make it accessible

Making your sales dashboards easily accessible ensures that team members and executives can quickly view and analyze data whenever they need to. By providing access across devices and integrating dashboards with other sales tools, you can empower your team to make data-driven decisions in real time, regardless of location, and experience better business outcomes because of it.

Make sure they’re right!

Perhaps most importantly, you must ensure that your sales dashboards are accurate. Otherwise, you simply can’t make reliable, data-driven decisions. By regularly validating and updating the data sources you’re using, you can avoid errors that could mislead your team and force you to make the wrong decisions.

Give LeadIQ’s sales dashboards a spin today!

At LeadIQ, we’re all about helping sales teams work as efficiently and effectively as possible, which is why we’ve included robust dashboarding tools in our platform.

To learn more about how LeadIQ’s dashboarding capabilities can help your team soar to new heights, read this.

‍