The Best 5 Salesforce Dashboards Every Sales Manager Needs

Sales dashboards reveal a ton of information in a short amount of time, helping sales teams gauge their current standing and informing their long-term strategy.

Information can be tough to process on its own, though, especially when trying to see bigger connections or anticipate what might come next. But with an organized report and accompanying visuals, these insights pop up immediately, spurring action and preventing overlooked details.

To help your sales teams make the most of their sales data and listen closely to the story it tells, try using one of the following 10 best Salesforce dashboards that can enable success:

Current Deals by Pipeline Stage and Close Date

This dashboard helps you instantly visualize the potential earnings you can obtain from deals while helping you assess how many people you have in your current funnel.

Start with a table column listing each pipeline stage, and then list the total estimated deal value for each stage by expected close date on the corresponding row. The result should be a stacked bar graph that reveals total revenue possibilities arranged by date and color-coded to indicate how many deals are in their respective stage of the pipeline.

 

  • X axis: close dates
  • Y axis: total deal values
  • Data series: listed by conversion stage, arranged as a stacked bar graph

Conversions Over Time

Converting people to the next stage of the pipeline is the key to consistent revenue earnings, helping teams focus on the activities that keep them consistent.

To reveal this information, start with a column of conversion actions — e.g. “second meeting to software demo” — and then list the conversions for each sales period in the corresponding row. The result is a line graph that reveals pipeline movement over time for each stage.

 

  • X axis: sales periods
  • Y axis: total conversions
  • Data series: a separate line graph for each type of conversion

Inbound Leads Over Time

This graph reveals how effective marketing is at bringing in leads to sales reps, reducing the amount of cold-calls and “hard prospecting” needed.

The Salesforce blog provides advice on how to set this one up, but the gist is that you will end up with one simple line graph that tracks total inbound leads over time.

 

  • X axis: sales periods
  • Y axis: total number of inbound leads
  • Data series: just one line graph tracking inbound leads, can be separated into inbound source to determine value of marketing activities

Sales Leaderboard, Earnings Progress Reports

The sales leaderboard can be displayed as a ranking list displayed on a table, but it can also be split up into several types of graphs to track closed-won trends or highlight weaker performers.

 

  • Table: Arranged by top earnings per sales rep
  • Graph: sales rep closed-won deals over time
    • X-axis: sales periods
    • Y-axis: earnings
    • Data series: separate line graph for each rep
  • Graph: total closed-won deal values over time
    • Same as above, but each sales rep is arranged as a stack bar graph rather than separate line graphs

Closed-Lost Reasons

Sometimes focusing on your weakest areas can help you determine where to make the most improvements. You can start by requesting that reps diligently record reasons behind each closed-lost sale, preferably from a simple pick list accompanied by more detailed notes.

Then, the total closed-lost deals can be viewed as a pie chart.

 

  • Pie chart: Reasons for closed-lost deals as a percentage of total
  • Data series: A separate wedge for each closed-lost reason, pie can be broken down further into losses to competitors or losses at certain pipeline stages

Using a Data Visualization Tools to Automate Salesforce Dashboards

If you happened to glance at the Salesforce blog linked to above that instructs you on how to create the “inbound leads over time” dashboard, you will have noticed that the process of turning your data into a graphic representation is fairly complex.

Rather than taking multiple steps each time you want to generate a report, you can use a third-party Salesforce data visualization tool that can generate dashboards in real time and help you keep up with the most important metrics.

By consistently visualizing and interpreting your data, you can stop guessing what you need to do to sell more and start knowing, helping you sell more than ever before.

 
What Can Salesforce Do For You
 


8 Tips to Manage Your Pipeline Like a Pro in Salesforce

When focusing on just one customer or account, the journey someone takes from initial awareness of a product to a completed, successful sale is crystal clear. Unfortunately, no sales rep on Earth has the luxury of handling just one account at a time. Instead, they are juggling multiple, all at different stages and levels of interest.

It can get confusing, to say the least! Tools like Salesforce can make managing all these people easier, especially when you use the following eight Salesforce pipeline management tips and best practices:

Start With a Well-Defined Process and Pipeline

The vocabulary of your sales pipeline should be ingrained in your reps’ minds. Each one should be familiar with the various stages, and they should know for sure how to identify which stage a lead is in based on activity and indicative factors.

Train your reps on this process, make simple-to-follow logic flowcharts to decide if a client is in a certain stage, and post reminder graphics all over the office so they never have to think twice about it. These efforts will make data entry and reporting in Salesforce much more effective and likely accompanied by a higher adoption rate.

Use a Pick List for Categories When Possible

Manual data entry can get tedious, but coding in a set of clear options for reps to pick from can make data entry go by quicker and encourage more people to actually do what they are supposed to.

Try to limit the amount of categories you have (more on that in a moment), but do ensure that each option is distinct and clear. Depending on the form in question, you may also want to include an “other’ category where the rep can write in their own information.

Include a Secondary Open Form With Picklists

Picklists are fast and generic, so accompanying them with a form where any text can be entered can allow reps to track important details.

Qualify and Categorize Leads

One of the first entry forms to include in your pick lists are lead qualification descriptors. Every incoming lead should have either a business category, interest level, referring source, or all three so that reps have as much information as possible when trying to prioritize activities.

Avoid Too Many Pipeline Stages

In reference to limiting categories as suggested above, the Salesforce blog recommends that you avoid having over four or five discrete phases to your sales pipeline. With too many possibilities, reps can get confused or have different interpretations regarding when a client is at a new stage. The amount of unusual movements that skip stages or move backwards also increases.

So, stick to the K.I.S.S. and make everyone’s life easier.

Use the Calendar and Reminder Features

The worst way to lose a sale is to have a lead effectively die within the pipeline. Ideally, every lost sale will be “closed-lost” rather than “Shoot! I forgot about them!”

To prevent these oversights and to keep everyone flowing along, you can use the internal calendar and reminder features to help automate tasks. For example, someone who receives a demo should be prompted to receive a follow-up email automatically after one or two days. That way, no one gets forgotten.

Make Entry Forms Dependent or Required

Required forms must be completed before submission. Dependent forms must be completed before the next related form is available. Configure both to prevent incomplete entries into the system and to get reps to pay close attention to how they describe a lead or their activities.

The Most Important of Salesforce Pipeline Management Tips: Track Sales Activities

Reporting and monitoring tools can help ensure that reps are doing what they are expected to on a weekly, monthly and quarterly basis. Even though this strategy doesn’t track individual leads, it does approximate the level of activity expected to handle the current new lead volume. I.e., sales reps should be making a certain number of calls every period to keep the pipeline flowing.

You can make tracking activity easier by using a third-party Salesforce visualization tool that can instantly alert you to every rep’s actions. Some tools, like VisualCue, also track each account to make sure they are not forgotten, so if you need a leg up on managing your pipeline, consider using a sales rep monitoring tool today.

 
The Power of Salesforce