Your sales might keep the register ringing, but it has no value unless it is effectively measured. Sales shares a symbiotic relationship with metrics. It is only when you have a peek into how many opportunities your salespeople create and how many get converted, the size of deals won, or email campaign response rates, will you know what further steps you can take to grow your business. This is where a sales dashboard plays a role.
Sales leaders struggle to measure their team’s performance accurately, which ultimately impacts win rates, attainment quotas, and sales team performance.
Did you know that 95% of people agree that poor quality data affects their company?
So, as a sales leader, you cannot let your intuition guide decisions. You need rock solid data to govern your sales teams. This is where a sales dashboard comes in.
What is a sales dashboard and why do you need one?
A sales dashboard enables you to track relevant and actionable sales data like lead conversion rate, opportunities, quote-to-close rate, product performance, and sales per rep, and make data-driven decisions by showing real-time sales data and progress. The sales dashboard also allows your sales teams to focus their time on selling and spend less time on administrative tasks or searching for data they need.
What should you track in a sales dashboard?
- Check conversations, not calls: Tracking the number of calls made is passé as it does not qualify what the salesperson did during the call. If the call just went to voicemail and did not impact a prospect, then it isn’t worth taking into account. That’s why it is always best to examine the quality of those attempts, the tools a salesperson uses to reach out and look for room for improvement through a sales dashboard.
- Lead quality, not quantity: The number of leads that come into the system do not matter. You need to track the quality of leads brought in by the SDR in a sales dashboard. Chasing after bad leads takes your sales team away from productive tasks and brings down your sales volume.
- Opportunities, not leads: Just keeping track of the number of leads in the funnel is futile, if they are not interested to buy your product. You need to check, out of the leads that marketing brought in, how many actually converted to opportunities using a sales dashboard.
Outbound Sales – SDRs
SDRs identify and reach out to prospects and gauge their intent to purchase and then pass it on to Account Executives (AEs).
While every activity that an SDR performs contributes to your firm’s growth, there are certain benchmarks that SDRs should consider to weigh in their performance.
These are some of the metrics SDRs track in their dashboards:
- Emails sent: SDRs should track open, click rates and response rates to understand the intent of the prospect and check if their emails resonate with the audience or they need to tweak their email copy.
- Quality of calls: The number of calls do not matter if, within a few calls, an SDR can rake in opportunities. Quality dialogue works across industries and verticals.
- Connections established: Using Linkedin Sales Navigator tool, an SDR can connect with leads and keep track of emails sent, messages sent on LinkedIn. This will help the SDR develop this lead into a contact.
Sales Managers
Typically, if a sales rep makes 100 calls, they might connect with 5% of the prospects, and from that 5%, only one or two prospects might actually express interest to buy your product.
You have to keenly observe sales teams by tracking the following metrics and suggest improvements to every sales rep:
- Quality of conversations: Contextual conversations between the sales rep and prospect results in converting a lead to a customer. Sales managers should track the length of conversations, what was being spoken, and how many conversations took place, not the number of calls.
- Monthly BDR attainment: This report tracks the performance of all your sales reps and ranks them according to their overall achievements. This encourages healthy competition and identifies best performing reps who bring in opportunities.
- Pipeline report: Pipeline report tracks number of deals in the pipeline, average size and value of deals, average time taken to close a deal and close ratio. It allows sales managers to monitor sales teams’ performance and forecast deals that will close in a certain period and the revenue that will bring in.
- Leaderboard: Maintaining a leaderboard provides sales managers with an idea on which sales reps are putting in their best and which reps have to improve in certain areas.
Inbound Sales
Inside sales teams get in touch with marketing qualified leads and gauge the prospect’s intent to purchase. Some of the sales metrics they track in a sales dashboard include:
- Follow ups: Did you know that 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up call? Inside sales reps play a key role by following up on marketing qualified leads. It is important to track this metric and ensure sales reps don’t give up on their follow ups.
- Leads assigned Vs Converted ratio: A lot of leads get assigned to inside sales reps, but how much they convert in a particular period of time is what matters.
- Connections: Inside sales reps also engage with prospects on social media like Linkedin and connect with them. How many connections they convert from Linkedin should also be tracked
Account Executives
Account executives handle leads received from SDRs and Inside sales and take the conversation or sale forward with the leads.
Some of the sales metrics they track include:
- Deal Probability: Sales managers should track the percentage of deals that will close to forecast sales on a monthly/quarterly basis
- Lead Source: Understanding where leads are coming from is crucial for an Account Executive. Depending on whether it is through marketing or chat or events, you will know which channels brings in more leads and what is not working
- Churn: Churn rate tells you how many prospects are not interested and what initiatives keep them engaged
VP of sales
Vice Presidents (VPs) of sales have the constant pressure of ensuring the entire sales brigade hits win rates, attain quotes and improve performance. In order to get a deeper view of the sales pipeline, some of the sales metrics a VP of Sales must track in his sales dashboard include:
- Lead Response Time: Reducing the lead response time greatly improves your bottom line which is what most VP of Sales are worried about. A lead that is responded to in 5 minutes or less is 21 times more likely to be qualified.
- Pipeline view: On the whole, VP of sales should track the deal pipeline and be aware of current and upcoming deals in order to predict the MRR and plan resources.
- Products that leads are interested in: VP of Sales should be able to gauge which products interest the leads and which products need to be marketed better
- Deal closures: VP of sales should be aware of number of deals every month, so that ultimately it will impact quote attainment rates at the end of the quarter. If deal closure is dipping in a particular month, he can ensure the teams take more steps to close more deals.
- Sales Process Steps: It is important to ensure your sales process steps are well defined and the salespeople engage with prospects at the earlier steps in order to optimize your sales process. According to TAS group, the win rate exceeds 50% for two-thirds of companies that have a defined process in place.
Tracking these metrics in a sales dashboard helps you plan for the next year based on what worked and didn’t work for each market. For example, due to stringent GDPR in UK, if calling leads is not feasible, then the management should make a decision to only reach out to leads via email/other channels.
Overall, tracking metrics through a sales dashboard is necessary and makes your job easier. It helps you take a deeper dive into the sales process, know what works and doesn’t work for each market, identify best performers, forecast revenue and prepare for the next year.
Greatness lies in preparation and we believe sales dashboards prepares you for success.
If you believe so, let us know in the comments section.
