CRM dashboards

There’s a reason video killed the radio star—humans are visual processors. According to research, an estimated 80 percent of the data we process from moment to moment is visual. This phenomenon is so powerful, in fact, that the use of visual images has proven to increase meeting effectiveness and efficiency by 24 percent.

When you integrate customer relationship management (CRM) software into your business, you’re hacking this part of the human brain. That’s because the best CRMs—even basic CRMs— include robust visualization tools that can help you track data, clearly interpret trends and information, and ultimately streamline your sales pipeline. If you’re looking to do good business, you’re going to need a good CRM that easily captures, analyzes, and visualizes your sales data in quick and easy CRM dashboards that answer all of your business questions.

In this article we’ll define, discuss, and assess the benefits of those CRM dashboards, as well as reveal exactly how they can take your business to the next level.

Table of contents

• What is a CRM dashboard?
• Dashboard examples
• CRM dashboard benefits
• Characteristics of good dashboards

A CRM dashboard is a centralized hub for your sales data and information. It presents sales activities, KPIs, and other essential CRM metrics in a visually appealing, dynamic, and interactive manner. A great CRM dashboard is your best admin assistant. With the powers of AI and automation, it organizes all current data and uncovers insights that can improve customer strategies and communications.

Companies with advanced analytics capabilities are outperforming their competitors — they’re twice as likely to be in the top quartile of financial performance in their industries. With a CRM dashboard, you can use built-in data visualization tools to create a clear snapshot of your most important business metrics. These include analysis and reporting for any number of KPIs, which we’ll expand on below.

In sales, there are so many moving pieces and variables that keeping up can be a challenge. CRM dashboards update crucial data in real time so that your sales reps and managers can make the most informed decisions and stay on the same page. Indeed, teams using visual language have experienced a 21% increase in reaching consensus as compared to groups that didn’t use visuals.

Most importantly, good CRM dashboards are highly customizable because every business has unique goals and objectives. With high-quality CRM software, you can choose the metrics with the most value to you and construct a personalized dashboard that presents them clearly and beautifully.

CRM dashboards are usually customizable and can measure a variety of different key performance indicators for your company. Let’s take a look at a few different CRM KPI dashboard examples.

Leads dashboard

A leads dashboard is a type of waterfall dashboard—it visualizes the cascading effect of your marketing qualified lead (MQL) goals on specific metrics and KPIs. A leads dashboard helps you monitor leads in your sales pipeline.

Using these easily-understandable visual metrics, your sales teams can optimize their selling strategies and work on continuously improving their tactics.

Leads dashboards help you visualize KPIs such as:

• Lead quality
• Lead conversion rate
• Active lead status
• Unqualified lead reasons

Deals dashboard

Deals dashboards display a comparative breakdown of your sales pipeline and your revenue, won and lost deals, and forecasts over monthly, quarterly, or annual periods. You can use these statistics to track success rates, pinpoint trends, and examine where and how deals succeed or fail.

Deals dashboards help you visualize KPIs such as:

• Win/loss rates per deal
• Average deals by pipeline and stage
• Lost deal reasons

Funnel report

A funnel report tracks the progression of potential leads as they move through your sales funnel. Funnel reports also track exactly where prospects leave your defined conversion path. Understanding when and why leads drop out of your funnel is critical information when striving for higher conversion rates. After all, you can’t fix what you can’t understand.

Sales funnel dashboards use easily-digestible imagery that allows you to literally keep an eye on your prospects as they move through each stage of the buyer’s journey. With visual data keeping you organized, it’s simple to track trends and adjust your strategies to optimize lead generation and conversion.

Calls dashboard

A calls dashboard visually summarizes the most relevant data about your sales calls. It offers intuitive visual reporting for call center metrics and KPIs so that your sales team can monitor call performance and work to optimize it. By monitoring information about their sales calls, such as call outcomes, reps can improve their outreach strategy.

Calls dashboards help you visualize KPIs such as:

• Total calls
• Outbound/inbound/missed calls
• Call outcomes
• Call duration

Activities dashboard

An activities dashboard displays a summary of any sales activities your team performs in their CRM. This includes information about your sales emails, calls, tasks, appointments, visits, and other daily obligations.

Activities dashboards track the activities you perform for leads, active deals, and closed deals. Seeing your activity in each section of the sales pipeline and how well you fare helps you track your strengths and weaknesses, as well as hone in on tasks that produce the best ROI for your time.

Activities dashboards help you visualize KPIs such as:

• Activities on leads/deals
• Activities per region, industry, or rep

There are many benefits that come with utilizing a great CRM dashboard:

• 
  It leads to stronger sales tactics. Access to a real-time picture of your sales pipeline guides your team towards smarter solutions and better decisions. For example, say your sales rep takes a look at their calls dashboard. Thanks to a clear visual graph, they’re able to see that calls made between 1-3 PM have a higher rate of success with prospects. This sales rep can then adjust their sales strategy to make more calls during that time, leading to overall higher conversion rates.
• 
  It saves time. When sales reps have easily-accessible centralized data, they’re able to find what they’re looking for more quickly and intuitively. This means being better equipped to answer critical business questions on the spot.
• 
  It leads to deeper insights. CRM reporting software offers enormously helpful insights using predictive, historic, and present data. CRM dashboards present these insights in a visual and digestible way. This allows your team to identify emerging trends and stay ahead of the game when figuring out how to best meet consumer needs.
• 
  It helps any business develop a data-driven strategy. When bringing data into your sales strategy it can be difficult and overwhelming to know where to beginIntegrated reporting tools and dashboards make this accessible by helping businesses of all sizes track, manage, and analyze their data.
• 
  It creates a single source of truth for your business data. Great reporting and dashboard capabilities are only as good as how reliable the data is. By centralizing your data across the business, you’re ensuring there is a single source of truth for all data and that everything is tracked accurately. With all data—and all apps—centralized into one platform, no metric gets left behind.

There’s a lot to consider when choosing the right CRM for your company. Here are a few crucial factors you should take into consideration while shopping around:

Customization

Ultimately, the most important thing is going to be finding CRM software that can be molded to suit your specific company needs. Thus, customization is key.

Every organization is different, and great CRM software needs to meet you where you are. It should be able to integrate smoothly and effectively with your existing systems and stay flexible and adjustable as you scale.

Different types of dashboards

While you may use a single primary dashboard, the best CRM software will allow you to customize multiple dashboards for the different KPIs you choose to track. For instance, you could create and customize:

• A sales rep performance dashboard: Set goals and check in on your employees’ quota fulfillment, conversion rates, and deals won or lost per individual rep. Knowing how everyone is performing and identifying each team member’s strengths and weaknesses will tell you exactly how to coach them, push them, and encourage them to smash those sales goals.
• A top deals or new deals dashboard: Whether you're securing your biggest clients for another year or pursuing ambitious new business plans, a dashboard dedicated to the art of the deal always helps you reach your revenue goals.

Integrating with your current systems

The CRM software you choose should easily integrate with any programs your company already uses. For example, if your company relies heavily on Google Calendar to track appointments and due dates, keep an eye out for CRM software that can integrate with that platform. The same is true for any communications, operations, or call center software you use.

The best CRMs make integration simple. That’s why Zendesk has over 200+ low-to-no-code software integrations with the business software you’re already using. Reduce annoying tab-switching and increase productivity when you integrate apps like MailChimp, Slack, and Square into your CRM dashboard.