The faster you can turn your data into insights, the better. But putting information together to tell the right story through eye-catching visualisations can be time-consuming if you don’t have an automated dashboard tool. 

That leads to your salespeople working extra hours to create daily, weekly, or monthly Excel reports that are overcrowded with information, are hard to read, and get lost in people’s email. That’s senseless, especially when there’s a faster and more efficient way to access and digest your CRM info.

Sales KPI dashboards are a way to create automated visualisations of your most important sales data and get automated notifications with actionable alerts or snapshots of your business performance. Here’s what to measure and how to do it. 

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Are you ready to unleash the real power of your data with Trevor.io? Try it for free today! 

What is a sales KPI dashboard? 

Sales KPI dashboards are interactive data visualisations that allow you to have at-a-glance access to real-time CRM data. Dashboards use graphics and visual assets to tell the story of your business, and in this case, of your sales performance. 

Connecting your CRM to your sales dashboard software can make it easier for you and your sales team to organise, visualise, and get actionable insights from the data. 

Why should your sales team use a dashboard to track performance?

Sales KPI dashboards can be a powerful tool for showcasing your department information and overall business performance. Having a sales dashboard can help you:

• Release your sales team from task dread
• Keep track of how your team’s performing vs business goals
• Make decisions based on data 
• Give bonuses and incentives to your top performers
• Spot recurring issues and come up with actionable insights to solve them

10 most important metrics for your sales performance dashboard

KPIs are meant to be tracked in order to achieve sales goals in a time period. There are several different metrics that you could be tracking as a sales leader. We’ve compiled a list of the ten we see Trevor.io users keep track of the most:

1. Sales target and growth

Tracking these two together allows you to keep track of your sales against the target and see the growth over a time period. You can add this metric to your sales dashboard by using a BI dashboard feature like dynamic text boxes, or creating automated sales reports with graphics that measure sales vs target.  

These metrics also answer the following questions:

• Is your current revenue higher or lower than your forecast?
• Is the trend going up or down? 
• How many new customers do you need to meet the target?
• Is your growth steady? Do you need to double down on a specific period?

Using a sales dashboard, you can easily see if your sales target and growth KPIs have fallen off track. 
Source: Datapine.

2. Average sales cycle length

Measuring the time it takes you to turn a prospect into a buyer is a great way of knowing the suitability of your leads and the efficiency of your sales reps. 

Tracking leads across the sales funnel allows you to forecast better. Try analyzing the average sales cycle length to see if it’s expanding or shortening over time and if you need to streamline the sales process. 

3. Upsell and cross-sell rates

Once you have a paying customer, you can always find different ways of selling them more services/products and increase the ROI and profits coming from that sales unit. Upselling and cross-selling tactics can help you achieve that. 

In this case, upselling would be getting your current customers to upgrade their service or package, and cross-selling would be offering them a related product/service that you also offer. 

These rates can be used to measure which sales rep brings you the most revenue, which products are easier to upsell, or find upselling/cross-selling combinations.

Highlighting your upsell and cross-sell numbers in a dynamic text box helps you visualise them easily. 
Source: Datapine.

4. Customer acquisition cost (CAC)

This metric is one of the most powerful ones because it measures what it costs you to get a buying customer. This means everything you do to attract, work, and make the sale. This is a great metric to keep track of because it helps you see if your marketing efforts are being efficient or if it’s costing you too much money to get a new customer. 

Measuring the number of new customers against the cost of acquisition over time can help you see if you’re on target.
Source: Chartio

5. Average revenue per unit (ARPU) 

ARPU is the average revenue gained from making sales to a customer. To get this number you have to divide the monthly recurring revenue (MRR) by your total number of customers. 

You should measure ARPU against CAC to ensure that your revenue per unit is always higher than what it cost you to get that customer.

Showcasing ARPU in a bar graphic against the CAC allows you to have information regarding the health of your business in a snapshot.
Source: Datapine

6. Revenue per sales rep

This is a key metric to measure your team against, as it tracks the revenue gained by each one of your sales reps. This will help you analyse big drops and discover if someone has performance issues, or if there’s something happening with your sales strategy.

7. Sales opportunity number and score

The higher the number of your sales opportunities, the better chances you have of increasing your revenue. Measuring the sales opportunity figures helps you plan sales strategies properly. Mixing the number with their score, a standardised value you assign to your sales opportunity regarding their likelihood of converting, helps you see your leads across all the sales funnel.

Adding your sales managers' revenue and sales activities during the cycle gives you a clear picture of your top and low performers. You can include the number of opportunities and cycle length throughout all sales stages.
Source: Breadcrumbs.io

8. Lead conversion rate

This metric is widely measured across all businesses, it helps you understand how many of your leads are actually purchasing your product or service. Measuring this against CAC also helps you see which marketing channels are more expensive than others. 

Calculating your lead conversion rate is extremely easy and highly important to optimise the number of closed deals. 
Source: Ruler Analytics

9. Customer lifetime value (CLV)

Whenever you make a sale, you expect the customer to come back. This metric tells you how much you’re expected to earn per customer. To calculate this metric, you should determine how much money you expect to get from a customer over the relationship lifetime and detract the CAC number. 

This KPI and ARPU are good indicators of your growth. 

CLV helps you understand how much your CAC can increase or decrease to keep your business profitable, and helps you forecast better.
Source: Klipfolio

10. Customer Churn Rate

Churn rate is a metric that tells you a lot about the health of your business and it’s especially tangible for SaaS businesses. This KPI measures the number of customers who stopped using your services or products in a period of time. 

Keeping a historic record of this KPI can give you a lot of information about your business because you’ll be able to see if there’s a correlation between spikes and change in management, new features, price rises, and customer lifetime coming to an end. 

Here’s how to calculate churn rate. For example, if you had 100 paying subscribers to your newsletter, and 10 unsubscribed during a month, your churn rate will be 10%. 
Source: Smile.io

Sales dashboard examples 

There are different types of sales KPI or BI dashboards examples that serve different purposes. These are: 

1. Sales KPI dashboards

A sales KPI dashboard is a visualisation of your most important sales metrics. You can include any of the metrics mentioned throughout the article or add others you find relevant. 

Sales KPI dashboards shouldn’t be too crowded and should be accountability documents for your sales reps. 

A sales KPI dashboard includes a set of relevant sales metrics like sales opportunity, sales cycle rate, and average lead response time. 
Source: Salesforce

2. Sales performance dashboard

To build a sales performance dashboard you also need to use some KPIs, but this time metrics should answer questions regarding profitability and team performance. This type of dashboard is great to get insights whenever you need to improve sales operations or make any management decisions.

Sales performance dashboards usually include metrics such as sales target, average sales during a period of time, CAC, CLTV, and the number of new customers.
Source: Datapine

3. Product Performance Sales Dashboard

This sales dashboard shares an at-a-glance visualisation of your sales performance by product or location. A product performance sales dashboard is particularly useful to see how a specific product is behaving in a market or timeframe. 

You can include MRR, number of customers, top-performing product, customers by location, orders placed by week and by country to have a snapshot of your product's performance. 
Source: Trevor.io

Related Post: 8 Critical Metrics for Your Insurance KPI Dashboard You Won’t Want to Skip (+ Examples)

How to create a sales dashboard

Creating a sales dashboard is not an arduous task, but you should make sure to follow these steps: 

1. Determine the dashboard usability. Ask yourself and your team:
2. Who will be the primary users? How do they process information best?
3. How frequently will they be using it?
4. Are they accessing it for updates? Or for making informed decisions?

2. List the metrics you want to display in your dashboard. Remember not to overcrowd the visualisation and select the ones that you’re constantly finding in team reports and meetings. You can also create different dashboards to serve different purposes, and using a BI tool like Trevor.io that offers unlimited dashboards, queries, and users, lets you and your team build as much as needed to meet the right goals.

3. Choose a sales dashboard company.  At this stage, you should decide where to create your dashboards. Make sure you choose one that connects to your CRM, gives you the flexibility to create multiple dashboards that are accessible to and editable by anyone you need, and is easier to set up and use. 

4. Connect your data. Sync your database to your dashboard tool and start using the dashboard features to create your powerful visualisations. 

5. Build your dashboard. Choose your graphics, organise it in your dashboard, add dynamic text boxes, and change colours to highlight your most important information. 

If you’re looking for a software solution that gives you access to several dashboard features, Trevor.io is a lightweight tool that offers unlimited

• ad-hoc queries 
• dashboard creation
• users

Trevor.io offers cloud-based and on-premise dashboard software solutions to better fit your business needs. 

 Connect your SQL database to Trevor.io without writing a line of code. Try it for free today!

Are you in need of a sales KPI dashboard?

You need an automated sales KPI dashboard if 

• Your data is constantly shared in email reports that cause your sales team to waste valuable time
• You need to access and analyse your information easily 
• You’re not tracking historical sales data
• You’re constantly failing to meet goals
• You need to make fast data-driven sales decisions
• You don’t know how to compensate your team for their performance in form of bonus and incentives
• You don’t have the visibility to spot small issues before they get bigger

Using a tool like Trevor.io can help you solve all of those problems by giving you the power of accessing all the information you want in a visual and interactive way. Not only will Trevor.io transform your sales department, but you can also use the same software for all your BI dashboard requests.

Are you ready to unleash the real power of your data with Trevor.io? Try it for free today!

Related Post: When to Set up a KPI Dashboard for Startups and Which Crucial Metrics to Consider

Frequently asked questions about sales KPI dashboards

What is a sales opportunity dashboard?

A sales opportunity dashboard is a visualisation of metrics around your most qualified leads (sales opportunities) at all stages of the sales funnel. You can include: 

• Number of sales opportunities
• Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
• Lost opportunities
• Points of contact (outreach, calls)
• Average revenue per unit (ARPU)

Why are sales KPIs important?

Sales KPIs are crucial to measuring the success and profitability of a business. Only by constantly looking at your sales KPIs can you get insights into your team’s performance, forecast revenue, discover sales trends, and keep track of leads and opportunities. 

Like any other KPIs, sales KPIs help you align your team to work in the same direction, and reach your business objectives.

How can sales KPIs be improved?

Sales KPIs can be improved by analysing each one of them in context (instead of in silos) and setting up action plans to improve them. The CAC won’t necessarily tell you any groundbreaking information by itself, but comparing it to the ARPU can tell you whether or not your business and sales strategy is being efficient or if it’s causing you to lose money. 

How do you monitor sales KPIs?

The best way to monitor sales KPIs is through a sales KPI dashboard where you add all the relevant metrics in a visually appealing manner. This way, you’ll always have the most updated information available at a glance. 

What should be included in a sales dashboard?

You should include all the KPIs that you consider relevant for that particular sales dashboards. To know exactly which metrics to add you should: 

1. Determine your target audience and the primary use of the dashboard
2. List the metrics you want to display in your dashboard 
3. Choose a sales dashboard company to host it in
4. Connect your data 
5. Build your dashboard using powerful visualisations