The purpose of sales dashboards is to increase and improve the sales. They make crucial information available at all times to the sales and marketing teams so they can make informed decisions.
Have your sales objectives been met? Have your margins increased since last year? Are your sales by product category as you predicted? Are your products distributed properly? Are you loosing sales opportunities of your key products with certain retailers?
Thankfully, most enterprises already have systems in place and a variety of reports capable of answering those questions. People from finance or IT departments can also retrieve other necessary data if needed.
However, it is not enough! Experience has taught us that in 9 cases out of 10, sales team members will only look at a few reports (1 to 3) due to a lack of time or because they don’t have the necessary analytic competence to cross-reference the indicators spread out throughout the documents.
The least technophobes might venture in working with Excel to organize their data as they need it each week or each month. Others might possibly print one or two reports and use their good old highlighter to emphasize important elements.
In sales analysis, most teams must usually deal with unfinished, incomplete and ill-suited tools and processes. Spreading key performance indicators to sales managers without identifying them can have a detrimental effect on your business:
– Loss of sales opportunities;
– Difficulties to anticipate and make realistic forecasts;
– Time loss;
– Difficulties to identify business issues and solutions;
– +++
By implementing sales dashboards, you will be able to:
- Make sure all members of your sales team have access to precise, relevant and quality information, anywhere and at anytime.
- Highlight the gap between your goals and results.
- Communicate clearly and easily in one page the most important indicators to make sure everybody is equipped to make a positive impact on the sales.
No matter what position you hold in a sales team you will find a dashboard made for you. It will help you start your day smoothly and show you clearly everything you need to see.