The Top 5 Salesforce Dashboards Every Salesperson Should Have

You want to keep on top of your business at all times.

But there are multiple reports with not nearly enough time to analyze them all. Then, once you’ve gotten them in order, it’s time to update everything.

That’s where dynamic dashboards come in. They empower you to follow the latest trends and metrics to help make decisions in real-time.

Here we’ll look at five types of dashboards in Salesforce every salesperson should use.

Read on to find out more:

Salesforce Dashboard Overview
5 Salesforce Dashboards You Should Be Using
1. Sales Funnel Dashboard
2. Forecast Dashboard
3. Leaderboard Dashboard
4. Pipeline Trend Dashboard
5. Customer Activity Dashboard

Salesforce Dashboard Overview

Nobody wants to face messy sales data.

"Data clutter accounts for an annual loss of $190 billion in the U.S. alone. Dashboards in Salesforce deal with that by organizing it all into a simple visual representation. The data then lets managers make informed business decisions in real-time."

But what’s the difference between a dynamic dashboard and a report?

Reports are more detailed, offering a complete breakdown of an organization. They’re also much longer than a dashboard. What a dashboard shows is information at a glance, and it also provides that data in real-time.

So, how many components are there in a Salesforce dashboard?

A Salesforce dashboard consists of five components:

• Charts: Displays comparisons.
• Gauges: Shows progress towards goals.
• Visualforce: The Visualforce component draws in data from elsewhere. It then shows it on the dashboard.
• Metrics: Present single digits giving a total with a specified label.
• Tables: Show lists. For example, the top or bottom five sales quotas.

It’s possible to have up to twenty dashboard components.

There are six types of charts available:

• Line Chart
• Vertical Bar Chart
• Horizontal Bar Chart
• Pie and Donut Chart
• Funnel Chart
• Scatter Chart

Why use reports and dashboards in Salesforce?

Salesforce manages so much data that it makes sense to have it all in one location. Whether it’s a report or a dashboard, they both provide quick access to your business status.

Separate dashboards reflecting different trends and metrics will give you a complete overview in an instant.

How do you use a drag and drop Salesforce dashboard builder?

To use a drag and drop Salesforce dashboard builder, simply select the Reports menu and click New Dashboard. Create a new dashboard by dragging each component into the previous pane. The Salesforce dashboards will then display the information through visual graphs with the Salesforce data they have access to use. Edit as necessary.

Once you've done that, click Save.

Now we’ll look at five Salesforce dashboards to help make your life easier.

5 Salesforce Dashboards You Should Be Using

1. Sales funnel
2. Forecast
3. Leadership
4. Pipeline
5. Customer activity

1. Sales Funnel Dashboard

Making sales is great, but how do you keep track of them?

You can do that by following every sale using a sales funnel. That analysis will empower you to maximize your profit potential.

The sales funnel dynamic dashboard lets you handle the funnel in real-time as you come to understand the different stages of your sales.

What is it?

The sales funnel dashboard makes sense of the value of your sales. As the name implies, it’s shaped like a funnel, with potential customers (or leads), at the top, filtering down to sales at the bottom.

Each sale typically goes through a series of different stages:

1. Prospect Stage: This involves attracting the leads as you accumulate a list of potential customers.
2. Investigation Stage: Follow up on leads, make appointments, and schedule meetings.
3. Negotiation Stage: Now, it’s time to close the deal. It may mean bargaining with them, as you both come to an agreement.
4. Conversion: The sale has gone through, and you’ve made a profit while retiring quota.

Why use it?

One of the key insights these dashboards in Salesforce can deliver is which part of the sales process you need to improve. Do you need to generate more leads? If the answer is yes, then you probably need to put more into your marketing budget.

Did you know 51% of sales leaders manage deeper connections with their clients? You need to keep track of that success somewhere.

If you create a dashboard using these metrics, you can also use it to:

• Rank leads
• Improve marketing
• Increase conversion rate

These Salesforce dashboards empower you to view multiple sales processes each step of the way. They’re also helpful in calculating whether or not the leads you’re generating are big enough to meet the demands set by your forecasts.

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2. Forecast Dashboard

Everyone needs goals.

The forecast dashboard is ideal for both you and your staff to help track targets and KPIs. Your company will get a clear idea of its sales forecasts for the quarter.

This particular dashboard gives you a clear picture of where you stand with those forecasts.

What is it?

These dashboards in Salesforce organize all your forecasts for the company. Once you have a clearer outlook, you can use the data to help drive sales.

There are several types of forecast reports, including:

• Representative: Forecasts given by set representatives.
• Employees: Individual employee forecasts.
• Stage: Forecasts projected for certain sales stages.
• Team: Projections of team workforces.
• Territory: Forecasts based on the status of your territory.

Those all need to be accounted for, which the dashboard can manage.

Why use it?

Every business needs targets to hit — it’s just a case of finding them. The forecast dashboard can help you organize those targets. Focusing on sales quotas and quota attainment rates, it uses employee reports to generate predictions.

The dashboard also provides proactive guidelines for any new employees to follow. You can then train and coach them towards meeting their targets and tracking their KPIs. Using the goals set out by the quarterly forecasts, you can plan with efficiency.

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3. Leaderboard Dashboard

Inspiring others is vital to being a leader. 

Another key part of leadership is a healthy competitive streak. Using the leaderboard dashboard, you can create a way to motivate the team with a little healthy competition and celebrating successes of the team as a whole. Much like a gamified system, this dashboard introduces employee ranking to help drive sales forward.

What is it?

The leadership dashboard uses revenue earned to identify the leading salesperson. In turn, that offers the sales manager insight into their group. They can then gather a complete overview of exactly where their strengths and weaknesses lie.

The leaderboard visualizes active engagement between employees and runs to a schedule. Offering a real-time analysis of everyone’s sales, it shows data provided by individual employees and teams.

Here are a few driving factors behind the leaderboards:

• Progress/Achievement: Shows each employee their current standing and how far they’ve come.
• Status: Everyone wants to increase their rank on the boards, as it also shows a real-time visualization of their profits earned.
•  Top Salesperson: Includes the top-ranking employee. This target helps everyone else aspire towards success.
• Goals and Targets: Gives employees a set target. These goals let them know how much work they have.

You drive reports using factors determined through the business model. So it could be that you’ve increased downloads on your website. In that case, you require a tally of all the active downloads.

Why use it?

With a clear graphic interface and real-time data, the leaderboard dashboard provides round-the-clock motivation. Using that competitive spirit as motivation, it’s a powerful driving force.

It’s also ideal for sales managers looking to gain a tighter rein over their team. The results give them a complete rundown, showing where they need to concentrate their efforts.

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4. Pipeline Trend Dashboard

You need to see where things are heading with your business.

Nobody wants to find out about a sales slump before it’s too late. That’s where the pipeline trend dashboard comes in. It provides an interactive look at your business in real-time and analyzes whether sales are increasing or decreasing.

What is it?

Running on the first of each month, this dashboard shows the pipeline trend up to that point. You can find either long-term or short-term trends. Both of those work to show how sales cycles are progressing in any given period.

You get a snapshot of the pipeline on a set date. Presenting this data in real-time, you have it all immediately to hand. A few trends may include:

• Downward Pipeline Trend: This means the pipeline size is decreasing.
• Negative Pipeline Trend: Shows early signs of a slump.
• Positive Pipeline Trend: Early signs of increasing activity.
• End of Year Sales Pipeline Trend: Overall activity for the year and deals closed.

Why use it?

You can use the pipeline trend dashboard to identify where your strengths and weaknesses lie.

For example, you might be profiting during a set period in the summer. Using the short-term pipeline trend, you can pinpoint its origin. If you had a sale during that time, that proves it was a success.

• Long-Term Pipeline Trend: Over a sustained period.
• Short-Term Pipeline Trend: Over a shorter period.
• Opportunity Trends: Displays all opportunities provided.

You can catch any issues ahead of time, and that foresight will motivate your sales team. You can then push them to improve on areas that are faltering.

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5. Customer Activity Dashboard

It’s time to focus on the customers.

You need to understand who’s making what purchases and when for any business model to succeed. Once you identify your audience, you can hone in on their needs. From customer service to activity, you can use a dashboard to identify each element of interaction successfully.

What is it?

The customer activity dashboard focuses on all the data surrounding customer interaction. It analyzes your activity on a daily basis by looking at performance and how many leads are converting to sales.

There are different dashboards relating to various aspects of your business, such as:

• Emails: Exports your dashboard by email and sends clients fully detailed reports.
• Phone Calls: The average salesperson has six calls a day, which needs tracking.
• Meetings: Provides detailed analysis of the amount of quality time you are spending with customers and prospects. With Calendar Scheduling tools in place, organizations can also set and automatically capture meetings by stage to get a better picture of deal progression to drive more accurate forecasting.
• Customer KPIs: Uses factors such as customer reply time and resolution time so you can see their relation to the conversion rate.

With those metrics, you’ll be able to identify key areas for improvement.

Why use it?

The customer activity dashboard delivers results to a schedule, collecting all of your customer data in one place. By viewing that data — including who your important customers are — you can then target your efforts. From that, you can then create a more effective growth plan.

Here are a few areas the customer activity dashboard can help improve:

• Campaigns & Cadences: Concentrate efforts on your target audience.
• Customer Service: Ensure you’re responding to customer queries and getting back to them quickly.
• Customer Satisfaction: Meet your customers’ needs using the data and feedback. Are we in contact with customers when we should be and are we executing on the right amount of touches?
• Sales Process: Are we following a solid process with every customer to ensure great CX.

By maintaining customer retention, you can use it to understand your target audience fully. Whether you’re an e-commerce business selling online or face-to-face, it keeps you updated in real-time. Knowing where the market lies, you can follow it, making the most of all customer data given.

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Final Thoughts: 5 Salesforce Dashboards To Inform Decision Making and Increase Productivity

Every business has different data.

With these five dashboards in Salesforce, you can manage everything in one place. This accessibility will then help you to make more informed decisions.

A few key insights to gain from dynamic dashboards are:

• Foresight
• Clarity
• Leadership
• Motivation

Once you create a dashboard, you can then identify your weaknesses and increase performance.

Having good data will improve all five of the Salesforce dashboards we discussed. Cirrus Insight Salesforce Sync can help admins create perfect data imports from sales teams’ inboxes. Try it today.