Sales Dashboard: Here are the answers – and thoughts – to the WH Questions of sales managers
Posted: Tue Dec 03, 2024 7:59 am
Note: If you feel like you're reading this article and you see your thoughts in the italicized sentences, don't worry: you're meaning it exactly as you should. Happy reading!
In the fast-paced world of business, where people never have time to think and are always swamped with work – mmm let's start well, this one knows my situation exactly – sales managers are faced with complex and stressful challenges related to the effective management of the sales force and the analysis of the activities carried out by sales.
The need to monitor the sales pipeline – ours is empty because of marketing that works with its ass – evaluate the performance of the sellers – it's useless, even the walls know who the slackers are here – and identify opportunities for improvement – blah blah blah there's never any time anyway – becomes increasingly crucial for the success of the company.
In this context, using dashboards for data analysis proves to be a strategic weapon to gain a temporal advantage on decisions to be made – I will finally be like Doctor Strange and predict the future!
New call to action
Doubts about sales dashboards
But the 5 questions about dashboards – let’s see if I have them all in my album of unanswered questions – that sales managers ask themselves are always the same: Where should they be created? Who should create them? How should they be structured? When should they be used? What should they tell me? – Wow… but they are the same questions I ask my colleagues and no one ever knows how to answer me.
1. Where should they be created?
This question can be put on the same level as the Shakespearean question “to be or not to be?” – have I already thought that this guy knows me very well? What is the name of the company that a call with them could be useful to me?
There are millions of software in the world that allow you to create data analysis graphs, from the free Excel – I hate it, don't talk to me about it because it's ugly and impossible to use – to super advanced programs that use AI to choose the fundamental data to transmit visually.
One thing is certain and cannot be questioned: the best application is the one that allows the sales manager to have a vision of the entire chain – that's what I've always said too –, from the article read on the site by the future prospect to the information on the renewal for the 4th consecutive year of the customer with significant growth prospects.
We write the reason only for the right to report but in reality it is very simple: the more information we have, the more analysis we can do, the more we are sure that in the end we will not miss some useful association.
There are many applications that perform these functions, including those that are sold as “easily integrated thanks to the API” – that’s what they continually try to sell me, but I don’t get fooled – and which in reality are never.
To give a virtuous example, Hubspot is a tool that manages marketing, sales and service activities, allowing us to have all the information we need in a single application natively – our marketing still uses that old tool, we have a horrible CRM (Excel, precisely after the failure of the CRM project) and I don’t even know if the service exists here… I’ll finish the article and then I’ll look at it.
2. Who should create them?
Once the application problem is solved, the hot potato arrives which, as for all companies, can turn into a “crown of the new emperor”, if the project is successful, or “a scam that I had to manage” if something goes wrong after just a few days – here, we understand how not to be fooled –.
Who do we have do it?
The answer is strange and ambiguous but at the same time correct and very true: everyone and no one. – in what sense???
This means that everyone should contribute to defining the structure and the finland whatsapp number data 5 million story that the dashboards should have, but no one should feel like the exclusive owner of the activity – aaaaah now it's clear!
The team of people who work on projects of this type is usually composed of:
A sales manager, who doesn't know how to use the tool but is useful because, thanks to his experience, he can direct the reasoning on the information that needs to be analyzed - ok, there are some
At least one sales person, who doesn't have the overall vision but lives the negotiations with customers on a daily basis and knows the phases and moments that can turn out to be bottlenecks to be corrected - we only have 2 good ones out of 10 and they are also the most busy, I try to understand with them who is interested because it could be useful for their growth
A marketing manager, who wouldn’t even know how to sell ice to Eskimos but knows all the communication channels very well. Together with this figure, we can analyze the most performing of the channels – right, so right away we understand what the leads they generate are like and see how to improve the lead management process with concrete data. Maybe I can also solve the relationship problems I have with them…
A technician, who does not speak our language but, at the same time, is the only one who knows where to put his hand in the initial phases of the process and is able, subsequently, to explain it to the rest of the team. – it is true that it is always necessary
3. How should they be structured?
Let's go quickly with this question - too bad, I was enjoying the depth and the cut of the article - and give the answer right away. The structure of the dashboards must always be the same and, based on the needs, it can be expanded at one stage or another:
In the fast-paced world of business, where people never have time to think and are always swamped with work – mmm let's start well, this one knows my situation exactly – sales managers are faced with complex and stressful challenges related to the effective management of the sales force and the analysis of the activities carried out by sales.
The need to monitor the sales pipeline – ours is empty because of marketing that works with its ass – evaluate the performance of the sellers – it's useless, even the walls know who the slackers are here – and identify opportunities for improvement – blah blah blah there's never any time anyway – becomes increasingly crucial for the success of the company.
In this context, using dashboards for data analysis proves to be a strategic weapon to gain a temporal advantage on decisions to be made – I will finally be like Doctor Strange and predict the future!
New call to action
Doubts about sales dashboards
But the 5 questions about dashboards – let’s see if I have them all in my album of unanswered questions – that sales managers ask themselves are always the same: Where should they be created? Who should create them? How should they be structured? When should they be used? What should they tell me? – Wow… but they are the same questions I ask my colleagues and no one ever knows how to answer me.
1. Where should they be created?
This question can be put on the same level as the Shakespearean question “to be or not to be?” – have I already thought that this guy knows me very well? What is the name of the company that a call with them could be useful to me?
There are millions of software in the world that allow you to create data analysis graphs, from the free Excel – I hate it, don't talk to me about it because it's ugly and impossible to use – to super advanced programs that use AI to choose the fundamental data to transmit visually.
One thing is certain and cannot be questioned: the best application is the one that allows the sales manager to have a vision of the entire chain – that's what I've always said too –, from the article read on the site by the future prospect to the information on the renewal for the 4th consecutive year of the customer with significant growth prospects.
We write the reason only for the right to report but in reality it is very simple: the more information we have, the more analysis we can do, the more we are sure that in the end we will not miss some useful association.
There are many applications that perform these functions, including those that are sold as “easily integrated thanks to the API” – that’s what they continually try to sell me, but I don’t get fooled – and which in reality are never.
To give a virtuous example, Hubspot is a tool that manages marketing, sales and service activities, allowing us to have all the information we need in a single application natively – our marketing still uses that old tool, we have a horrible CRM (Excel, precisely after the failure of the CRM project) and I don’t even know if the service exists here… I’ll finish the article and then I’ll look at it.
2. Who should create them?
Once the application problem is solved, the hot potato arrives which, as for all companies, can turn into a “crown of the new emperor”, if the project is successful, or “a scam that I had to manage” if something goes wrong after just a few days – here, we understand how not to be fooled –.
Who do we have do it?
The answer is strange and ambiguous but at the same time correct and very true: everyone and no one. – in what sense???
This means that everyone should contribute to defining the structure and the finland whatsapp number data 5 million story that the dashboards should have, but no one should feel like the exclusive owner of the activity – aaaaah now it's clear!
The team of people who work on projects of this type is usually composed of:
A sales manager, who doesn't know how to use the tool but is useful because, thanks to his experience, he can direct the reasoning on the information that needs to be analyzed - ok, there are some
At least one sales person, who doesn't have the overall vision but lives the negotiations with customers on a daily basis and knows the phases and moments that can turn out to be bottlenecks to be corrected - we only have 2 good ones out of 10 and they are also the most busy, I try to understand with them who is interested because it could be useful for their growth
A marketing manager, who wouldn’t even know how to sell ice to Eskimos but knows all the communication channels very well. Together with this figure, we can analyze the most performing of the channels – right, so right away we understand what the leads they generate are like and see how to improve the lead management process with concrete data. Maybe I can also solve the relationship problems I have with them…
A technician, who does not speak our language but, at the same time, is the only one who knows where to put his hand in the initial phases of the process and is able, subsequently, to explain it to the rest of the team. – it is true that it is always necessary
3. How should they be structured?
Let's go quickly with this question - too bad, I was enjoying the depth and the cut of the article - and give the answer right away. The structure of the dashboards must always be the same and, based on the needs, it can be expanded at one stage or another: