Accelerate your thought leadership by contributing to our blog. Join our community of experts now!
Keeping track of your sales team’s numbers and metrics can be tedious and time-consuming. If you’re a small team with limited resources or just looking for more flexibility in your data management, Google Sheets can be a great place to host your sales data. Spreadsheets are customizable, scalable, and easily accessible.
However, if you want to put your data to use, spreadsheets can be cluttered and hard to read. On the other hand, a Google Sheets dashboard will help make your data easier to read and more actionable for your organization. Creating dashboards from your Google Sheets data is simple with Databox.
Build an effective sales dashboard in 5 easy steps:
Before you begin to compile your data, consider what the goal of your dashboard is. Who is the dashboard intended for? What are the metrics and KPIs they care about or need to know? A cluttered dashboard can be confusing and difficult to read, so a solid understanding of your audience will help keep your dashboard focused.
When defining your audience, consider:
With the objectives of your audience in mind, select the metrics you’d like to include. Focusing on the most important metrics will ensure your dashboard is effective and easy to read.
If you need to include many metrics or objectives, create a looped dashboard. A looped dashboard allows you to group together relevant dashboards so you can present a comprehensive story with your data—without the cluttered screen.
Here are some of the most popular metrics for tracking sales performance:
Once you know the metrics you want to track, set up your Google Sheet in a way that makes sense for your objectives. Below is an example:
Once you have your spreadsheet ready, connecting it to Databox is easy. First, go to the Data Manager in your Databox account. Click the New Connection button in the top right corner of the page, and then select Google Sheets.
Select the spreadsheet with the sales data you are looking to visualize. Once selected, you can begin creating the metrics you want to track on your dashboard.
Creating the custom metrics you need is easy with the Google Sheets Wizard tool. To get started, go to the dashboards section of your Databox account. From here click, “New Databoard” in the top right corner, and then select “Use Wizard”.
From here, select Google Sheets as your data source. You will then select the specific spreadsheet you want to use for your dashboard. The data will populate on your screen like this:
Verify the data is correct, and then click “Continue”.
Time to create your first metric! Select the value you’d like to measure. This is the primary numerical value you want to track for your metric:
For this example, we’re tracking deal size by industry segment. Once you have selected your primary metric, click “Continue”.
From here you have the option to further segment your metric by adding a Dimension—this could be something like Region, Industry, or in the example above, Segment. Dimensions will allow you to categorize your metrics the way you want them.
Once you’ve selected your dimension, click “Continue”. You will then be prompted to select the appropriate date range:
Click “Continue”. You will be able to name your metric and finish any data selections you may have on the next screen:
Once you’re finished, click “Continue”.
On this last screen, you can select the way you’d like to visualize your data, and add it to a new or existing databoard.
Once you have created all the metrics you want to track, add them to your dashboard. The Databox dashboard designer makes it easy to visualize your metrics the way you want. Select a metric, then choose from a variety of visualization options to find what works best for your data. The dashboard designer allows you to create meaningful dashboards that your entire team can understand.
Features like goals will help you and your team keep track of your progress towards important targets. Dashboards are easy to share with team members through snapshots or custom reports—now available to build directly in Databox!
Log in to your Databox account to get started.
Don’t have an account yet? Sign up here for free.
Get practical strategies that drive consistent growth