The goal of the sales dashboard is to serve as a roadmap of sales trends and KPIs in the context of today’s successful businesses selling in incredibly competitive markets. A sales dashboard gives an overview of such metrics as those that enable a sales force to track their progress, measure outcomes, and possibly look for the shortcomings they might be encountering. Specifically, this article is only going to consider the perfect sales dashboard, consider the essential KPIs, and teach you how to make the sales dashboard perfect for your particular business.
A sales dashboard is a single location that features different metrics that are related to sales in real-time. These dashboards can be designed based on the requirements of the various users like salesmen, managers, and executives. Through pooling data from multiple sources, the sales dashboard helps users to identify trends and status through the goals set.
It is therefore essential that the metrics used in creating the dashboard meet specific organizational goals. Here are some of the most important sales metrics to consider:
Total revenue signifies one of the biggest measures that any organization could ever desire in a comprehensive sales dashboard. It refers to the total amount of income that has been received through the sales for any particular period. Organizations can use total revenue to evaluate how their finances are doing to identify future growth trends.
The sales growth rate is the percentage change in sales that a business records in a specific period. This one assists in measuring the overall organizational performance regarding variance between the prior periods and establishing new performance targets. It gives growth details on how fast the business is growing and can inform on areas of success or lack of success.
The conversion rate shows the proportion of the leads that were in a position to transmute to paying clients. This one is important to measure how successful your sales process is as well as where potential issues might be occurring. Prospects converted at a high rate would mean that your team is doing a good job of closing customers while prospects who did not convert may point towards a problem in the sales funnel.
Customer acquisition cost provides an estimate of the total expenses involved in acquiring a new customer, other expenses apart from the marketing costs, and salaries. Appreciating CAC is important whether as an individual or organization because it helps organizations compare the effectiveness of their marketing and sales departments. Thus, it becomes crucial to drive CAC lower while not losing the quality of customers who will be an essential ingredient for the sustainable growth of the company.
Customer lifetime value is the forecast of the total earnings a customer will yield during the time he or she will be doing business with your company. CLV enables management to determine the amount of money they can invest in the acquisition of new customers since the customers should be profitable. It also guides retention strategies since it discourages the killing of the relationship since it is healthy to maintain a healthy business relationship.
Average deal size is used to calculate the average revenue the company has closed for a given period. This metric enables organizations to compare the effectiveness of their pricing strategies and perhaps consider ways of using a single price point to offer different values to their customers. Measuring the average size of the deals tends to give more information about the market needs and customers.
Sales cycle length is defined as the average time taken for a sale to be completed, starting from making contact right to the sale being made. This way, the organizations understand gaps in the sales process adjust their strategies as needed, and improve on the numbers. A reduced sales cycle implies efficiency in the applied strategy of sales and good customer relationships.
Win rate calculates the number of times a company has closed deals against with, while in comparison with Win loss analysis, it tells the number of deals closed out of the total opportunities tracked. This means enables managers to assess the success of various strategies and determine whether the team is closing sales or not.
The churn rate is the measure of the number of customers who no longer obtain products or services from your firm within a given timeframe. Appointment turnover can be an early warning signal for product or service dissatisfaction, or demonstrate that a business needs to better address customer loyalty.
Pipeline coverage lays down the proportion of potential revenue in the pipeline to the sales goals set for a particular period. It works on the understanding of helping organizations know whether they have adequate opportunities to allow them to meet their objectives and can be used in making resource decisions.
While the above metrics are fundamental for any effective sales dashboard, you may also want to include additional metrics based on your organization’s specific needs:
When designing your sales dashboard, consider these best practices:
Evaluating the right KPIs when constructing the sales dashboard is critical in identifying the right metrics for your organization. If you target the most important figures, such as total revenues, conversion rates, cost per acquisition, and average value per deal, you create a solid tool to make sense of your sales organization. Finally, a good and effective sales dashboard is a vital tool that can enable you to keep track of the progress of a goal and achievement, analyze trends, and promote accountability within an organization. So, if you use these insights properly in your strategic planning, you will improve your actions and achieve long-term success in a modern world of goods and services.