Tips for Creating a Sales Dashboard

When you’re juggling leads, closing deals, and trying to stay on top of your numbers, the last thing you need is a cluttered, confusing dashboard slowing you down. When it comes to a sales dashboard, you want something that’s actually useful, easy to navigate, and seamlessly integrates with your workflow. After all, sales professionals need to spot high-value opportunities and track key performance indicators (KPIs) fast.

According to the 2024 Salesforce State of Sales report, inadequate technology is a top-five challenge for sales leaders. In fact, 47% of sales professionals say navigating inaccurate or incomplete customer data is more difficult than it was just a year before.

Sales dashboards are increasingly versatile tools that help inform sales and other business decisions at every step. With the right cross-platform sales and work operating system, you can better understand your customers’ needs and how to meet them most effectively.

Here’s what to know about how to create an optimal sales dashboard.

What is a sales dashboard?

A sales dashboard is like a command center for your sales data: It brings everything together in one place so teams and leaders can easily track customer details and seller performance. Instead of digging through spreadsheets or multiple tools, it pulls info straight from your customer relationship management (CRM) software and other trusted sources, turning complex data into clear, visual snapshots with charts and graphs.

The best sales tools go a step further, giving you real-time updates and the flexibility to create custom dashboards tailored to each team member. That way, everyone gets the insights they need, right when they need them.

The role of sales dashboards in data-driven decision-making

Sales dashboards are the go-to tools for daily insights. But don’t discount their ability to drill below the surface. Sales professionals can use a dashboard to guide strategic decisions when connected to multiple data sources.

Here’s a look at what sales dashboards can do:

• Custom configurations show the data that matters most in each role, reducing information overload for clearer, faster decision-making. Leaders can monitor year-over-year metrics, while managers track team performance and reps use lead-scoring or pipeline-deal widgets to prioritize tasks.
• Real-time data informs sales professionals about team, lead, and market changes, helping them align decisions with current trends and deal stages. With solutions like the Slack and Salesforce integration, teams can receive automated alerts right when changes occur.
• Comprehensive insights combine CRM, marketing automation, and email platform data for a more complete view of performance and trends in one spot. For example, employees at an Australian media company reduced context switching by using a slash command to view content performance dashboards right from Slack.
• Data visualization tools bring KPIs to life with interactive widgets, charts, and graphs. A team using a sales KPI dashboard that shows monthly revenue targets with color-coded graphs or progress bars may find these visuals easier to comprehend than raw numbers.
• AI-powered features enhance decision-making by uncovering patterns, predicting outcomes, and generating valuable insights. CRMs with dashboards can automate data analysis and proactively suggest sales tasks. By using Slack solutions for sales with your dashboard, sales teams can automate pipeline and approval steps, leaving more time for selling.

4 key benefits of implementing a sales dashboard

Landing and closing deals is a team effort, but managing pipelines and handoffs can be tricky. Well-designed sales dashboards increase visibility, providing everyone with the right information at the right time.

Here are some ways dashboards benefit sales operations:

1. Increase efficiency: Dashboards can centralize data and improve workflows. For example, Lyft improved its metrics by connecting Salesforce to Slack. This allowed sales reps to update deal stages and sales pipeline dashboards right in Slack, sharing information as it unfolded.
2. Improve sales enablement and training: By storing information in one place and connecting it to your work operating system, you can unify data about people, goals, and content. For example, a manager might view a lead conversion rate to identify skill gaps or use insights to develop effective sales enablement materials. Leaders can customize sales dashboard metrics to convey how enablement relates to revenue goals.
3. Surface trends and opportunities: Having a big-picture view of multiple data points gives your company a competitive advantage. Imagine looking at a sales pipeline dashboard and seeing leads spike in a specific industry. You can jump on this opportunity by focusing on qualifying high-potential prospects to close deals and increase revenue.
4. Enhance sales performance and goal alignment at every level: Data-driven decision-making enables reps to focus on high-value prospects, shorten sales cycles, and close more deals. Likewise, leaders can course-correct when dashboards show missed quotas or declining pipeline health.

 

How to plan and design a sales dashboard

To keep your pipeline accurate and deals moving forward, it’s important to identify the challenges affecting your sales operations and find the right tools to tackle them. The key is to build dashboards that are easy to use and actually help your team stay on track. Follow these steps to design a sales dashboard that works for you.

Identify your sales dashboard needs

KPIs and customization options vary among dashboard toolsets. To understand which features and capabilities fit your sales process, consider these questions:

• Who will use the sales dashboard? Review the roles, priorities, and locations of everyone involved in your sales operations. People use dashboards differently, from frontline sales reps accessing insights via mobile phone to sales engineers consolidating technical details within their work platforms.
• What’s your desired outcome? Break down how dashboards support company and team goals. For example, a sales KPI dashboard can highlight opportunities that boost conversion rates, while a sales performance dashboard can track the progress driving revenue growth.
• What KPIs and metrics should the sales dashboard track? Identify role-based metrics and KPIs that will deliver relevant, actionable insights. These range from high-level overviews for executives to performance data for individuals, including average deal size, lead conversion rate, sales cycle length, and sales volume.
• How can dashboards enhance usability? Assess your team’s skill level and needs to determine the range of features, customization, and interactivity required. For instance, one sports equipment retailer connected Salesforce and Slack to provide clean, accessible data while adding Tableau Pulse for advanced business intelligence.

Select a platform for your sales dashboard

After deciding on the main features and metrics, prioritize solutions that integrate multiple data sources for a unified view of sales performance. At a minimum, dashboards should centralize pipeline data, customer interactions, leads, and revenue metrics.

However, the best sales dashboard tools automate real-time updates and integrate them directly into the workflow. These capabilities let teams review insights, update pipelines, and track progress, with less context switching.

Build your sales dashboard

Dashboard metrics and KPIs help sales professionals of any kind focus on their individual and team goals. Role-based configurations can provide different viewpoints for sales dashboard users:

• Frontline sales: Consider using a sales pipeline dashboard to track deal stages, outreach efforts, and lead progression. Interactive widgets can highlight metrics like lead conversion rates, meeting bookings, call and email activity, and pipeline stages.
• Account executives and managers: Select a sales performance dashboard that reflects core responsibilities, such as meeting quotas and revenue goals. Add KPIs for sales cycle length, deal size, forecasted revenue, or quota attainment.
• Sales engineers: Customize a sales pipeline dashboard with key metrics for technical sales support, including product demo completion, solution-fit assessments, and deal technical requirements.
• Customer success reps: Showcase customer lifetime value, churn, and renewal rates on a sales KPI dashboard to focus success managers on client retention and satisfaction, ensuring alignment with your long-term KPIs.
• Sales managers and directors: Provide comprehensive views of team performance, productivity, revenue forecasts, and KPIs using a sales performance dashboard and sales KPI dashboard tools.

Use dashboard reports for strategic decision-making

The best sales dashboards pull data from multiple platforms, giving you a comprehensive view of your sales operations. Reports typically break down key metrics over a set period, making it easy to track KPIs, assess pipeline health, and spot issues like bottlenecks or slow lead conversions.

Instead of sifting through data manually, AI-powered dashboards streamline the process by generating insights and recommendations, saving valuable time. With AI agent teammates in the mix, sales teams can take it a step further — automating tasks based on reports, like adjusting pricing strategies to address bottlenecks and keep deals moving forward.

Tips for sales dashboard optimization

Sales dashboards should drive decisions and, ultimately, improve sales operations. Tailoring your approach based on roles is key to sales success, but your processes and tools must adjust and adapt to meet the moment. Explore these tips for sales dashboard optimization to design dashboards that consistently deliver meaningful insights and support sales teams.

• Engage sales teams with customized functionality. Role-based views, filters, and drill-down capabilities let sales professionals discover insights by clicking on charts and expanding them.
• Incorporate predictive analytics into your dashboard. With this feature, you can forecast sales performance, identify potential risks, and uncover emerging trends. By applying historical data and predictive models, sales leaders can make data-driven decisions that improve goal-setting and resource-planning accuracy.
• Integrate your dashboard so it’s easily accessible. Your sales teams can pull up boards and view deal insight notifications right where their work is already happening. For instance, when using Slack Sales Elevate with Salesforce Sales Cloud, you can get real-time deal movement alerts and automatically celebrate wins to recognize team member achievements in your collaborative workspace.
• Refresh sales dashboards quarterly. Having a straightforward way to update your current sales goals, KPIs, and quotas keeps everyone on the same page. Regular maintenance, such as refreshing data sources and eliminating unnecessary widgets, ensures that dashboards stay relevant and support better decision-making.
• Use AI-powered insights on real-time data. A coordinated sales dashboard can highlight opportunities, recommend next steps, and display actionable tips to set your sales team up for success. AI-driven alerts can notify sales reps when a deal is at risk, suggest personalized outreach strategies, or provide context-specific coaching to boost productivity and close rates.

 

Drive sales success by keeping teams focused

When sales teams have the data and metrics that matter at their fingertips, they can focus on high-priority tasks. The first step is choosing an AI-powered platform that offers real-time data syncing and the right features for your needs, while continuously optimizing the dashboard and processes. By following these best practices, sales teams can harness the full potential of their data, enabling smarter decision-making and improved results.