In order for your car to run efficiently, you need every part of your engine firing on all cylinders. Nothing can be out of place, and if one piece fails to perform its function, you won’t get very far for very long.
Your revenue organization works in the same way. Everyone on your team must meet their specific goals in order for your engine to operate efficiently.
Here’s the thing about driving a car — and about running a sales org:
Bumps in the road are inevitable. The only way for your team to stay on track when the road gets rough is to make sure they’re in good shape to begin with.
One of the best ways to ensure every part of your engine is running smoothly is to build sales performance dashboards for everyone on your team.
What is a sales performance dashboard?
Much like the dashboard in a car, a sales performance dashboard provides a real-time visualization of the metrics that matter most for each member of your team.
Dashboards integrate with your CRM so you can instantly see performance data, trends, and progress-to-goal. With that information front and center, you and your people are well equipped to take the right next steps more efficiently—without spending hours pulling reports yourself.
The beauty of a sales performance dashboard is your ability to customize it. Every part of your revenue engine serves a specific purpose, but each part supports the whole. Building a sales performance dashboard with key metrics for each different role ensures everyone is on track to fulfill their individual responsibilities, thus fueling the engine as a whole.
How do you know which metrics to track for each role?
In this post, we’ll break down the different parts of your revenue engine and discuss metrics you can use to build sales performance dashboards for each role.
But before we open up the hood, let’s review some sales performance dashboard basics.
The elements of a good sales performance dashboard
The purpose of a sales performance dashboard is to show individuals on your team where they stand in relation to their goals.
So how do you determine what those goals are, and how do you know what to measure to achieve those goals? Here are the three main types of sales performance metrics you’ll want to include:
3 essential sales performance metrics
Regardless of the role you want to build a dashboard for, you have to start with the same question: What is the desired result?
Related reading: The Guide to the 9 Most Important Types of Sales Metrics
Answering this question helps you break down the activities and objectives required to achieve the outcome. The metrics you track in your team’s sales performance dashboard will likely fall under one of these three categories:
1. Activity metrics
- What your people do on a daily, weekly, and monthly basis
- May include: calls, emails, connects, and demos
- Considered leading indicators — predictive and proactive metrics you can use to inform future strategies
2. Objective metrics
- Metrics that depend on employee performance and customer behavior
- May include: customer retention rate, win rate, and new customers acquired
- Considered lagging indicators — you can’t change their outcome, but you can use them to identify problem areas and develop a new game plan
3. Efficiency metrics
- Metrics that assess how quality and quantity of work compare to the outcome
- May include: sales cycle length or cost of net new revenue
- These metrics help you see how efficiently your team is working
Tracking those types of metrics in sales performance dashboards gives you data-driven insights regarding:
- How your team is performing
- Where you stand in relation to business goals
- Where your problem areas lie
- How to pivot, strategize, and coach
Now that we’ve covered the basics, let’s take apart your revenue engine.
How does each part of the revenue engine serve the whole? What are their individual responsibilities? And what kind of sales performance dashboards do they need?
Building an SDR dashboard
Before we dig in, remember: To build a relevant sales performance dashboard, you must first define the goal for a specific role.
Let’s review the responsibilities of a sales development rep (SDR) to determine the desired result.
SDRs fuel the whole revenue engine by bringing in qualified leads to generate pipeline. Before a new customer deal can close, an SDR has to find that customer.
Finding ideal prospects means your SDRs must be experts on your products and services, and be able to communicate how they can solve your potential customers’ problems.
Related: The Definitive Guide to Sales Prospecting With Proven Outreach Methods
It’s your SDRs’ job to make a stellar first impression, start the relationship, and convince potential buyers that they need your solution.
SDRs’ goal: Bring in qualified leads
With that goal in mind, let’s break down what your SDRs must do to achieve their goal.
Realistically, not every prospect your SDR team contacts will want your product, have the budget, or be in the buying stage. So what does it take to bring in hot leads?
Read: A Sales Coach’s Tactical Guide on Setting the Right Goals for Sales Reps
Persistent and consistent communication is key for SDRs, whether they’re prospecting or nurturing a lead. So measuring those touches and their outcomes will populate their sales performance dashboards.
Metrics to measure in a SDR dashboard
- Calls made, connect rate, outcomes
- Emails sent, outcomes
- Sales accepted opportunities
- Future meetings
Measuring these metrics will reveal rep effectiveness and the quality of the leads they bring in. If your reps don’t meet their quota, you have a record of their activity — which means you can dig into the numbers to figure out why they’re behind and coach them accordingly.
Keeping track of accepted opportunities shows you what your reps are doing right and how you can repeat those behaviors. All of these metrics ladder up to the ultimate goal of bringing in qualified leads.
Building an SDR manager dashboard
The driving force behind your SDRs is their manager.
Sales development managers shoulder a host of responsibilities, but their biggest job is to coach their reps. This involves spending 1:1 time with their people to help them strategize, brainstorm, and develop their communication and selling skills so they can grow your pipeline.
SDR manager’s goal: Coach reps to keep the top of the funnel full
Read: How to Coach Your Team: Your Template For More Effective 1:1 Coaching
In order to coach effectively, managers need to analyze rep performance — but most managers oversee ~10 reps, which leaves them with a lot of data to analyze.
Tracking those numbers in a dashboard saves managers hours of valuable time and keeps the numbers accessible, so they know exactly who needs what kind of coaching at any given time. Let’s break down how that might look in a sales manager dashboard.
Metrics to measure in a sales manager dashboard
- Individual rep activity metrics like calls, emails, and connects
- New accounts
- Monthly recurring revenue
- Accounts by region
With these metrics at the forefront, managers can quickly see how their reps are performing. They know exactly who needs coaching on what, and they can begin developing repeatable processes based on which behaviors drive sales.
Additionally, they can see which of their reps deserve recognition and celebration. Insight into daily rep activity allows sales managers to steer their reps in the right direction and stay on track to achieve bigger business goals.
Building an AE dashboard
Once an SDR has secured a qualified lead, they tap an account executive (AE) to give demos, negotiate contracts, and drive the deal home.
In addition to closing new customer deals, AEs are responsible for managing, growing, and renewing existing accounts. They put a lot of effort into personalizing interactions with customers in order to better understand their needs and find solutions that can bring in revenue for the sales organization.
AE’s goal: Hit a defined amount of revenue
In order to push a deal across the finish line, AEs must stay in constant communication with prospects. Their sales performance dashboard should track every touchpoint with a potential customer, measure how they are nurturing that relationship, and give a high-level overview of how their contributions impact the pipeline as a whole.
Metrics to measure in an account executive dashboard
- Activity metrics like calls, emails, meetings, or demos
- Leads worked within a given time period
- Open opps
- Pipeline coverage
- Win rate
By measuring an AE’s ongoing activities alongside bigger objective metrics like pipeline coverage and win rate, AEs can more easily analyze the quality of their output, the quality of their leads, and what about their process works.
While AEs play a critical role in closing deals, the decision to buy is ultimately up to the customer. Visualizing an AE’s activity in relation to open opps reveals where they might need to pivot or strategize to get a contract signed.
Building an account manager dashboard
Securing new customers is just the beginning. What you want is to solve that customer’s problem well enough that they keep renewing their contract and expanding their package.
After an AE closes a deal, an account manager steps in to serve as the customer’s main point of contact. It’s their job to ensure the customer feels supported and satisfied with their experience from the moment they onboard.
The goal: Retain customers through unparalleled customer service and support
Building an exceptional customer experience means staying in contact with customers, listening to their needs, and using that feedback to optimize your internal processes and products. The account manager’s dashboard should keep a record of customer interactions, both with the account managers themselves and with the product.
Metrics to measure in an account manager dashboard
- Customer satisfaction rate
- Account value
- Churned accounts
- Retention rate
- Expansion revenue rate
These numbers will reflect the customer experience, giving account managers insight into who could benefit from an up- or cross-sell, which accounts are at-risk, and how internal processes are affecting retention and expansion.
An account manager’s sales performance dashboard gives them a clear picture of where they stand in terms of revenue goals so they can proactively find solutions to grow that revenue.
Building a sales leader dashboard
Sales leaders are in the driver’s seat. They’re the visionaries on your team who define long-term goals and build out the strategy to achieve success.
Sales leaders create the roadmap for your organization and share it with sales managers, who then use it to lead and coach their SDRs.
Sales leader’s goal: Define big-picture goals and empower the team to put strategy into action
In order to build out the roadmap to success, sales leaders need all the data they can get. Their sales performance dashboard should provide an overview of how every piece of the revenue engine is operating. This will allow them to forecast for potential roadblocks and keep the organization on track.
Here’s how that could look in a sales leader dashboard.
Metrics to measure in a sales leader dashboard
- Account opportunity stage
- Opportunity size
- Opportunity by seller
- New vs. existing accounts
- Opportunity by product
- Sales cycle length
Part of the sales leader’s role involves knowing when and where to make detours. With eyes on the status of every sales function in the organization, sales leaders have the information to forecast clearly and discern the best path forward.
Sometimes, re-writing the roadmap is unavoidable — but with data from a comprehensive dashboard, sales leaders can make strategic adjustments with confidence.
Building a sales enablement dashboard
The sales enablement team equips frontline sellers with the tools and education they need to sell efficiently, effectively, and successfully. They use performance data from across the revenue engine to optimize processes for recruiting, training, onboarding, and streamlining the sales process.
Sales operations and sales enablement work in tandem to achieve the same goals, but they focus on different pieces of the sales cycle. For example, sales enablement focuses on enabling sales reps, who are responsible for filling the top of the funnel. Sales operations is more focused on helping sales leaders with high-level strategy.
Sales enablement goal: Equip frontline sellers with tools, education, and processes that lead to better selling
In order to successfully enable frontline sellers, the sales enablement team needs insight into how their current materials and enablement tools impact rep and revenue performance. Tracking those metrics shows the enablement team exactly how to optimize their programs and training.
Metrics to measure in a sales enablement dashboard
- Pipeline analysis
- Close rate
- Average deal size
- New pipeline created
- Average sales cycle length
With visibility into the details of every stage of the funnel, enablement can better understand the gaps in terms of pipeline, revenue, and rep performance. Is the team pacing to goal at an acceptable rate? Why or why not?
This information helps the enablement team build stronger strategies and processes to more adequately equip sellers with the resources they need to succeed.
Enable your revenue engine to go the distance
Sales isn’t a quick drive around the neighborhood—it’s more like a cross-country road trip. You might encounter unexpected stops along the way, but you’ll have a much smoother drive if all parts of your revenue engine are in check.
Building a sales performance dashboard for each piece of your revenue engine can feel overwhelming. But remember: If you’re not sure where to start, think about where you want to end. Keeping the destination in mind makes it easier to build out the roadmap to success. When your revenue engine is in alignment, no distance is out of reach.
Edited by Kendra Fortmeyer @ Sales Hacker 2022
