Today’s salespeople have access to more data than ever — but not all data is relevant for making better decisions. Over the course of my career, I’ve learned that to sift through the noise, you need sales dashboards to visualize actionable data, analyze performance, and inform key business decisions.
In this article, I’ll start by walking through what a sales dashboard is and why you probably need one. Then, I’ll share some of my favorite dashboard examples and walk through my top tips for creating one of your own.
Table of Contents
- Sales Dashboard Examples
- What is a sales dashboard?
- How to Create a Sales Dashboard
- Sales Dashboard Tips
- What makes a great sales dashboard?
What is a sales dashboard?
A sales dashboard is a visual representation of your sales data. As a salesperson, you can use a dashboard to view information from different time periods, and in some cases, you can even look at real-time data.
Sales dashboards provide an overview of your team’s performance on its Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Common metrics that I like to track include quota attainment, conversion/win rate, average deal size, revenue, and sales funnel leakage.
I’ve used KPIs like these to track a sales team’s progress toward its goals and revenue targets, to adjust compensation, and to award bonuses. KPIs can also help sales leaders identify issues before they become colossal problems, as well as inform many other critical decisions.
Why you need a sales dashboard
In my experience, a sales dashboard is a great way to get quick access to comprehensive information about the deals I’m working on without having to dig through tedious spreadsheets or look through endless old emails. A great sales KPI dashboard streamlines all the information that’s relevant to me, saving me time and empowering me to make smart, data-driven decisions.
In addition, a sales performance dashboard makes it possible to ensure that I’m always looking at the latest, up-to-date intel. Rather than relying on static spreadsheets or other documents that can quickly become outdated, sales dashboards keep everyone aligned and responsive to real-time information.
As business management expert Peter Drucker is said to have observed, “You can’t manage what you can’t measure.” Ultimately, the core purpose of a sales dashboard is to empower sales teams to keep their decisions aligned with the KPIs and other metrics that matter most.
Of course, setting up an effective sales dashboard requires some time and effort upfront. But take it from me — It’s worth the effort!
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Free Sales Metrics Calculator
A free, interactive template to calculate your sales KPIs.
- Average Deal Size
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- And more!
Download Free
All fields are required.
How to Create a Sales Dashboard
- Determine which sales metrics you’ll track.
- Identify how your team will use the dashboard.
- Pick a sales dashboard provider.
- Pull data into the dashboard.
- Build reports for the sales dashboard.
1. Determine which sales metrics you’ll track.
When creating a sales dashboard, the first thing I always do is determine which sales metrics I want to track. What are the specific goals or targets I’m trying to reach? A dashboard can help me visualize my progress toward those goals.
To get started, I’ll ask myself the following questions:
- What metrics do I regularly review with the entire company, in one-on-one meetings, and among my sales team?
- Do I consider some metrics more important than others?
- What are my Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)?
- Do I have multiple sales teams within my organization?
Depending on the context, the sales metrics I choose will often fall into one or more of the following categories:
- Activity sales metrics.
- Pipeline sales metrics.
- Lead generation sales metrics.
- Sales outreach metrics.
- Primary conversion sales metrics.
- Channel sales metrics.
- Sales productivity metrics.
- Rep hiring and onboarding metrics.
- Sales process, tool, and training adoption metrics.
Pro tip: If you’re not sure where to begin, check out our guide to sales metrics to determine which pieces of information are most important to you and your sales organization.
2. Identify how the dashboard will be used.
Next, I need to determine how the sales dashboard will be used. After all, there’s no one-size-fits-all sales dashboard — so it’s important to think about how my team will use the dashboard.
Is the dashboard going to help individual sales reps track their progress toward their monthly quota? Will sales managers use it to see the top-performing reps for the quarter? Here are a few factors other to consider:
- Who will use the dashboard? Sales reps, managers, VPs, or executives?
- How often will they use it? Will they be checking the dashboard daily, weekly, or monthly?
- What information will they want to see? Which metrics, visualizations, and calculations will they look at?
I also always make sure to think about where and how my colleagues might want to view the dashboard. For example, if I were developing a dashboard for outside sales reps who are always on the go, I’d probably want to make a mobile-friendly version of the dashboard so they can view it from their mobile phone, tablet, or computer.
3. Pick a sales dashboard provider.
If you’re already using a CRM, it likely comes with reporting dashboard features that your team can use. However, if you’re not using a CRM, there are also several standalone reporting tools you can use to sync or import your data, making it possible to create your own dashboards and reports.
Here are some of my favorite sales dashboard software providers.
1. HubSpot
With HubSpot, I can create custom reports and dashboards for my team by pulling data directly from the HubSpot CRM. I can also sync data from a wide range of apps and web services.
What I love: HubSpot gathers all of my data in one place, creating a single source of truth for my team.
2. Geckoboard
Geckoboard is a KPI dashboard tool that integrates directly with more than 90 different data sources, including Hubspot Sales, Salesforce and Pipedrive. I especially appreciate that Geckoboard offers a no-code solution, taking the hassle out of building live dashboards. Here are 13 more sales dashboard examples from Geckoboard.
What I Love: Geckoboard’s drag-and-drop interface makes it ridiculously simple to create real-time KPI dashboards. I also love the sharing options, which make it possible to share a dashboard via a link or set up automated notifications and reports on Slack.
3. RIB BI+ (Formerly datapine)
RIB BI+ is an intuitive business intelligence and dashboard software that lets me swiftly generate interactive dashboards for different industries and functions, including sales. It provides a centralized and user-friendly environment to visualize multiple data sources in real time, empowering me to make data-driven decisions.
What I love: RIB BI+ offers multiple sharing options, including automated email dashboards and embedded analytics to boost sales team collaboration and communication.
4. Klipfolio
This software tool makes it possible for me to combine data from my CRM with data from the other services to create detailed sales dashboards.
What I love: Kipfolio also generates a sales team leaderboard, making it possible to celebrate top performers and foster healthy competition.
5. Zoho Analytics
With Zoho Analytics’ 60+ reports and dashboards, I can easily track a wide range of key performance metrics — and I can also create custom reports.
What I love: Zoho Analytics integrates fully with HubSpot, making it possible to merge my HubSpot CRM data with 100+ different data sources to create meaningful business reports.
6. Coefficient
With Coefficient, I can build dashboards that centralize my sales and marketing data right within a Google Sheets spreadsheet. I can also choose from a gallery of dashboards built specifically off of my data source integration.
What I love: Coefficient’s templates are unique in that I can power them with my live data. There’s no need to copy/paste or import/export. I just make a copy of the template and then follow the prompts to sync live data from my tech stack (including HubSpot).
7. Slemma
With Slemma, I can choose from a gallery of dashboards built specifically off of my data source integration, empowering me to build dashboards that centralize my sales and marketing data.
What I love: Slemma’s templates save me time and set me up for success.
8. Visible
Whenever I’ve been looking to create a dashboard to increase investor visibility, this has been my go-to software solution. With Visible, I can automate report creation, build dashboards, and drill down to see the details of my reports.
What I love: This dashboard is made specifically to help new companies keep their many important stakeholders in the loop.
9. TapClicks
TapClicks helps me address sales challenges by creating reports and dashboards that identify warning signs. When a challenge arises, the software notifies me and my team so we can proactively find a solution.
What I love: With TapClicks, I can take key information from dashboards and easily turn it into slides or reports.
4. Pull data into the dashboard.
Once I’ve chosen my dashboard provider, it’s time to integrate the data. If I opt for a dashboard that integrates with my CRM, it’s easy to sync the data between them.
For example, the HubSpot CRM allows me to generate sales reports based on data from my customer database.
Pro tip: I love using HubSpot’s CRM to create dashboards and reports that track sales performance, identify top-performing sales reps, create sales forecasts, and more.
In contrast, when I’ve worked on teams that use spreadsheets to manage prospects and customers rather than a CRM, the process tends to be more manual. Luckily, there are sales dashboard templates for Excel that have helped me build reports from scratch.
5. Build reports for the sales dashboard.
Finally, after putting together a dashboard and integrating the data, I can get started on building reports. When building reports for a sales dashboard, I can pick from a wide range of charts to visualize my data. For example, I’ve used charts for:
- Comparing values (e.g., comparing sales from two different territories). These comparisons can be shown as bar charts, column charts, line graphs, pie graphs, or scatter plots.
- Composition (e.g., total sales broken down by sales rep). I’ve reported on where sales are coming from using pie charts, stacked bar charts, stacked column charts, area charts, or waterfall charts.
- Trends (e.g., month-over-month revenue growth). I’ve illustrated trends with line charts, dual-axis line charts, or column charts.
Remember: The best visualizations are easy to read and actionable.
When I create a dashboard, I want my users to be able to read and understand the charts at a glance, without having to click through the full report. Then, once the dashboard and reports are ready to go, I’ll share them with my team — but I’m never afraid to go back to the drawing board if a report doesn't meet the needs of my sales team.
Free Sales Metrics Calculator
A free, interactive template to calculate your sales KPIs.
- Average Deal Size
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- And more!
Download Free
All fields are required.
Sales Dashboard Examples
To be sure, every organization has its own unique needs when it comes to sales performance dashboards. But if you’re looking for inspiration, here are some of my favorite sales dashboard examples:
1. Sales Conversion Rate Dashboard
Calculate progress throughout your entire sales pipeline with HubSpot’s free Sales Conversion and Close Rate Calculator. In my experience, this interactive dashboard is a great tool to help you analyze and set goals by month and quarter. I also especially like that it lets you forecast metrics like lead-to-MQL rate, MQL-to-customer rate, lead-to-customer rate, and more.
2. Sales Rep Dashboard
This dashboard is a great option if you’re looking to help your sales reps track their individual performance. I also like that this dashboard includes reports for key metrics such as meetings booked, open opportunities, deals in the pipeline, forecasted revenue, and any other performance indicators your team uses.
3. Sales Manager Dashboard
This dashboard provides an overview of key metrics that sales managers can use to measure performance. In addition, one of my favorite aspects of this dashboard is that it includes a section for today’s stats as well as monthly progress toward the sales team’s new account target and MRR goals.
4. Sales Leaderboard
A sales leaderboard is a great way to see who’s performing the best out of all your salespeople — and foster a bit of healthy competition, too. Sales leaderboard dashboards typically include information on the number of completed activities (e.g., calls, emails, and meetings), new accounts, generated MRR, and customer retention.
5. Deal Performance Dashboard
With the deal forecast front and center, members of your sales organization can use a deal performance dashboard to see how much revenue they’re expecting to close. I also like using reports to see how many deals are currently at each stage of the sales process, how many have closed, and how those numbers compare to my targets.
6. Win/Loss Dashboard
This win/loss dashboard by Solver provides metrics on deal size, salesperson, and industry. I particularly like using this dashboard to identify top performers on my team, to understand why we might have won or lost deals, and to iterate on my sales process. In addition, this dashboard also makes it possible to compare my team’s close rates to close rates from previous reporting periods or industry benchmarks.
7. Sales Performance by Region
Where are you making the most sales? And which products are customers buying? I love using this dashboard to gain insight into which territories are selling the most of each product type. Plus, I can also use it to see an overview of this month’s MRR compared to that of the previous month.
8. Sales Activities Dashboard
In my experience, a sales activities dashboard is a great option to provide sales managers with a visual representation of what their reps are doing on a day-to-day basis. Moreover, this dashboard also includes broader information, such as the average number of activities per won deal.
9. Performance Overview Sales Dashboard
What I really love about this dashboard is that it features the key performance metrics, front and center. This makes it easy to read, and the most valuable information is the first thing I see as soon as the dashboard loads.
10. Time-Tracking Sales Dashboard
Do you have a sales team that’s always on the go? I’ve found that this time-tracking dashboard is really helpful in explaining where sales reps spend their time and how much revenue they’re generating.
11. Sales To Target Template
Whenever I need to keep a close eye on my company’s sales goals and how I’m progressing toward these targets, this is my go-to dashboard. With this tool, I can sync my live data into the template, establish customized sales targets based on teams or opportunity categories, and effortlessly monitor advancements on a monthly, quarterly, and yearly basis.
12. Sales KPI Dashboard
Looking to review your performance on the KPIs that matter most? This sales KPI dashboard is a great way to gain insight into these critical metrics. In particular, I love that this dashboard puts invoiced income front and center, with a clear, visual breakdown by month.
13. Executive Sales Performance Dashboard
This executive sales performance dashboard is one of my favorite ways to stay on top of a sales team’s opportunities, bookings, and more. With all the key performance information I need in one easily accessible dashboard, this is a great option for executive sales managers looking to get a quick but comprehensive look at their team’s performance.
Sales Dashboard Tips
Feeling inspired to crunch some numbers and start building your own sales reports? Here are some of my top tips to help guide you as you create your sales dashboard:
1. Use a clean layout
It’s important to avoid making the visuals (e.g., graphs and charts) and colors too busy, as this will distract from the data. Many of my favorite dashboard tools allow you to lay out your reports in a grid automatically, which I’ve found can be a great way to keep the layout clean and organized.
In addition, when thinking about where to place your charts, apply human psychology. Research shows that people tend to look at the top-left corner of a website first, so I’ve learned that it’s often helpful to create a flow from left to right.
Pro tip: I always place the most important visuals on the left-hand side of the dashboard, with additional information to the right.
2. Include calculations (when applicable)
Over the course of my career, I’ve found that including calculations can add invaluable context to a report, saving me time and making the report clearer.
For example, I don’t want my team to have to go through the trouble of doing mental math to determine month-over-month revenue growth. Instead, I’ll make sure to include these relevant calculations, ensuring that the dashboard has all the information I need right at my fingertips.
3. Make the dashboard accessible
Finally, I’ve learned that when it comes to sales dashboards, accessibility is a non-negotiable. If I design a dashboard specifically for sales managers, VPs, or executives, I always make sure that individual contributors can see which metrics and goals are important to leadership.
This kind of transparency can help motivate my sales reps, because it lets them zoom out and see the impact their numbers have on the broader business.
What makes a great sales dashboard?
Creating a great sales dashboard is as much an art as it is a science. As with any tool, it’s critical to be flexible, adapting any templates or best practices to fit the unique needs and requirements of your team and business. It’s also essential to experiment and iterate, adapting your dashboard in response to user feedback, new technologies, and other factors.
That being said, there are a few key points that I always remember to consider when creating a new dashboard:
Don’t overcomplicate.
First and foremost, avoid overcomplication. When building out a sales dashboard, simplicity is everything.
For example, one of my favorite sales tracking tools is HubSpot’s free Sales Metrics Calculator. This Excel template is simple and easy to use, offering key information such as average deal size, win-loss rate, and churn rate, without overwhelming me with unnecessary data and charts.
To be sure, it’s important to include all of the information and context that your sales reps or managers will need to make informed, data-driven decisions. But at the same time, it’s vital to balance that completeness with clarity, and steer clear of overly complicated layouts and excessively detailed reports.
Keep your users in mind.
Another important consideration is your audience. Who is your dashboard designed for? Junior sales reps? Managers? Executives? I’ve learned firsthand that it’s vital to keep your users in mind when developing a new sales dashboard.
Pro tip: As cofounder of marketing analytics firm Improvado, Ali Flynn explains, “The best sales dashboards fit users’ specific needs. A sales manager tracks team performance, while an analyst delves into sales metrics for insights. Customization guarantees relevance and effectiveness.”
Prioritize the most important KPIs.
When building a sales dashboard, it may be tempting to include every metric under the sun — but to be effective, you have to prioritize. I’ve found that it’s important to think really critically about the specific sales KPIs I want to emphasize in different kinds of sales dashboards.
In some cases, for instance, I might focus more on monthly or quarterly revenue forecasts. In other contexts, it may make more sense to highlight metrics related to quote attainment rates or growth.
There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to identifying the right KPIs for your dashboard. Marketing expert Jeffrey Steen speaks powerfully to the importance of prioritization, noting: “Too much data and no focus has made it difficult for sales leaders to reach clear ‘aha’ moments that drive confident decisions and sustainable growth.”
He continues, “To ensure you’re maximizing the ROI of tools, teams, and customer relationships, zero in on sales key performance indicators (KPIs) that make the most of what you have while delivering recurring revenue: a combination of tried-and-true targets, like lead conversion rate, and those that measure long-term value, like customer and employee retention.”
Ultimately, what’s most important is that you put in the effort to prioritize and determine the best options for your unique situation.
Think strategically about sharing.
Finally, don’t forget to think about how you will share your sales dashboard. Does it make sense to offer certain key stakeholders the option to subscribe for regular updates? Is there an internal portal where you could host the dashboard?
Ultimately, a dashboard is only useful if people actually use it — so it’s important to think strategically about exactly how, when, and where you’ll share your sales dashboards.
Get Reporting Right
At the end of the day, there are no shortcuts to creating an amazing sales dashboard. However, with the sales dashboard examples, as well as the tips and tricks I’ve laid out in this article, you’ll be set up for success.
In particular, one of my favorite pieces of advice is to avoid overcomplicating things. I’ve seen firsthand just how tempting it can be to add more and more charts to a dashboard, thinking that you’re making it better and better … only to discover that you’ve actually just created an overcomplicated mess. It’s so important to remember that when it comes to a sales dashboard, less is more. Stick to the most important information, use a clear layout, and when in doubt, keep it simple.
Free Sales Metrics Calculator
A free, interactive template to calculate your sales KPIs.
- Average Deal Size
- Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
- Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
- And more!
Download Free
All fields are required.
![Understanding Sales Variance [Formula + Examples]](https://www.hubspot.com/hubfs/Sales%20Variance.png)
