The power of sales dashboards

When your salespeople are on the road, at home and in the office, they need quick access to key data and insights, enabling them to make better decisions. That’s where sales dashboards can be an enormously powerful tool. They provide a summary of key information on one screen, such as what your customers are doing, what they are buying, and how you interact and continue to work with them.

In Phocas Analytics, sales dashboards are crucial for sales professionals. Some customers display these dashboards on large screens across branches to track sales performance continuously and to create a leaderboard of sales activity.

Sales managers measure key performance indicators (KPIs) relevant to their business, such as daily margin and sales performance against budget, which aids all people in understanding how team performance is progressing.

What is a sales dashboard?

A sales dashboard is an interactive, dynamic tool that presents key sales metrics and insights through widgets such as charts, grids and graphs. It enables users to monitor data in real time, analyze performance, and identify trends such as underperformance in specific regions. They are designed to help users quickly access and analyze sales data from your ERP, ecommerce system, CRM like HubSpot or Salesforce and sell thru data sources.

By offering real-time visibility into crucial sales data, a well-designed sales dashboard empowers teams to identify opportunities and challenges swiftly, enabling them to react proactively to customer needs. This immediacy of information allows sales representatives to be on top of their game.

What features to look for in a sales dashboard?

1. Dashboards are easy to use

Dashboards are no longer complicated to navigate, with clunky interfaces and static data. Sales dashboards are simple to use, making it easy to collate data and provide a visual representation of the big picture. Depending on the information you want at your fingertips, you can customize the data for each dashboard.

That could be your quarterly or yearly Sales vs. Budget, your top 10 customers, profit margin per product, new contracts, closing calls, or any other pertinent information that could drive performance. The sales dashboard’s purpose is to automatically bring that data to life on one screen, so your salespeople can make data-driven decisions in a matter of minutes.

2. Prompt account management

Using a sales dashboard keeps your sales team focused on customers, meeting their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and makes better use of their limited time. Based on the data in the dashboard, they can decide what they need to do next to manage their accounts and meet their sales goals.

With the proper training from the start, sales teams can eventually operate the system on their own — with no need for help from IT or other departments. Sales teams can use their dashboards to set goals as a team since the dashboard keeps them constantly informed on where they stand.

3. Drill down to understand what’s happening

Sales dashboards allow you to immediately see how your company is performing and drill down into the underlying data. For instance, if you see something strange in your sales activities, you can investigate the issue quickly by drill down into the relevant data which is not possible in an Excel spreadsheet or a templated report from an ERP System.

Dashboards help the sales team to self-serve in a way to interrogate the information and really understand the metrics that are being presented. Users can follow their train of thought from high-level performance metrics down to the details.

Always beware the “second question” is a saying we often use – meaning you want to be confident you have the underlying detail to support any analysis you provide.

When you click the Analyze button on a widget within a dashboard, it opens the widget’s underlying data in the Phocas grid. This allows you to perform further analysis and view the data at a more detailed level. As you drill down into the data, the number of records in the grid decreases. The filters you apply display across the top of the grid, so you can track where you are and follow your train of thought, all the way down until you find the answers to your questions. 

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Drill down and follow your train of thought

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4. Customizable insights

Sales dashboards allow you to immediately see, for example, how your company’s sales funnel is performing. You could, for instance set up a sales pipeline dashboard.

You can delve into the sales funnel and lead generation then analyze outreach based on lead source, open opportunities and sales strategies. This flexibility enables sales teams to uncover trends into customer acquisition, analyze conversion rates or loss rate and refine their sales cycle based on real-time insights.

Sales forecasting can also be represented in the sales performance dashboard. In Phocas Analytics a forecast combines the actual results from past months with projected values for the remaining period. It is regularly updated, which means that as new actual sales data becomes available, the forecast is adjusted to better reflect the company’s current trajectory. This forward-looking approach helps sales leaders estimate future sales or profit and understand whether the sales strategies are working.

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Sales budgeting and forecasting

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5. Dynamic, real-time dashboards

There’s nothing static about a sales dashboard. Dashboards provide up to the minute information and updates based on performance metrics – so you never have to worry that the data you’re working with is outdated.

That also ensures that everyone involved in decision-making has access to the most accurate and current information available. For sales reps, who are often on the road and juggling multiple accounts, it’s important for them to have access to data that reflects the current situation and business performance.

If created with a data analytics solution, a sales dashboard offers simple, accessible features and information that your sales team can immediately put to use. Of course, understanding these features and how to use them is important, too.

Equip your sales team with the training and skills they need to get the most out of the sales dashboard. They need to know why this works, how it works, and how it’ll make their jobs easier.

Data analytics software providers offer a number of templates for sales dashboards or have the functionality to build your own. Here are some Phocas sales dashboards examples that many of our manufacturing, wholesale and distribution customers find useful.

1. Sales performance dashboard – Provides an overview of revenue, cost of sales, profit margins, and sales trends, helping businesses track overall sales success and identify growth opportunities.
2. Sales activity dashboard – Monitors daily sales activities, such as calls, meetings, and follow-ups, to assess sales team productivity and engagement with prospects and customers.
3. Sales KPI dashboard – Tracks key sales metrics like variances from budget to actual, new customers, declining customers and customer types.
4. Sales rep dashboard – Provides individual sales representatives with real-time insights into their performance
5. Sales manager dashboard – Gives sales managers a high-level view of sales team performance, key metrics like budget to actual, and pipeline health, enabling them to identify coaching opportunities and optimize sales strategies.
6. Sales opportunity dashboard – Tracks actionable insights in the pipeline, highlighting stages, win rates and expected close dates to help sales teams prioritize high-value opportunities.