Sales Pipeline Dashboard: A Reliable Tool to Scale Sales

A real-world sales pipeline rarely runs in a straight line, with prospects moving through conversion journeys in their own unique ways and leaving sales teams with a wide variety of data to mull over. 

For enterprise sales professionals, processing substantial amounts of data every day, generating insights from sales pipeline metrics, and implementing effective strategies on time and at scale can be challenging. Sales pipeline dashboards exist to address those challenges.

A sales pipeline dashboard simplifies the process of sales pipeline tracking and making data-driven sales decisions by delivering complex sales data in highly visual, easily digestible formats. 

In this guide, we will explore what sales pipeline dashboards are, why you need them, and some of the most important metrics you can track for a more productive sales pipeline analysis.

What is a Sales Pipeline?

In a nutshell, a sales pipeline is a visual representation of the stages prospects go through as they transition from leads to customers.

It is important to note that while some people use the terms “sales funnel” and “sales pipeline” interchangeably, they’re not necessarily the same.

A sales funnel considers the entire consumer journey, from the point of awareness to the first sale and beyond. On the other hand, a sales pipeline focuses on the stages of the actual sales process, from the initial contact between sales teams and leads to the final close of a deal.

Want to learn more? Here’s an in-depth guide on the sales pipeline that you can read.

Why Build a Sales Pipeline Dashboard?

Analyzing a sales pipeline helps you map a prospect's conversion journey so you can identify strategies for moving them all the way to the finish line. However, the conversion process will never be the same for all prospects because they exhibit different behaviors and require different nurturing strategies.

To understand where each prospect is at in the conversion journey, what channels bring them to your website, and how best to sell to them, you'll need to dive into their individual data. However, without a dashboard, this process would be time-consuming and prone to errors.

Quick access to near-real-time data

A study by Dooly.ai shows that 1 in 4 sales professionals report spending at least 5 hours in a CRM every workday because it has all the data they need for closing pending deals.

However, cleaning up the CRM data for analysis is traditionally a manual, time-consuming process, and data exported from CRMs often becomes outdated and abandoned in a spreadsheet within a short time. Due to this, sales professionals struggle to get a quick, 360-degree view of the overall sales performance.

However, with a sales dashboard and sales pipeline visualization, this challenge is quickly averted. A sales dashboard automatically pulls data from all relevant sources and delivers insights in visual, easy-to-understand formats, and does so in near-real time, so that nothing gets outdated and abandoned.

This speeds up decision-making for sales professionals, liberating them from data hassles and allowing them to focus on what truly matters: closing deals. 

Identifying bottlenecks and growth opportunities

A sales dashboard provides insights into current customers, what brought them to your website, and how many deals you lost before closing one. The visibility into the sales pipeline—how likely the leads are to move from one stage to another and how long it takes—helps identify bottlenecks on the customer journey. Analyzing each stage in the context of the whole customer journey helps sales professionals to quickly spot underperforming areas and address the issue. 

A single source of truth 

A sales dashboard acts as a single source of truth for sellers, managers, and senior executives. That way, everyone on the team is speaking the same language and working toward the same KPIs. It'll also provide more visibility within the team, helping team leads manage resources and understand individual performance better.

What Sales Pipeline Metrics to Track in Your Dashboard

This section will discuss some of the most important sales metrics you can include in your sales pipeline report.

However, it is important to note that no two organizations are identical. Thus, your overall sales dashboard will look considerably different when you factor in your unique offerings, revenue objectives, and target prospects.

Average sales cycle length

With sales cycle length, you are looking at the average duration it takes to close a deal, starting from the first touch with the prospect. To calculate this, you must sum up the total time it took to close your deals within a specific time frame and divide this figure by the total number of closed sales within that period.

By tracking and analyzing the average sales cycle length, sales teams can identify what's causing sales hangups and what stage of the pipeline needs more attention. 

Leads by source

This metric lets you quickly see where your sales leads are coming from—in other words, through which channels leads discover your company. Lead source attribution is just one aspect of the overarching topic of marketing attribution, which is the identification of touchpoints that aided the conversion.

Combining lead source and revenue attribution data, you'll be able to identify sources that deliver your sales team's highest number of leads or high-value customers and prioritize those. Here's why it's important. Imagine you have two channels that bring you the same high number of leads. Leads coming from one channel drop or go dark after a quick discovery call. However, the majority of leads from the other channel quickly turn into paying customers. 

When it comes to sales, it is crucial to understand that quality should be prioritized over quantity. Thus, you should always pay attention to sources that deliver the best quality leads. 

Pipeline stage conversion rate

The pipeline stage conversion rate measures the ratio of leads that progress from one stage of the sales pipeline to the next.

For instance, if you receive 100 marketing-qualified leads (MQL) from your marketing department, and only 50 become sales-qualified leads (SQL), the conversion rate for this pipeline stage would be 50%. If you successfully set up demo calls with 30 of those SQLs, the new pipeline stage conversion rate would be 60%.

Weighing the ratio of leads that progress through your pipeline’s opportunity stages against your industry's benchmark helps you determine how effective your sales strategies have been, as well as the quality of leads you've been receiving. Use this data to run sales optimization experiments and determine which lead-generation strategies work best for your business.

Opportunity win rate

This refers to the number of sales opportunities that converted to deals within a defined time frame vs. the total number of opportunities created during the same period.

For large organizations, this metric can be measured for individual sales team members and specific time frames.

For instance, if you had 100 sales opportunities in the first quarter and successfully closed 20 deals, your opportunity win rate for Q1 would be 20%. The same applies to individual sales personnel, especially if you're trying to gauge their effectiveness.

In general, your goal should be to implement strategies for keeping your opportunity win rate as high as possible.

Average deal size

The average deal size refers to the average amount your clients spend per closed deal. The average deal size can be calculated for a certain segment of customers—for example, mid-market brands, the median for all customers, or a weighted sum.

Knowing your average deal size will enable you to have more realistic expectations and implement strategies to hit them. That said, you can ramp up the figures by upselling existing customers on more valuable offers, targeting larger clients, and securing long-term contracts.

Pipeline value

This refers to the value of the opportunities in your sales pipeline. To determine this, you'll need to count the total number of sales opportunities within your pipeline, then multiply this by your average deal size. The important thing here is to identify what a sales opportunity is. Without clear criteria, you may count the value of leads or prospects. 

So, if you had 50 opportunities and your average deal size was $150k, your pipeline would be valued at $7.5 million. This means that your sales team would return $7.5 million if they converted all 50 opportunities in the pipeline.

Closing opportunities by source

This metric helps you determine where your best prospects are coming from. The aim is to prioritize sources that produce the highest number of closing opportunities for the sales team.

By focusing your resources on your customer journeys that bring leads with the highest likelihood to convert, you will be able to optimize and close even more deals.

Closing opportunities by source also tells you when to diversify your channels to avoid too much reliance on one source. In general, if your best sales opportunities are coming from one source, your business will be at risk, and the only way to curb this would be to keep expanding and testing other avenues.

New deals created

This metric considers the exact number of new deals, meaning opportunities that turned into paying customers, closed by sales professionals within a set period. The time frame considered when calculating this metric varies from business to business. The number of new deals created essentially contrasts the figures with expected results to quickly gauge the productivity of your sales team.

Deals won amount

The deals won amount focuses on the actual revenue generated from the deals closed by your sales representatives. Let's say your team closed ten sales for products worth $150k each. In that case, the total revenue from those closed deals would be $1.5m.

Customer lifetime value (CLTV)

This refers to the total revenue a sales team can generate from a single customer throughout the course of their relationship. This is particularly important for SaaS and subscription-based businesses where CLTV depends on renewals.

With CLTV, you will be able to identify who your most valuable clients are and how to maximize your business relationships. In general, CLTV can be ramped up by leveraging upsell and cross-sell opportunities, as well as lowering the rate of customer churn.

Go from Insight to Impact with a Sales Pipeline Dashboard

A sales dashboard is a critical component of an effective sales pipeline analysis and reporting and sales optimization process. Without a proper solution, it becomes difficult to extract insights and implement effective strategies from the huge streams of sales data that flood your CRM every day.

Remember, there’s no one-size-fits-all dashboard. Every organization is wired differently, so it’s important to populate your sales pipeline dashboard with metrics relevant to your offerings, strategies, and revenue goals.