Managing sales data from different platforms can be challenging, but Geckoboard makes it easy to visualize sales metrics from tools like Aircall, HubSpot, Intercom, and Zapier all in one place. With Geckoboard, you can track these sources on the same sales dashboard or, if it works better for your team, create separate dashboards that focus on specific areas.

This flexibility allows you to monitor exactly what you need, whether you prefer a unified view or detailed insights across multiple boards.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through setting up a sales data dashboard that integrates Aircall, HubSpot, Intercom, and Zapier metrics. We’ll also discuss how to create multiple dashboards for more specific reporting if that’s the better option for your team.

Step 1: Connect your data sources in Geckoboard

Start by connecting your various data sources to Geckoboard. Here’s how to link each account:

• Log into Geckoboard: Sign in or create a Geckoboard account if you don’t have one yet.
• Connect HubSpot: From the ‘Data Sources’ section, select HubSpot and follow the prompts to connect your account. You’ll be able to pull in key sales metrics like deal stages, lead conversions, and total revenue.
• Connect Aircall: Similarly, select Aircall in the ‘Data Sources’ section. This integration allows you to track call volume, duration, and response times; important metrics for understanding your sales team’s phone performance.
• Connect Intercom: Add Intercom as a data source to visualize customer conversations and support metrics, such as chat response times and resolution rates.
• Connect Zapier: Lastly, integrate Zapier to track how many workflows are running, how successful they are, and how automation is impacting your sales processes.

Step 2: Set up widgets for each data source

Now that your data sources are connected, it’s time to create widgets to visualize the key metrics from each platform:

• HubSpot widgets: Track essential metrics like deal stages, conversion rates, and closed deals. This data is critical for monitoring your sales pipeline in real time.
• Aircall widgets: Create widgets to visualize call volume, call duration, and average response times, which are key indicators of your team's outreach efforts.
• Intercom widgets: Use Intercom widgets to track customer conversation data, like how quickly issues are resolved and how many inquiries are coming in through live chat.
• Zapier widgets: Set up widgets that show how many automations Zapier is running and how efficient they are at helping your team streamline workflows.

Step 3: Customize your dashboard layout

Whether you decide to track all your data on a single dashboard or split it into multiple dashboards for more focused insights, Geckoboard allows for easy customization.

1. Single dashboard for a unified view: If you prefer an all-in-one approach, arrange widgets from Aircall, HubSpot, Intercom, and Zapier on the same dashboard to get a holistic view of your sales activities. Group related metrics together to see how they influence each other, like comparing sales calls to deal closings.
2. Multiple dashboards for specific insights: You might find it easier to separate data by platform or category. For example, one dashboard could focus solely on HubSpot metrics like deal stages and revenue, while another could track call activity from Aircall. This way, you can dive deeper into specific areas without cluttering a single dashboard.
3. Tailor your layout: Geckoboard allows you to adjust widget sizes, colors, and layouts to make the most important data stand out. Consider organizing by priority, placing key performance indicators (KPIs) at the top of the dashboard for quick insights.

Step 4: Automate snapshot reports

To keep your team updated without manually checking the dashboard, Geckoboard allows you to automate snapshot reports. Here’s how to set them up:

• Set daily snapshots for real-time sales data: For your sales team, automate daily snapshots to track call activity, deal stages, and customer interactions. This provides a quick overview of performance.
• Weekly and monthly snapshots for trend analysis: Use weekly or monthly reports to get a broader picture of how your team is performing over time. These reports can help track patterns in closed deals, customer inquiries, and workflow efficiency.
• Schedule snapshot reports for email: Set up automatic snapshots to be sent directly to your team’s inbox. This ensures everyone stays informed without needing to access the dashboard regularly.

Choose the right dashboard setup for your team

With Geckoboard, you have the flexibility to visualize sales data from Aircall, HubSpot, Intercom, and Zapier on a single sales data dashboard or create separate dashboards to drill down into specific areas. Whether you need an all-in-one view of your sales operations or prefer dedicated dashboards for more focused insights, Geckoboard allows you to tailor your setup to what works best for your team.

Ready to see how Geckoboard can simplify your data tracking? Start a free trial today and experience firsthand how easy it is to visualize and monitor all your sales metrics in one place.

When you rely on HubSpot reports for key insights, keeping them up to date is crucial. But ensuring they reflect the latest data isn’t always as easy as it looks. Are your reports refreshing frequently enough? Are they covering the right date ranges? And how do you spot errors before they mislead your team?

This post walks you through how to keep your HubSpot reports current by adjusting refresh rates, selecting accurate date ranges, and identifying data issues, so you're always working with the most reliable information.

Understanding refresh rates for HubSpot reports

One of the most important factors in keeping your HubSpot reports current is setting the correct refresh rates. A report that doesn't refresh frequently enough could leave you working with outdated data.

HubSpot's default settings refresh reports daily, but this can be adjusted depending on your needs. For example, sales teams often rely on daily sales reports to track performance, but if you’ve also set up a HubSpot quarterly report, it’s likely to need less frequent updates.

Make sure to align your refresh rates with the operational needs of your team. You can adjust these in the settings of your HubSpot dashboard, depending on whether you need daily, weekly, or even hourly refreshes.

How to set accurate date ranges

HubSpot allows you to set custom date ranges for reports, from “Today” or “Yesterday” to more expansive options like “Last 30 days” or “Last Quarter.”

For regular reporting needs, such as daily sales reports, you’ll want to make sure your data is updating in line with that. It’s always worth double checking any preset ranges that might accidentally skew your figures, rather than assuming it’s set up properly from the start. For instance, if you're reviewing a HubSpot quarterly report, confirm that your report covers the exact months in your fiscal quarter to avoid discrepancies.

How to know when your HubSpot report data is wrong

Sometimes, you may notice that your HubSpot report doesn’t look quite right. Perhaps a graph shows no data points for a particular month, or maybe certain sales figures don’t seem to add up. Common indicators that something's off with your data include:

• Missing data points: If graphs or tables show no data for long periods, it’s a sign that your report isn’t pulling in the correct time range or data.
• Unusual spikes or dips: Unexplained spikes or sudden dips in data could indicate incorrect parameters in your report.
• Delayed updates: If your reports are not refreshing as often as they should, your data might be out of sync with real-time operations.

If you notice any of these red flags, it’s essential to recheck your report settings and the sources of data to ensure everything is being pulled correctly. If you have more than one admin on your account, be mindful that other members of your team could make changes that impact your data accuracy, even if they’re accidental.

How to ensure your reports are always up to date

To make sure your HubSpot reports remain up to date, here are a few best practices:

1. Set realistic refresh schedules: As mentioned, not all reports need to be refreshed daily. Consider the needs of your team and adjust your refresh settings accordingly. For a daily sales report, a daily refresh makes sense. But for monthly or quarterly reports, you may want to adjust this to weekly or monthly.
2. Check your date ranges regularly: Within HubSpot, ensure that the date ranges you’re reporting on are still relevant. This is particularly important for reports covering seasonal sales trends or fiscal quarters. Regularly audit your reports to make sure they reflect the correct time frames.
3. Regularly monitor for errors: Set aside time to regularly check your most critical reports for any errors in data. Keeping an eye out for missing data points or odd trends can save you from making decisions based on faulty information.
4. Automate snapshot reports: Tools like Geckoboard can simplify the process of pulling together your sales data at regular intervals. This tool allows you to schedule daily, weekly, and monthly report snapshots that automatically pull data for periods like ‘Today’, ‘Yesterday’, ‘Last Week’, and ‘Last Month’. These shareable HubSpot reports are ideal for recurring reports like HubSpot quarterly reports and daily sales reports.

Keeping your HubSpot reports up to date

Keeping your HubSpot reports up to date is all about getting the basics right: consistent refresh schedules, accurate date ranges, and staying alert for any data inconsistencies. With these steps in place, you can trust that your reports will give you the information you need, when you need it.

And with tools like Geckoboard, automating report snapshots can make it even easier to keep track of your daily, weekly, or monthly insights, so your data is always fresh and ready to go.

Managing a sales pipeline can feel overwhelming without the right insights. Deals are progressing, but without clear data, it’s tough to know what’s working and what’s holding things up. That’s where HubSpot’s sales pipeline reporting comes in. It gives you visibility into every stage of your pipeline, helping you catch issues early and keep your team focused on the most important tasks.

In this guide, we’ll explain how to get the most out of reporting on your HubSpot sales pipeline. You’ll learn how and why to share these reports with the right people, to be sure that they’re being used to drive better decisions. Whether it’s identifying bottlenecks, forecasting revenue, or tracking team performance, these reports will help you take control of your sales process and keep everything running smoothly.

Setting up a sales pipeline dashboard

Before diving into reporting, the first step is setting up a custom sales pipeline dashboard in HubSpot. Think of this dashboard as your central hub for all things sales-related. It gives you real-time insights into how deals are progressing and helps you track key metrics like deal velocity and win rates.

If you’re unsure how to get started, check out our post on setting up HubSpot dashboards for a step-by-step guide. It’s a great resource to help you build a dashboard that fits your needs.

Why sales pipeline reports matter

Once you have a dashboard set up, it’s time to talk about why sales pipeline reports are so important. These reports are essentially the compass for your sales team. They show where deals are progressing, where they’re stalling, and whether you're on track to meet your goals.

Reports give you the visibility to identify bottlenecks, forecast revenue, and adjust your sales strategies. They’re not just a luxury; they’re a necessity for any well-functioning sales operation.

Types of sales pipeline reports you should be creating

When it comes to sales pipeline reports, there are a few types that will provide you with the most value. By focusing on these key report types, you’ll get a comprehensive view of your sales pipeline, tracking progress, predicting revenue, identifying successes and failures, and monitoring your team’s efforts. Let’s break them down:

1. Deal stage reports: These reports track where each deal is within your sales pipeline. By seeing how deals move through each stage, you can quickly spot where things might be stalling. For example, if a lot of deals are getting stuck in the ‘Negotiation’ stage, it might be time to revisit your pricing strategy or improve negotiation skills.
2. Sales forecasting reports: These reports help predict future revenue based on the deals currently in your pipeline. By analyzing the likelihood of deals closing and the value of each, sales forecasting gives you a clearer idea of what revenue to expect in the coming weeks or months. This is crucial for executives and managers who need to plan resources, set expectations, and make strategic decisions. A good forecasting report shows not just what’s in the pipeline but when it’s likely to close.
3. Win/loss reports: Win/loss reports analyze which deals your team is winning and losing, and why. Understanding the reasons behind wins and losses can help to refine your sales strategies. For instance, if many deals are being lost to a specific competitor, it could signal the need for stronger competitive positioning. These reports are great for identifying areas for improvement in both your sales process and product offering.
4. Activity reports: These reports track the actions taken by your sales team, like calls made, emails sent, and meetings scheduled. Activity reports help correlate sales efforts with deal progress. These reports are especially useful for managers to monitor productivity and understand what activities are driving success.

Who needs to see your sales reports?

Your sales pipeline data holds valuable insights for everyone in the organization. Executives, sales managers, and sales reps all have different needs, so it's important to tailor your reports to each group.

Customizing your reports for these different audiences ensures that each person gets the information that’s most relevant to them.

Customizing reports for different audiences

• Executives care about top-level metrics such as revenue projections, deal velocity, and pipeline value. They need a quick snapshot of overall performance to make informed, high-level decisions.
• Sales managers need more granular reports. They want to see how individual reps are performing, which deals are moving (or stalling) through the pipeline, and what actions are driving success. This helps them manage the team effectively and address any issues.
• Sales reps benefit from highly specific, personal reports. They need to know which deals need immediate attention, how their activity levels compare to targets, and where they can focus to maximize their performance. Customizing reports to show individual progress and deal priorities gives them clear direction.

When you tailor reports to suit the needs of each group, you empower them to take meaningful action based on relevant, actionable insights.

How to make sure reports are actually seen

Creating valuable reports is only half the battle; ensuring they get in front of the right eyes is just as important. Here’s how to make sure your sales pipeline reports aren’t ignored:

• Automate email reports in HubSpot to send them directly to key stakeholders. Set up scheduled deliveries-daily, weekly, or monthly-so everyone gets the sharable data they need without having to manually pull reports. This ensures that your team always has up-to-date information in their inbox.
• For teams that need quick, real-time updates, HubSpot’s daily summary emails can include pipeline snapshots. These snapshots give a concise overview of deals, deal stages, and expected revenue, keeping everyone informed on a day-to-day basis.
• To give your reports maximum visibility, consider displaying live sales pipeline data on an office TV screen. Geckoboard can pull real-time data from HubSpot and display it in a visually engaging way, keeping critical metrics front and center for your entire team. When the data is right in front of everyone, they’re more likely to act on it.

How to know when your reporting isn’t working

Even with a solid HubSpot sales reporting system, things can go off track. If your team isn’t acting on the insights from your reports, it’s a sign something’s wrong. Here are some common issues to watch out for:

• Data overload: If the reports are too detailed or complicated, team members may not engage with them. Simplifying the reports can make them more useful.
• Out-of-date information: If your reports aren’t being updated regularly, decisions may be based on outdated data. Make sure your reports are refreshed to prevent this issue.
• Low engagement: If no one is checking the reports, it might be time to rethink how you deliver them. Try adjusting the format, making them more accessible, or displaying them in a high-visibility area like an office TV screen.

Recognizing these signs early will help you optimize your reporting process and make sure your team is getting the most value from the data.

Turn your reports into actionable insights

Sales pipeline reports are a powerful tool when used effectively. They give you the visibility you need to understand how your sales process is performing, where improvements can be made, and how to keep your team on track. By tailoring reports to meet the needs of each audience and sharing them in ways that ensure they’re seen and used, you can transform raw data into clear, actionable insights.

With the right approach to reporting, you’ll not only track progress but also drive meaningful action, helping your business stay focused, adaptable, and ready for growth.

When it comes to sales, numbers tell the real story. But with so many metrics out there, it’s easy to get lost in the data. That’s where HubSpot comes in; it offers a ton of ways to track your sales performance, but knowing which numbers actually matter can make all the difference.

Focusing on the right HubSpot sales metrics gives you a clear path to better decisions, smarter strategies, and more wins. Whether you’re trying to speed up your sales cycle or figure out why deals are getting stuck, the right data helps you adjust course in real time. Let’s break down the most important HubSpot sales metrics you should be tracking to keep your team on the right track.

1. Deals Created

At the heart of any sales process are the deals your team creates. Tracking the number of deals created in HubSpot helps you monitor the volume of opportunities entering your pipeline. This metric gives you an early indication of sales momentum and provides insights into whether your marketing and lead generation efforts are working effectively.

Why it matters: If deals created suddenly drop, it could signal a problem with lead generation or prospecting, requiring immediate action to prevent pipeline drought.

What to track:

• Number of deals created by rep or team
• Deal creation trends by week or month

2. Deal Stage Progression

Not every deal moves through the pipeline at the same pace, and that’s okay. What’s important is tracking how deals progress through each stage of your pipeline. HubSpot allows you to create custom deal stages, and tracking where deals get stuck (or where they accelerate) helps identify potential bottlenecks.

Why it matters: If many deals stall at a particular stage, you may need to refine your sales process or provide additional support to your team to move deals forward.

What to track:

• Conversion rates between deal stages
• Time spent in each stage

3. Win Rate

Your win rate is the percentage of deals that successfully close compared to the total number of deals created. This is one of the most important HubSpot sales metrics to monitor because it gives you a clear view of how effective your sales team is at closing deals.

Why it matters: A declining win rate could mean that your team needs better training, improved tools, or more qualified leads entering the pipeline. On the other hand, a high win rate indicates that your team is well-equipped and your sales process is functioning smoothly, but could be an opportunity to test higher price points.

What to track:

• Overall win rate
• Win rate by sales rep

4. Average Deal Size

Understanding your average deal size is essential for forecasting revenue and setting sales goals. HubSpot sales metrics allow you to track the total value of deals and calculate the average size of a closed-won deal.

Why it matters: If your average deal size is shrinking, it may indicate that your team is closing more low-value deals or offering too many discounts. On the other hand, increasing average deal size could mean your team is successfully upselling or cross-selling.

What to track:

• Average deal size over time
• Average deal size by sales rep or team

5. Sales Cycle Length

Sales cycle length refers to the average time it takes to close a deal, from the moment it enters the pipeline until it becomes a closed-won deal. HubSpot makes it easy to track this metric so you can identify anything wrong in your sales process.

Why it matters: A long sales cycle can affect cash flow and cause frustration for both your team and potential customers. By reducing the time it takes to close deals, you can increase your overall sales velocity and improve team morale.

What to track:

• Average sales cycle length overall
• Sales cycle length by deal size or type

6. Lead Response Time

How quickly your sales team responds to new leads can directly impact your chances of closing a deal. HubSpot allows you to track lead response time, which is the average time it takes for your team to follow up with a new lead after they’ve been assigned or have made contact.

Why it matters: Studies show that the faster your sales team responds to a lead, the higher the chance of converting that lead into a paying customer. Monitoring this metric helps ensure that leads are not slipping through the cracks.

What to track:

• Average lead response time by team or rep
• Lead response time trends over time

7. Quota Attainment

Quota attainment measures how close your sales reps are to hitting their assigned sales goals. In HubSpot, you can track each sales rep’s performance in relation to their target and see how they’re progressing throughout the month or quarter.

Why it matters: This is one of the most direct indicators of whether your sales team is performing well. If reps consistently fail to meet their quotas, it may indicate a need for more training, better leads, or improved processes.

What to track:

• Percentage of quota achieved by rep
• Quota attainment trends over time

8. Revenue by Source

Understanding where your revenue is coming from is important for optimizing your sales strategy. HubSpot sales metrics can track revenue by lead source, whether it’s inbound marketing, outbound prospecting, referrals, or another source.

Why it matters: If one source consistently brings in more revenue than others, you can adjust your efforts to focus on what works best. If certain sources are underperforming, it may be worth reevaluating your investment in them.

What to track:

• Total revenue by source
• Revenue trends by source over time

9. Customer Retention Rate

While HubSpot is often seen as a tool for driving new sales, tracking customer retention is just as important. This metric tells you how well you’re keeping your existing customers and whether they’re likely to renew or make repeat purchases.

Why it matters: Retaining customers is often more cost-effective than acquiring new ones. A high customer retention rate indicates customer satisfaction and strong product-market fit, while a low retention rate signals that you may need to work on customer experience or support.

What to track:

• Overall customer retention rate
• Retention rate by product or service

Are you tracking the right metrics?

It’s easy to get lost in all the data HubSpot provides, but the real magic happens when you focus on tracking the right sales metrics. By zeroing in on the numbers that drive real results, you’re setting yourself and your team up for success.

Once you’ve nailed down the right metrics, the next step is to make sure you can easily keep an eye on them. That’s where Geckoboard comes in. It lets you visualize your key metrics in real time, so whether you’re doing a quick check-in or reviewing progress with your team, you’ll always have a clear view of where things stand with your sales pipeline.

So, are you tracking the right metrics? Are you visualizing them in a dashboard in a way that keeps you on track? Now’s the time to make sure both are working for you.

As a sales manager, you need clear, actionable data that helps you make informed decisions. Key performance indicators (KPIs) are essential metrics that keep you on track, and building a dashboard in HubSpot can help you monitor these KPIs efficiently.

Let’s get started with a simple dashboard.

How to build a simple HubSpot dashboard in 5 steps

1. Go to ‘Reports’ and select ‘Dashboards’.
2. Click ‘Create Dashboard’ and name it.
3. Add ‘Reports’ by selecting your key metrics (like revenue or conversions).
4. Organize the layout by dragging and dropping reports.
5. ‘Save’ and ‘Share’ with your team.

That’s enough to get started, but designing a dashboard that evolves with your sales strategy, empowers your team, and provides a 360-degree view of your performance does require some more work.

The rest of this guide delves into some additional steps to help you to create a flexible, dynamic dashboard that scales with your business and adapts to your changing goals.

Step 1: Align KPIs with your evolving sales strategy

Choosing your KPIs isn’t a one-time decision. As your business grows, your KPIs should evolve to reflect shifting priorities and objectives. You may start by tracking basic metrics like revenue and deal volume, but as your team expands, you’ll need more nuanced KPIs that measure efficiency, team performance, and customer lifetime value.

• Early-stage businesses may focus on core metrics like total revenue, average deal size, and lead conversion rates.
• Growing businesses often track metrics like sales cycle length, pipeline velocity, and customer acquisition cost (CAC).
• Scaling businesses need more complex metrics like customer lifetime value (CLV), churn rate, and the percentage of repeat business.

This step is about future-proofing your dashboard. Think beyond your immediate needs and ask, "What metrics will matter six months from now?" By thinking ahead, you’ll save yourself from constantly rebuilding your dashboard as your sales strategy matures.

Step 2: Build a multi-layered dashboard

While many sales dashboards focus on current performance, a well-rounded KPI dashboard offers both real-time insights and historical trends. To get the full picture, your dashboard should balance both high-level overviews and detailed breakdowns that help you identify trends.

A multi-layered dashboard allows you to move fluidly between a general overview and specific data points, creating a dashboard that is adaptable to multiple team members with different roles.

1. Top-level overview: This includes must-have metrics like current revenue, open deals, and conversion rates. These metrics give you an indication on overall performance.
2. Mid-level metrics: Track deal stage distribution, lead source performance, and sales cycle length. These reports highlight how deals are progressing and where potential slowdowns are happening.
3. Drill-down reports: Add drill-down metrics like sales performance by rep, product line success, and geographic trends. These insights help you spot issues and find opportunities for improvement.

Step 3: Automate and update your dashboard in real-time

Static reports can quickly become outdated, and manual data entry has a high risk of error. HubSpot’s automation tools ensure that your KPI dashboard stays relevant by pulling in the latest data without requiring manual updates.

• Set up daily, weekly, and monthly data pulls: Depending on the nature of the KPI, configure automated updates to fit the reporting cycle. Revenue and pipeline reports might refresh daily, while customer lifetime value might be calculated monthly.
• Monitor real-time data through integrations: If you need live updates on specific metrics, partners like Geckoboard can pull in data from multiple systems in real time, offering a more immediate snapshot of performance across your tools.

Step 4: Adapt your dashboard as your team scales

As your sales team grows, your KPI dashboard needs to keep pace. The metrics that work for a five-person sales team might not be enough for a team of 50. At this point, you’ll need to spend some time optimizing your dashboard so it still works for your organization.

• Segment KPIs by team: Create separate views for different sales teams or regions. For example, if you manage multiple territories, create separate revenue reports for each one and track performance regionally.
• Introduce new KPIs gradually: As your business grows, incorporate KPIs like customer retention rates, cross-sell effectiveness, or upsell performance. Avoid adding too many metrics at once to prevent data overload.
• Refine KPI definitions: As sales processes evolve, the definition of success might change. Continuously refine what you’re measuring to match your current goals. For instance, instead of just tracking lead volume, measure lead quality by focusing on leads that reach specific deal stages.

Step 5: Use data visualization to drive team action

The visualization of data can make all the difference in. When KPIs are well-visualized, they not only tell a story but also inspire action. Good visualization can help you and your team spot problems, seize opportunities, and stay on track to meet goals.

• Use heatmaps for deal progress: Use heatmaps to visually highlight deals that are moving through your pipeline quickly versus those that are stuck.
• Use trend graphs for lead generation: Line or bar charts showing lead generation trends over time can reveal patterns, such as seasonal slowdowns or upticks after specific marketing efforts.
• Use goal progress meters: Use goal-tracking visualizations like progress meters to show how close you are to monthly or quarterly sales targets.

Step 6: Build a full picture with multiple data sources

Your KPI dashboard shouldn’t exist in isolation. Often, businesses rely on multiple tools to manage sales, customer support, and operations. Using Geckoboard, you can pull in data from multiple sources like HubSpot, Zendesk, and Zapier, into a single dashboard. This gives you a real-time, 360-degree view of your business operations.

• Geckoboard allows you to display data from various platforms all in one place. You can combine data from HubSpot, Zendesk, Google Sheets, Aircall, and other apps to get a holistic view of your performance.
• Geckoboard pulls in real-time data, so you’re always working with the most up-to-date metrics from all your systems, rather than waiting for periodic updates.

Sign up for a free trial of Geckoboard to bring data from multiple tools into one dashboard.

Step 7: Tailor dashboards for different roles

Different members of your team have different priorities, so a one-size-fits-all dashboard often doesn’t work. Instead, create role-specific dashboards that provide tailored insights for each level of your sales organization.

• For sales reps, focus on individual performance metrics, such as calls made, deals closed, and personal pipeline health.
• For sales managers, highlight team-wide metrics, including total revenue, deal velocity, and lead-to-deal conversion rates.
• For executives, use higher-level KPIs like total revenue growth, sales cycle length, and customer retention to show the overall direction of the business.

Providing tailored dashboards keeps the focus on the right metrics for each team member and gives clarity at every level of the sales process.

Creating a HubSpot KPI dashboard that grows with your business

Remember, building a HubSpot KPI dashboard is more than just assembling reports. Whether you’re a small team focused on lead conversion or a growing salesforce tackling complex pipelines, your dashboard should evolve as your business does.

By following these steps and using tools like Geckoboard for multi-source integrations, your KPI dashboard will become an essential asset in driving success and keeping your team on track.

As a sales manager, your ability to track performance, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions can directly impact your team’s results. You’ve probably already discovered that HubSpot offers a wide range of reporting tools to help you monitor sales activities, assess team performance, and analyze key metrics. But while these tools are powerful, using them effectively requires more than just pulling standard reports.

The right reporting strategies can help you:

• Pinpoint bottlenecks in your sales pipeline
• Optimize team performance by tracking key metrics like deal velocity and closed revenue
• Align your team’s efforts with broader business goals by tracking progress against targets
• Make better decisions by combining data from multiple sources

But just using HubSpot’s reporting tools isn’t enough on its own. To really get useful insights, you need to know how to customize, filter, and automate your reports so they’re giving you the information you need.

The following tips will help you unlock the full potential of HubSpot reporting, keeping your sales team on track and performing at its best.

1. Customize your reports for clear insights

Every sales process is different, and HubSpot’s ability to create custom reports ensures that you can focus on what matters most. Instead of relying on generic, pre-built reports, take the time to tailor them specifically for your business needs.

Here’s how to customize effectively:

• Start with your key metrics: Identify the core metrics you need to track, such as sales pipeline stages, closed deals, revenue by source, or individual rep performance.
• Use HubSpot’s drag-and-drop report builder: This tool allows you to add and remove data fields, apply filters, and build reports that give you the insights you need.
• Group and segment data: For example, you can create reports that group deals by region, industry, or sales rep, giving you better visibility into performance differences across segments.
• Visualize with charts: HubSpot offers a variety of chart types, such as bar, line, pie, and others. Pick the chart type that best represents the data, making it easier for you and your team to interpret the information quickly.

Customization example: If tracking revenue by industry is a priority for your business, you could create a report that filters your closed deals by industry, displays the average deal size, and shows the win rate for each sector.

2. Use filters to get specific data

Not all sales data is useful in every context. Filters help you drill down to the specific information that matters most. With HubSpot’s filters, you can create reports that focus on particular aspects of your pipeline, teams, or time frames.

To make the most of filters:

• Focus on a specific time period: Use date range filters to review performance over a specific quarter or fiscal year. This is especially helpful for tracking progress against quarterly targets.
• Isolate specific deal types: Want to know how enterprise deals are progressing versus smaller deals? Set up filters that segment the data by deal size or deal type.
• Narrow down by team or individual: If you manage multiple sales teams or territories, create reports that filter performance by team or rep. This way, you can assess the success of different groups.

Filter example: You can set a filter for ‘Deal Stage’ to see how many deals are in the ‘Negotiation’ stage for each sales rep, allowing you to target coaching efforts where deals tend to stall.

3. Track deal velocity to optimize your pipeline

Deal velocity is a critical metric that tells you how fast deals move through your sales pipeline. A slow pipeline could indicate bottlenecks or inefficiencies, while a fast-moving pipeline suggests high sales efficiency. HubSpot allows you to track deal velocity through custom reports, giving you insight into your sales cycle.

To optimize deal velocity:

• Create a deal velocity report: Set up a report that tracks the average number of days deals spend in each pipeline stage. Compare this to your target velocity to identify potential delays.
• Segment by deal type or size: Larger deals may naturally take longer to close, but identifying the stages where they slow down can help you streamline the process.
• Implement follow-up actions: If you notice deals getting stuck in a certain stage (like ‘Proposal Sent’), set automated reminders or tasks for your sales team to follow up.

Deal velocity example: A report showing that deals are spending too much time in the ‘Negotiation’ phase could prompt you to coach reps on how to handle objections faster, ultimately speeding up the process.

4. Set up goal tracking to monitor performance

HubSpot’s goal tracking feature lets you monitor how well your team is performing against set targets. Whether it's for revenue, deal closures, or activity levels, setting up goals in HubSpot allows you to see real-time progress and keep everyone aligned.

To set up goal tracking:

• Define your sales goals: These could be related to revenue, the number of closed deals, or even activities like the number of calls or emails sent by your team.
• Create goals in HubSpot: Navigate to the ‘Sales Tools’ section in HubSpot, and under ‘Goals’, set measurable, time-bound objectives. For example, you can set a quarterly revenue goal of $500,000 for your team.
• Track goal progress on dashboards: HubSpot lets you create dashboard widgets that track real-time progress against goals. These widgets show how close your team is to hitting the target, both individually and collectively.

Goal tracking example: Set up a dashboard that shows your team’s performance toward their monthly call and deal closure targets. This helps you monitor which reps are hitting their goals and which might need additional coaching.

5. Automate report scheduling

You don’t need to log into HubSpot every time you want to check a report. HubSpot allows you to automate the delivery of reports directly to your inbox or your team’s, saving time and ensuring consistent updates.

How to automate report scheduling:

• Choose your report: Any report you build in HubSpot can be scheduled for regular updates.
• Set the frequency: Decide whether you want the report delivered daily, weekly, or monthly. A weekly revenue summary, for instance, can keep you updated on your sales team’s progress without constant manual checking.
• Pick recipients: Choose who should receive the report. You can send it to yourself, the entire sales team, or specific individuals.

Automation example: You can automate the delivery of your ‘Pipeline Overview’ report every Monday morning, so your sales team starts the week with a clear picture of what’s in progress and where they need to focus.

6. Use tools alongside HubSpot for multi-source reporting

While HubSpot’s reporting tools are powerful for tracking your sales data, many sales managers need to pull information from other platforms to get a full picture of performance. Whether you’re working with customer support data from Zendesk or marketing insights from Google Analytics, HubSpot alone may not be able to provide everything you need.

This is where using a tool like Geckoboard alongside HubSpot can make a big difference:

• Multi-source integrations: Geckoboard allows you to integrate data from various platforms like Zendesk, Google Sheets, and Salesforce, and visualize everything in one place. This gives you a more comprehensive view of your business beyond what HubSpot alone can offer.
• Real-time dashboards: Unlike HubSpot, which updates reports every few minutes, Geckoboard gives real-time data updates, so you can keep an eye on critical metrics as they change.
• Customizable dashboards: Geckoboard’s intuitive interface lets you create visual, easy-to-understand dashboards that can be displayed on office screens or accessed remotely by your team. This can be especially helpful for sharing live sales data with the broader organization.

Try a free trial of Geckoboard so you can overcome the limitations of relying on a single platform and get a more complete, real-time understanding of your business.

7. Regularly review and update your reports

Sales processes are constantly evolving, so it’s important to review and update your reports regularly to ensure they still align with your team’s goals and workflow. Stale reports with outdated metrics or irrelevant KPIs won’t give you the insights you need to drive performance.

Here’s how to keep your reports relevant:

• Schedule quarterly reviews: At least once a quarter, revisit your existing reports. Are they still aligned with your business goals? Are there new KPIs you should be tracking?
• Keep your team involved: Ask your sales reps for feedback on what metrics they find most helpful, and update reports accordingly.
• Adjust KPIs as needed: As your team’s goals shift, so should your KPIs. Make sure your reports reflect your current priorities, such as focusing more on lead generation or pipeline velocity, depending on what’s most important for your business at the time.

Review example: If your focus shifts from closing deals to generating new leads, adjust your reports to prioritize metrics like the number of new leads, lead sources, and conversion rates.

Take control of your sales data

By following these detailed tips, you’ll not only get the most out of HubSpot’s reporting features but also ensure your reports are delivering the insights you need to drive your sales strategy. Whether it’s customizing reports, tracking deal velocity, or integrating data with tools like Geckoboard, these strategies will help you stay informed, agile, and ready to hit your targets.

Getting your sales pipeline right in HubSpot isn’t just about staying organized; it’s about making sure your data is clear, actionable, and reliable. Without a well-structured pipeline, your reports can become skewed, leading to inaccurate forecasts and missed opportunities for your business.

A well-built pipeline helps you to make sure that every deal is tracked properly, giving you a true picture of what’s happening in your sales process.

How does your pipeline structure affect reporting?

Your sales pipeline is more than just a list of stages. It forms the backbone of your reporting, so the way you structure it will directly influence your ability to monitor key metrics like conversion rates and deal velocity. If your stages don’t reflect the reality of your sales cycle, your reports aren’t going to tell the full story.

Let’s use the “Proposal Sent” stage as an example. By clearly defining this stage, you can track how many proposals move forward to a closed deal. This stage will also provide insight into how long deals tend to stay in the proposal phase before moving forward or falling off your pipeline. 

On the flip side, if your stages are vague or too broad, you could end up blurring the lines between different phases of the sales process, making it hard to get accurate data.

Why vague stages can lead to bad data

When the stages in your pipeline aren’t well-defined, it becomes hard to know where a deal truly stands. Imagine a “Negotiation” stage that covers everything from the first discussion about pricing to final contract review. Such a wide range of activities under one stage could obscure valuable insights, like how close a deal is to closing or where potential delays might be happening.

By breaking down broad stages into more specific ones, you’ll get a clearer view of the actual sales journey, making your reports far more actionable.

When to overhaul your pipeline

Even the best pipeline needs a tune-up now and then. As your business evolves, so should your pipeline. A pipeline that worked perfectly when you were smaller might not scale well as your sales process becomes more complex. Here are a couple of signs that it’s time to rethink your setup:

• If deals are consistently getting stuck in certain stages (like “Proposal Sent”) it’s worth examining whether that stage needs to be broken down further.
• If your sales forecasts are frequently off, it’s possible that your pipeline doesn’t accurately reflect the steps deals actually go through. When the stages don’t match your process, your reports and forecasts won’t either.

How to audit your pipeline for improvement

A regular audit helps ensure your pipeline stays aligned with your sales process. Here’s a quick way to review and refine it:

1. Review current stages: Look at each stage. Does it reflect your current sales process, or is it outdated? Remove or update any stages that no longer apply.
2. Analyze deal flow: Use HubSpot reports to identify stages where deals get stuck. If certain stages, like “Proposal Sent,” have long delays, consider breaking them into smaller, more specific steps.
3. Check for overlap: Look for stages that might be redundant. For example, if “Negotiation” and “Final Pricing” are similar, you may want to merge them.
4. Spot missing stages: Are there steps in your process not reflected in the pipeline? Add new stages if key actions, like “Contract Review,” are missing.
5. Get feedback from your sales team: Your team knows where the pipeline doesn’t match their workflow. Ask them which stages feel unclear or unnecessary.
6. Test and adjust: Before making big changes, test updates on a few deals to ensure they improve clarity without adding confusion.

What stages should be in your HubSpot pipeline?

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to pipeline stages, but there are some tried-and-true stages that most businesses can benefit from. These include:

• Lead Qualification: Sorting out which leads are worth pursuing.
• Proposal Sent: Tracking how many leads are progressing to the proposal stage.
• Closed Won/Closed Lost: Knowing the final outcome of your deals.

However, the key to a successful pipeline is customization. The stages should reflect the reality of your sales process.

Customizing your pipeline

Tailoring your pipeline is essential for making sure it truly supports your sales team’s work. A pipeline that reflects your actual sales journey gives you the insights you need to improve performance and plan strategically.

For example, if you’re selling both services and products, you might want to create separate pipelines or stages for each. This way, you can track progress, challenges, and success rates more accurately across different areas of your business. Customization doesn’t just make your pipeline more accurate, it makes it more useful.

Weighting your pipeline stages for forecasting

Good forecasting is all about understanding the likelihood of deals closing at each stage of your pipeline. By assigning weights to each stage, you can more accurately predict future revenue and resource needs.

Using weighted stages

Weighting your pipeline stages means giving each stage a probability of success. For example:

• A deal in the “Negotiation” stage might have an 80% chance of closing.
• A lead in “Qualification” might only have a 20% chance of moving forward.

These percentages aren’t guesses; they’re based on your historical data. By knowing the likelihood of deals closing at each stage, you can make more accurate forecasts and plan your resources accordingly.

Adjusting your weights over time

Like anything in sales, these weights aren’t set in stone. As you gather more data, you’ll need to adjust your weights. If only 50% of deals in the “Proposal Sent” stage actually close, then the weight should reflect that, perhaps dropping from 70% to 50%.

Regularly reviewing and adjusting your stage weights keeps your forecasting aligned with reality, giving you more control over your revenue predictions.

How to build or overhaul a pipeline in HubSpot

Whether you’re starting from scratch or updating an old pipeline, HubSpot makes it simple to set up a system that works for your team.

For existing pipelines

When refreshing an existing pipeline, you’ll want to preserve historical data. Instead of deleting old stages, modify them. If you find that “Proposal Sent” is too vague, try breaking it into “Proposal Sent” and “Contract Review.” This way, you keep past data intact while improving it going forward.

For new pipelines

If you’re building a pipeline from the ground up? Start with the basics that we covered above in the section about what stages should be in your HubSpot pipeline.

From there, you’ll want to tweak the stages to match your sales process. If your process has a lot of moving parts, consider adding intermediate stages to capture important steps. Keep reviewing the pipeline regularly to ensure it continues to reflect the real-world sales journey.

Fine-tuning your deal properties

While your pipeline stages capture the broad flow of a deal, deal properties help you drill down into the details. Keeping these properties up-to-date means your reporting will remain clean and relevant.

Customizing deal properties for better insights

Default properties are fine for basic reporting, but creating custom properties can give you deeper insights. For instance, adding a “Lead Source” property helps you track where your most valuable leads come from. This extra data lets you refine your marketing strategies and focus on the channels that drive the best results.

Automating your pipeline for better reporting

Automation helps your pipeline reflect the true status of your deals in real-time. By automating deal movement and setting up triggers, you can keep your pipeline up-to-date without manual input.

Automating deal movement

You can set up rules in HubSpot that automatically move deals to the next stage based on specific actions or criteria. For example, if a deal hits a certain value, it can automatically move from “Lead Qualification” to “Negotiation”. This keeps everything flowing smoothly without manual updates.

Using triggers to stay on track

Triggers can help prevent deals from stalling. If a deal stays in “Proposal Sent” for more than two weeks, a trigger can alert a sales rep to follow up. This keeps deals moving and ensures that nothing slips through the cracks.

Reporting from your HubSpot pipeline

A well-structured pipeline allows you to generate reports that give you valuable insights into your sales process. To get the most from your pipeline, make sure you’re generating reports like:

• Conversion rates: How effectively are leads moving from one stage to the next?
• Deal velocity: How quickly are deals progressing?

These reports offer a wealth of insight into your team’s performance, helping you identify areas where the process might be slowing down.

Using reports to drive performance

At this point, your reports should be ready to share more widely in your team, and can be used to drive team performance in real-time. After you get your pipeline performing better, you can use Geckoboard to share HubSpot reporting live on screen from your HQ, ensuring everyone stays on track and aligned with key goals. Sign up to give it a try.

Sales managers often face the challenge of tracking key performance metrics and keeping their teams aligned with sales goals. HubSpot dashboards are a powerful tool to help streamline this process, making the sales pipeline more visible to everyone that needs to see it.

Whether you’re new to HubSpot or you’re just looking for a few tips, understanding how dashboards work can transform the way you manage sales performance. In this guide, we’ll explore everything from setting up your first dashboard to understanding its limitations.

What is a HubSpot dashboard?

A HubSpot dashboard is a customizable, visual interface that gives you an overview of key sales data. It consolidates reports and metrics into one place, allowing you to track everything from deal progress to revenue goals with ease. 

Unlike standalone reports, which focus on specific data sets, dashboards bring together multiple reports into a single view, helping you keep a finger on the pulse of your sales activities at all times.

How is a HubSpot dashboard different from a report?

While both dashboards and reports provide valuable insights, they serve distinct purposes. Reports are designed for deeper analysis of specific data points, while dashboards present a broader, real-time overview of various metrics. This makes dashboards ideal for day-to-day tracking, while reports offer more detailed insight into specific areas.

Here’s a clearer breakdown of the differences between the two:

• Reports: Offer in-depth, granular analysis of particular metrics or areas of the sales process.
• Dashboards: Provide a broad overview of several metrics at once, helping you track general progress quickly.

What are the benefits of setting up HubSpot dashboards?

A well-structured HubSpot dashboard can transform how your sales team operates. By pulling all essential metrics into one place, it simplifies tracking KPIs and provides your team with a visual way to stay on top of their goals.

Key benefits of using HubSpot dashboards include:

• Centralized data: Keep all your important sales data in one place for quick access.
• Customization: Tailor dashboards to your team’s specific needs, displaying relevant reports and data.
• Frequent updates: HubSpot dashboards refresh every 5–10 minutes, giving you nearly up-to-date information.
• Goal tracking: Easily monitor progress toward sales quotas, revenue targets, and deal stages.

What are the limitations of HubSpot dashboards?

While HubSpot dashboards can be a lifeline for sales teams, they do have limitations that are worth considering. For teams needing real-time data or the ability to integrate information from multiple platforms, there are other solutions to help.

Here are some of the limitations that users might experience:

• Plan limitations: Dashboards are not available on HubSpot’s Starter plan, limiting access for smaller teams.
• Data isn’t real-time: HubSpot dashboards refresh every 5-10 minutes but don’t provide live, real-time updates.
• No office display: HubSpot doesn’t support using dashboards on TV displays for team-wide visibility in an office setting.
• Data from multiple sources: HubSpot struggles to integrate data from external sources like Zendesk, Aircall, or Google Sheets, limiting your ability to combine data from different platforms.

If your team needs real-time data or broader integrations, Geckoboard offers an excellent addition to HubSpot. It integrates with various data sources and provides true real-time updates, perfect for displaying live data on office screens or combining information from multiple platforms.

Getting started with HubSpot dashboards

Setting up your first HubSpot sales dashboard is straightforward, thanks to customizable templates and easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality. Follow these steps to get started:

1. Navigate to dashboards: From your HubSpot account, go to the main menu on the top navigation bar. Hover over ‘Reports’ and click ‘Dashboards’ from the dropdown.
2. Create a new dashboard: On the ‘Dashboard’ page, click the ‘Create Dashboard’ button in the top-right corner.
3. Choose a template: HubSpot provides several pre-built templates tailored to different business needs. Some popular templates include: Sales Dashboard, Marketing Dashboard, Revenue Leaderboard, and Sales Pipeline Overview. You can choose a template or start from scratch by selecting ‘Blank Dashboard’.
4. Name your dashboard: After selecting a template (or choosing to create a blank one), give your dashboard a descriptive name that reflects its purpose (e.g., ‘Sales Performance Dashboard’ or ‘Lead Tracking Dashboard’).
5. Customize your dashboard: Now, you can start adding reports or widgets to your dashboard. If you chose a template, some reports will already be populated, but you can adjust or remove them as needed. To add new reports, click the ‘Add Report’ button and either choose from existing reports in your account or create new ones. Drag and drop the reports into the layout that works best for your team.
6. Set filters and permissions: Customize your filters based on the data you want to display (e.g., time period, sales rep, deal stage). Set permissions to ensure only the right team members have access to view or edit the dashboard.
7. Save and share: Once you’re happy with your dashboard layout, click ‘Save’ to finalize it. You can also share the dashboard with your team by clicking ‘Share’ and selecting who should have access (specific individuals or teams).

Tips for optimizing your HubSpot dashboards

Once your dashboard is set up, you’ll want to fine-tune it so it’s easy to use and shows the most important data. This will help your team work better and make informed decisions quickly.

Here are some tips for improving your HubSpot dashboards:

• Keep it focused: Limit your dashboard to 5-7 key metrics that give you the most valuable insights.
• Use color coding: Distinguish between different metrics with color coding; e.g., red for deals behind schedule and green for successful closures.
• Automate updates: Make sure your dashboards auto-refresh to keep your data as up-to-date as possible.
• Revisit regularly: Sales processes evolve, so review and update your dashboard every quarter to reflect current priorities.

Common dashboard mistakes

When setting up and using HubSpot dashboards, there are some common mistakes that can make them less helpful. By avoiding these, you’ll keep your dashboard useful and easy for your sales team to work with:

• Overloading the dashboard: Including too many reports or metrics can overwhelm users and dilute the dashboard's focus. Stick to the most critical metrics to avoid clutter.
• Unclear KPIs: If the key performance indicators (KPIs) you’re tracking are too vague or don’t align with your sales goals, your dashboard won’t provide actionable insights. Ensure that each metric is directly tied to a measurable outcome.
• Not customizing for the audience: A one-size-fits-all dashboard might not be ideal for every team member. Consider creating customized dashboards for different roles (e.g., sales managers vs. sales reps) to display the most relevant data for each user.
• Neglecting regular updates: Failing to review and update your dashboard regularly can result in outdated information that no longer reflects the sales process. Schedule quarterly audits to ensure the data and metrics are still relevant.
• Ignoring real-time needs: If your team requires live, real-time data but relies on HubSpot’s near-real-time updates, your dashboard might not be fully effective. For real-time needs, consider using a tool like Geckoboard which has a free trial.

Using your HubSpot sales data

HubSpot dashboards provide a powerful, nearly real-time overview of your sales performance, helping your team stay on track. While they are frequently updated, they may not be fast enough for teams requiring true real-time insights or data from multiple sources.

In such cases, Geckoboard can offer real-time updates and multi-platform integrations, providing a more comprehensive solution. By following these tips and leveraging the right tools, you can create dashboards that drive performance and keep your team aligned with your sales goals.

Sales teams are always looking for ways to streamline workflows, improve productivity, and make the most of their CRM. HubSpot’s versatility makes it a go-to platform for many sales teams, and its value increases significantly with the right integrations. Below are the 15 best HubSpot integrations for sales teams in 2025, each offering unique advantages to help boost efficiency, improve communication, and drive more sales.

1. Geckoboard

Real-time data visualization from multiple sources.

Why sales teams need it: Sales teams thrive when they have clear insights into their performance metrics. Geckoboard helps by visualizing key sales data, such as deal pipelines, revenue targets, and performance KPIs. Teams can monitor their progress on customized dashboards, giving them the clarity they need to stay on track. Plus, it pulls in data from many of the other tools listed in this post.

2. Aircall

Cloud-based call center software.

Why sales teams need it: Aircall is perfect for teams that rely heavily on phone outreach. It integrates seamlessly with HubSpot to automatically log calls and create follow-up tasks. This ensures that all phone interactions are captured, giving teams a complete picture of their customer communication.

3. Zapier

Workflow automation tool.

Why sales teams need it: Zapier connects HubSpot with thousands of apps, allowing sales teams to automate tasks that would otherwise require manual effort. Whether syncing contact information with other tools or automating follow-up emails, Zapier simplifies complex workflows and saves time.

4. PandaDoc

Document automation and e-signatures.

Why sales teams need it: Streamlining the proposal and contract process is essential for closing deals quickly. PandaDoc allows sales reps to create, send, and track documents directly in HubSpot. With its integrated e-signature capability, closing deals becomes much faster.

5. Salesforce

CRM integration for multi-platform users.

Why sales teams need it: Many companies use both Salesforce and HubSpot for different departments. This integration enables syncing between the two CRMs, ensuring that both sales and marketing teams can access the same up-to-date information.

6. Slack

Communication and collaboration tool.

Why sales teams need it: Slack keeps sales teams connected. By integrating with HubSpot, Slack sends real-time notifications about deal updates, new leads, and other critical activities directly to the team’s communication channels. This means that sales reps stay informed and can collaborate more effectively.

7. Gmail/Outlook

Email client integration.

Why sales teams need it: Most sales interactions happen over email. By integrating Gmail or Outlook with HubSpot, sales reps can track emails, schedule meetings, and log communication directly from their inbox. This simplifies email outreach and makes sure every interaction is logged in HubSpot.

8. SurveyMonkey

Customer feedback and survey tool.

Why sales teams need it: Understanding customer satisfaction is crucial for sales success. SurveyMonkey integrates with HubSpot to feed customer feedback directly into the CRM. Sales teams can view survey results alongside other customer data, helping them identify areas for improvement and upsell opportunities.

9. LinkedIn Sales Navigator

Lead generation and relationship management.

Why sales teams need it: LinkedIn is used by a lot of B2B sales teams. This integration enriches HubSpot with LinkedIn profile data, making it easier to find new leads and nurture relationships with existing ones. Sales reps can use this integration to enhance prospecting and social selling.

10. Trello

Project management and organization.

Why sales teams need it: Trello is ideal for sales teams looking for a visual way to manage their pipelines. By integrating with HubSpot, sales teams can create Trello cards directly from HubSpot deals, helping them track the progress of each deal visually and stay organized.

11. Asana

Task and project management.

Why sales teams need it: Similar to Trello, Asana helps sales teams stay on top of their tasks. The HubSpot-Asana integration automatically creates tasks in Asana based on actions taken in HubSpot, making sure nothing slips through the cracks, whether it's following up with a lead or sending out a proposal.

12. Zoom

Video conferencing and webinar platform.

Why sales teams need it: Zoom has become a critical tool for sales teams, especially in remote work environments. With its HubSpot integration, sales teams can automatically log Zoom meetings and webinars, making it easier to track customer interactions and ensure that nothing is missed in follow-up efforts.

13. DocuSign

E-signature and document management.

Why sales teams need it: DocuSign speeds up the deal-closing process by allowing sales teams to send, sign, and manage contracts digitally. HubSpot’s integration with DocuSign ensures that all signed documents are tracked in the CRM, giving teams a clear view of the sales pipeline's legal aspects.

14. Zendesk

Customer support and service platform.

Why sales teams need it: Zendesk is a fantastic tool for bridging sales and customer service teams. The integration ensures that sales teams have full visibility into customer service tickets, helping them understand customer needs and frustrations. This insight can lead to improved customer relationships and upsell opportunities, making Zendesk a must-have integration for any sales team.

15. Stripe

Payment processing platform.

Why sales teams need it: Stripe makes it easy for sales teams to handle payments directly within HubSpot. Whether invoicing a client or processing a recurring payment, this integration streamlines the payment process, helping sales teams focus on closing deals and managing relationships instead of administrative tasks.

Why use HubSpot integrations?

Each of these integrations can help your sales team operate more efficiently by automating tasks, improving communication, and providing deeper insights into customer behavior. By using these tools, your sales team will be better equipped to close deals faster and manage relationships more effectively.

If you want to optimize HubSpot for maximum productivity in 2025, consider adding these integrations to your tech stack, or trying Geckoboard to display data from multiple tools in one dashboard. Your sales team will thank you for it!

To compete and win in business in our digital age, sales leaders must trust their company’s data and make timely decisions based on insights they can extract from it. Sales reports enable executives to identify sales trends and customer behavior patterns impacting their company’s growth trajectory and take decisive action, whether to continue their current strategy or change course towards more profitable outcomes. 

Sales executives need to gather insights from data collected from multiple input channels, including contact centers, sales representatives, and customers themselves via e-commerce storefronts and online portals and residing in multiple applications. 

Sharing this data with your employees in a sales context requires sophisticated, customizable analysis tools. Few salespeople have advanced data science skills or advanced analytics tools. It is critical that sales reports provide scheduled or real-time access to reporting tools that intuitively present KPIs with the right amount of context. That includes historical sales reports, reports that capture a moment in time, and predictive reporting that can guide the way forward based on past results.   

What is a sales report?

A sales report – or sales analysis report, if you prefer – is a detailed record of sales performance over a specific time period, including predicting future outcomes. Let’s explore ten types of sales reports to help you analyze performance. Depending on what data you want to share with your team, you may turn it into dashboards, which will help you monitor performance in real-time.

1. Revenue forecasts: Many companies are shifting to automated forecasting because sales reps are often overly optimistic about the likelihood that their customers will buy during this fiscal period. Some reps sandbag deals to manipulate quota or to ease pressure from management. Forecast accuracy (or exceeding forecasts) should be rewarded for these reasons. Automated forecasting doesn’t just improve accuracy based on historical trends.It helps your intradepartmental colleagues ensure you have the operational support and fulfillment resources you need to satisfy your customers, investors, and leadership team based on reliable sales intelligence.
2. Revenue closed by sales representative: When your sales reps consistently meet or exceed their revenue quotas, they distinguish themselves as top candidates for financial rewards, promotion opportunities, and mentoring new hires. Closed revenue reports also provide feedback and coaching opportunities and inform territory or industry coverage based on the needs of your business. Most top-performing sales pros keep an eye on their revenue number above all else, as it tends to have the biggest impact on their paycheck. Even if your reps are paid on company performance, quantifying their contribution to company growth provides important context your sales reps can build their career on.     
3. Win rate: Tracking each representative’s win rate can identify where your time would be best spent coaching your representatives or where training is required. Opportunity win rates that capture the products or services your company offers may not address the needs of your target market, or you might need better sales enablement tools or marketing assets. Your product team may need to revisit their pricing strategies or roadmap to identify opportunities to make your offerings more attractive.
4. Average deal size: In my experience, value-based is a better strategy than going head-to-head with competitors on price. Coaching your team to sell on your company’s strengths, like product quality, service offerings, or customer satisfaction, and protecting your profit margins. These kinds of sales reports also identify your reps who are doing the best job at upselling and cross-selling, so you can reward them and motivate them to share their strategies for increasing contract values by bundling value-added services or selling top-tier subscription plans.
5. Sales rep activity: Motivating sales reps to make more calls, send more emails, and share more company content on social media takes more than telling your team that “Sales is a numbers game.” A report that presents your team’s numbers, along with their activity rates, such as their quarter-to-date (QTD) or year-to-date (YTD) closed revenue, is a better way to ignite that “fire in the belly” and drive to succeed. 
   
   Conversion rate reports that monitor scenarios like how often Sales Development Reps (SDRs) convert leads to opportunities.
6. Pipeline velocity: Running internal sales competitions that motivate your sales reps to close deals faster is a great way to “pressure test” your sales methodology at each process stage. You may need to adjust your workflows where leads or opportunities tend to bottleneck. Or, you may identify individual or team-wide coaching opportunities on topics like improving presentation or negotiation skills, or how to ask for the contract if deals are stalling on the goal line.  
7. Speed of Orders to Invoice to Cash: It’s natural for salespeople to want to bask in the glory of a win and move on to the next selling adventure. Yet motivating your team to take greater ownership of their customer relationships beyond the purchase order can deter transactional sales behaviors and motivate post-sale relationship management. 
   
   A scheduled sales follow-up to ensure a goods shipment arrived on time, or a service engagement met expectations and an invoice can be issued. Your customers also have an increasingly larger variety of online payment options, like PayPal, Stripe for SaaS, and Recurly, which can offer important customer buying insights. Motivating your sales reps to bring in outstanding receivables is another opportunity for a sales follow-up and possible upsell, like training or other consulting services that might accelerate a slow deployment start.
8. Lead acquisition source and response time: Identifying your top lead generation channels helps sales managers decide about market development funds for resellers, partner lead registration rules, and territory coverage models. Suppose an inside sales agent or business partner is getting good traction in a region where a field salesperson would be too costly. In that case, you can tailor your sales approach and targets accordingly. 
   
   Monitoring your sales development reps’ campaign lead response times can identify what works best for your target audience. 
9. Top opportunities: The effect of a significant opportunity being added to or removed from the pipeline or one side of the win/loss column can’t be overstated. In a recent role, every sales cadence call I attended kicked off by discussing the status of the “top opps,” and we discussed the business development process of how those opportunities were discovered as success stories. These opportunities are obviously great for morale and quota reasons, and they are excellent learning opportunities that your team can share along the way through the funnel.
10. Renewal and churn rates: Monitoring the rates at which customers are choosing to extend their relationship with your business and its services or take their business elsewhere is critical. Renewal pipeline reports often use predictive analytics to issue renewal notices and prompt sales reps to follow up with customers to close the loop on the renewal process. 
    
    Depending on the size and nature of your business, you could benefit from customer lifetime value (CLV) reports, which measure the customer’s revenue contributions over the lifecycle of their relationship with your business, and Win/Loss reports, which can contribute to repeatable strategies for winning renewals. Or lessons learned for continuous improvement.
    

Why sales reporting is vital to business success

Automated sales report generation minimizes the administrative work, human error, and technical overhead you’ve likely endured with manually generated reports. It provides current, trustworthy insights that sales managers and their teams can count on to:

1. Inform sales managers of patterns and trends so they can act accordingly 
2. Trigger workflows for events like when NPS or CSAT scores are low
3. Share account management-specific data like at-risk accounts and subscription plan changes 
4. Coach underperforming salespeople and reward top performers
5. Enrich sales meetings and make them more structured
6. Motivate sellers to do their best work through friendly competition
7. Boost employee morale and engagement by recognizing achievements and milestones
8. Communicate sales milestones to remote and onsite employees with a need to know

Choosing the right systems to generate, present and share your sales reports and dashboards is vital. Sales reports typically pull data from business data sources like:

• CRM apps
• Ecommerce platforms 
• Finance apps
• Spreadsheets
• Contact center management applications 

Investing in a sales reporting tool that can extract and analyze data via APIs from multiple data sources–without requiring advanced business intelligence knowledge–is vital for high-growth, multichannel businesses.

What’s the difference between a dashboard and a report?

We should clarify the difference between a report and a dashboard (even if the terms are sometimes used interchangeably).

Generally speaking, a report is more detailed, and is shared at regular intervals. It might include some manual analysis or commentary, which can only be produced periodically. Reports help you understand and diagnose what’s happened in the past. 

A dashboard, on the other hand, helps people monitor KPIs in the moment. The data on the dashboard stays up to date and is designed so users can easily access the information they need at a glance. Dashboards help you monitor performance and keep your team aware of their current progress.

Key approaches to effective sales reporting

Years ago, creating sales reports years ago was a complex, manual process that required considerable technical skills. It was prone to error since reports often required manual data entry, and reporting apps didn’t offer the kinds of role-based data access controls (RBAC).

For example, HubSpot and Salesforce enable departmental and regional sales managers to have visibility across their teams. A VP of Sales will have broader access across all sales industries or territories, and reps only have reporting visibility to their pipeline and account-related data.

Important reporting strategies and priorities include:

• Defining your audience and target market: Framing your ideal client profile (ICP) and marketing personas
• Deciding on scheduled report frequency: Should reports be available on-demand, monthly or quarterly?
• Choosing the most impactful KPIs: Personalized metrics that best reflect your business performance:
  • Ensure your company’s sales efforts align with your short- and long-term business goals
  • Provide clear visibility into sales performance 
  • Guide strategic decision-making 
  • Drive meaningful improvements toward meeting individual and team targets
• Creating dashboards to help your team and other stakeholders visualize the data with identify patterns and trends at a glance.
• Sharing reports and dashboards based on audience needs: Sales teams may need detailed reports on individual performance metrics like revenue targets, win rates, deal progress and pipeline stages. Executives might prefer high-level summaries and trend analyses.

Sales reporting best practices

As CRM and business analysis tools evolve, ensuring sales report accuracy follows the classic ‘quality data in, quality data out’ mantra—or QIQO if you will (as opposed to garbage in/garbage out or GIGO). Creating company policies around data accuracy and quality is important to generating sales reports and dashboards you can act on. A sales dashboard system that can integrate with multiple data sources minimizes human data entry and improves data integrity. 

For some companies, different areas of the business have varying priorities pertaining to the sales data that matters most to their role, while others are common across the business. Using a system that provides tailored dashboards based on their needs and preferences helps make the dashboard a vital tool in their day-to-day duties. 

For example, an ecommerce manager will be concerned about top products by sales, average order value, and sales volume. Meanwhile, B2B direct sales managers care about lifetime account value, pipeline value, and average deal size. Product managers will want to see sales volumes on a per-product basis for inventory planning purposes. 

Businesses that reach their target market through multiple channels, including online, direct sales and resellers, can configure and customize their dashboards for the unique needs of each user role.  

Sales reporting success stories

Just as your employees in different roles will prioritize certain sales reports and dashboards, certain industries have reporting types that are especially very useful. For example:

• SaaS providers - Monthly recurring revenue, customer lifetime value (CLTV) and churn analysis reports. Case study: Finstrat Management
• Retail and ecommerce - Sales by product, average order size, store performance, customer buying patterns, unfulfilled orders. Case study: Premiere Book Group and Jigsaw
• Manufacturing - Sales by product, sales by region, supply chain performance, competitive analysis. Case study: Dymatec
• Healthcare services - Sales by rep, service line performance, sales pipeline, referral sources. Case study: Touchcare

Choose and implement sales reporting and dashboard tools for your business that are interoperable with your existing application stack, including CRM, e-commerce, and analysis data sources. They should be flexible enough to align with your real-world business workflows and the roles and preferences of your employees whose jobs depend on the success of your business development, sales and account management teams. 

Conclusion

Leading a sales team in a high-growth business can be a lot like driving a high-performance sports car. A sales manager needs to know their team’s pipeline value and activity rate by rep. A driver needs to know that their engine has the fuel it needs to reach their destination, how efficiently the vehicle is running and consuming fuel. 

Just as a driver shouldn’t need to be a mechanic to drive a modern vehicle, a sales leader shouldn’t have to be a data scientist to access the KPIs and data points they need to monitor their team’s performance. Due to advanced SaaS-based apps, sales analysis is faster and easier to personalize and share than ever before. 

Are you looking to create dashboards that distill sales report data into visuals that motivate and inspire your sales team? 

Do you need to provide executives with macro-level revenue performance snapshots on demand? Try Geckoboard for free for 14 days. Build KPI-rich sales dashboards in minutes, and see how easily you can get more value from your company’s data to drive business growth. 

If you use Zendesk, you will likely have come across Zendesk's native reporting and analytics tool, Zendesk Explore. This allows you to create custom views of the metrics in your Zendesk account.

But what if you want to create reports and dashboards that visualize data from multiple Zendesk accounts? Sadly, this is not possible in Zendesk Explore.

Fortunately, it is possible to visualise data from several Zendesk instances in Geckoboard. In this article we’ll explore how you can use Geckoboard to visualize metrics from several Zendesk accounts in a single dashboard.

Why might you need to report on multiple Zendesk instances?  

There are several reasons why you might need to report on more than one Zendesk account simultaneously. 

• You’re a Zendesk consultant or implementor, and you want to monitor several clients’ Zendesk metrics at once.
• You own more than one business and want to keep tabs on Support KPIs from both of your businesses, in the same dashboard
• You run several brands within the same business. And these are operationally separate, with different accounts. 

If you find yourself in one of these situations, you might already find the only way to keep track of your metrics is to continually log in and out of your different accounts. Fortunately, there is another way. 

How to report on multiple accounts with Geckoboard 

In the same way you can use Geckoboard to create a KPI dashboard that visualizes data from multiple sources (such as HubSpot, LinkedIn, Salesforce and Google Analytics) – you can also use Geckoboard to create dashboards that visualize data from multiple accounts within the same data source.  

That means you can easily create a custom dashboard, which gives you all the data you need in one place. Geckoboard also auto-refreshes its data sources in real-time, so you know your metrics will always be up to date. 

So let’s find out how you can build a multi-data source dashboard. 

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard and connect Zendesk

Head to Geckoboard to sign up for a 14-day free trial. Next, start building your dashboard selecting one of the Zendesk data sources.

Step 2: Build a widget with Zendesk data

Now you’ve connected Zendesk, you can build your first widget. A widget is just a type of data visualization – you can choose numbers, line charts, leaderboard, funnels or gauges.

You can also add further context to your widgets. For example, you might add a status indicator to alert you when you are not meeting your SLAs. This helps your team quickly understand how to interpret the data on the dashboard, and take action.

Step 3: Connect data from multiple Zendesk accounts

When you add a widget, you’ll notice there is a dropdown at the top left hand side of the screen where you can connect additional Zendesk connections. Just click the drop down and select 'Add connection'.  

Step 4: Complete your dashboard by adding more widgets

Continue adding widgets until you’ve visualized all your most important data from across your different accounts. You might complete the picture by including visualizations from other data sources such as Aircall, Jira, Facebook, or Spreadsheets.

Conclusion

There we have it. Now you can see all your Zendesk data in one place. No more wasting time logging into different accounts.

If your business uses HubSpot for sales, alongside common marketing tools like Google Analytics and LinkedIn, you might eventually find it becomes time-consuming to keep track of all your KPIs. 

It’s not just that it’s time-consuming for leaders who need to monitor these performance metrics. The biggest downside is that teams and individuals stay in their silos.  

That’s because it’s hard for the sales team to stay on top of what’s happening with marketing tools; and it’s hard for the marketing team to stay on top of what’s happening in HubSpot. 

Most teams try to address this with regular manual reporting. But this can be both ineffective and inefficient. 

Instead, we’re going to explore how Geckoboard can bring together data from these tools, so you can create custom dashboards that show you exactly the metrics you want to see. 

Instead of hassling your team to share reports and updates, you can create a solution that saves you time, and means everyone stays aware of the metrics that matter. 

What is Geckoboard?

Geckoboard is a KPI dashboard tool that helps you monitor your most important business metrics in real-time. In addition to HubSpot, LinkedIn and Google Analytics, it also connects to over 90 data sources such as Salesforce, Shopify, Zendesk, Google Ads, Facebook, Instagram and Google Sheets.

Unlike more heavyweight BI tools, Geckoboard is different because it’s built for non-technical teams, who want to access data in real-time. 

We’re talking about:

• Ease of use: You can connect your data in a few clicks, and build your dashboard in a few minutes. No coding or specialist knowledge required. 
• Real-time monitoring: Geckoboard auto-refreshes and supports the fastest possible refresh rates across all our integrations, regardless of your plan. 
• Designed to be seen: Sharing options for TV display, desktop, mobile, email and Slack. 

Build a dashboard to display HubSpot, LinkedIn and Google Analytics data

Next we’ll show you, step-by-step, how to build a dashboard that visualizes data from HubSpot, LinkedIn and Google Analytics. 

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard 

You can start your fully-featured free trial here – no credit card required. 

Step 2: Connect LinkedIn 

Depending on whether you want to visualize data from your company page (i.e. page followers) or your LinkedIn Advertising campaigns, choose LinkedIn or LinkedIn Ads. 

I’ll choose LinkedIn Ads. 

Next I’ll select one of the presets: Ad spend. (But if you want to explore the full range of metrics you can visualize, then select “Build your own widget”)

The next screen will ask you to connect your LinkedIn account. 

Step 3: Build your first widget 

A widget is just a single data visualization we’ll use to populate our dashboard. On the next screen I’m going to fine-tune our widget to get it to show the exact metrics we want to see. 

To start off, the widget displays our ad spend for the past 30 days as a simple number widget. 

However, on my dashboard, I want to see metrics related to the past 7 days. So I’m going to change the time filter, and also include a comparison to the previous seven days. 

Now I’m happy with my widget. I'm going to add it to my dashboard. 

Step 4: Add another widget and group them

As well as visualizing our overall spend, I’d like to monitor how it’s changing day to day. So next, I’m going to create a line-chart that shows the weekly spend by day. 

To do this, you can duplicate the existing widget then edit it to visualize as a line chart. 

After adding it to the dashboard, you can group related widgets together, resize them and add a title like in the images below. 

Step 5: Add Google Analytics widgets

Next, I’m going to repeat the exact same process to add data from Google Analytics. 

• Click 'Add widget'
• Select Google Analytics 4 from the data source menu
• Connect your account
• Then build a widget

As you can see, I’ve created two groups of two widgets. One group to track the overall number of sessions on the website over the past seven days, and one group to track the number of engaged sessions over the past seven days.

Step 6: Add HubSpot widgets 

Next, I’m going to repeat the exact same process to add data from my HubSpot account. 

• Click 'Add widget'
• Select HubSpot from the data source menu
• Connect your account
• Then build a widget 

By selecting ‘Feeds’ from the display menu, I can create a live feed of all our recently created (or recently closed) deals, which is great for keeping teams in the loop, and starting conversations. 

I’ve also built a widget that visualizes our Win Rate using a gauge visualization. By adding a status indicator, I can show that anything above 40% is positive.

Step 7: Share your dashboard

Once you’ve built your dashboard, it will auto-refresh in real time. You can create a sharing link to share your dashboard with colleagues. Or if you really want your team to engage with their KPIs, why not display it on a TV screen using our Send to TV feature? 

Either way, you can relax knowing you have saved yourself countless hours spent producing manual reports. And all for a few minutes work. 

Try Geckoboard for free here

We all know HubSpot has some excellent reporting features for visualizing your key sales data. 

But what happens when you want to create dashboards and reports that visualize data from multiple HubSpot accounts? 

Can you achieve this in HubSpot?

Unfortunately not. But never fear, in this article we’ll explore how you can use Geckoboard to visualize metrics from several HubSpot accounts in a single dashboard.

Why might you need to report on multiple HubSpot accounts?  

There are many reasons why you might need to report on several HubSpot accounts simultaneously. 

• You’re a HubSpot consultant, and want to monitor several clients’ HubSpot accounts at once.
• You own more than one business and want to keep tabs on sales KPIs from both businesses in the same dashboard
• You operate several brands within the same business, which are operationally separate, with separate accounts. 

In these situations, the only way to keep track of your metrics would be to continually log in and out of your different accounts. Fortunately, there is another way. 

How to report on multiple accounts with Geckoboard 

In the same way you can use Geckoboard to create a KPI dashboard that visualizes data from multiple sources (such as HubSpot, Linkedin, Zendesk and Google Analytics) – you can also use Geckoboard to create dashboards that visualize data from multiple accounts within the same data source.  

That means you can build a custom dashboard that gives you all the information you need in a single glance. 

And the best part is that Geckoboard auto refreshes its data sources in real-time, so you know your metrics will always be up to date. 

Let’s explore how you can build your own multi-data source dashboard. 

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard and connect your HubSpot account

Head to Geckoboard to sign up for a 14-day free trial. Next, start building your dashboard selecting the HubSpot data source.

Step 2: Build a widget using HubSpot data

Now you’ve connected HubSpot, you can start building widgets. A widget is just a type of data visualization – you can choose numbers, line charts, leaderboard, funnels or gauges.

You can also add further context to your visualizations. For example, you might add a sales goal you are trying to reach, a comparison with a previous period. This helps the team quickly understand how to interpret the data on the dashboard.

Step 3: Connect data from multiple HubSpot accounts

When you add a widget, you’ll notice there is a dropdown at the top left hand side of the screen where you can connect additional HubSpot accounts. Just click the drop down and select Add connection.  

Step 4: Build up your dashboard by adding more widgets

Continue adding widgets until you’ve visualized all your most important data from across your different accounts. You might complete the picture by including visualizations from other data sources such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, LinkedIn, Facebook, Zendesk or Spreadsheets.

It’s easy to move, resize and group widgets using Geckoboard – it's just a case of "drag and drop".

Conclusion

And there you go. Now you can see all your HubSpot metrics in one place. No more spending all your time logging into different accounts.

There are many situations in which you might need to monitor multiple Pipedrive accounts at the same time. 

For example, you might own multiple businesses with their own, seperate Pipedrive accounts. Or you might be a technical consultant who is helping multiple businesses set up and maintain their Pipedrive platform. In this situation, it’s helpful to understand how much your clients are using the platform, to understand how well they are onboarding. 

For obvious reasons, Pipedrive’s native reporting platform isn’t designed to let you report on metrics from other accounts, meaning you can’t create reports to track metrics from different accounts.  

So if you want to avoid spending your day logging into multiple accounts or switching between admin users, you’re going to need a solution. 

Fortunately, there’s a simple solution to this reporting problem – Geckoboard. It’s going to save you a lot of time, and help you maintain an overview of all your Pipedrive data.

How to report on multiple accounts with Geckoboard 

Geckoboard is a KPI dashboard tool that helps you monitor your most important sales metrics in real-time. In addition to Pipedrive, it also connects to over 90 data sources such as HubSpot, Salesforce, Shopify, Zendesk Google Ads, Google Analytics, Facebook, Instagram and Google Sheets. 

That means you can build real-time dashboards from multiple data sources. Using our drag-and-drop dashboard creator, the whole process takes just a few minutes. 

The best part is, Geckoboard can connect to several accounts in Pipedrive, meaning you can access all your metrics all in one place. 

Step 1: Sign up to Geckoboard and connect your Pipedrive account

Head to Geckoboard to sign up for a free trial (you don’t need to enter any credit card details). Next, start building your dashboard selecting the Pipedrive data source.

Step 2: Build a widget using Pipedrive data

Now you’ve connected Pipedrive, you can start building widgets. A widget is just a type of data visualization – you can choose numbers, line charts, leaderboard, funnels or gauges.

You can also add further context to your visualizations. For example, you might add a sales goal you are trying to reach, a comparison with a previous period. This helps the team quickly understand how to interpret the data on the dashboard.

Step 3: Connect data from multiple Pipedrive accounts

When you add a widget, you’ll notice there is a dropdown at the top left hand side of the screen, here you can connect additional Pipedrive accounts. Just click the drop down and select Add connection.  

Step 4: Build up your dashboard by adding more widgets

Continue adding widgets until you’ve visualized all your most important data from across your different accounts. You might complete the picture by including visualizations from other data sources such as Google Analytics, Google Ads, Facebook or Spreadsheets.

It’s easy to move, resize and group widgets using Geckoboard – it's just a case of "drag and drop". And if you want to change the color scheme, just click on the customize menu to create a custom theme like the one we’ve created below. 

Conclusion

And there you go. Now you can see all your Pipedrive metrics in one place. No more spending all your time logging into different accounts.

Sales is a naturally competitive role that attracts people with a competitive spirit. If you run a sales team, you’ll likely find there are times when you need to inject that extra boost of competition into your team culture. A sales contest or competition is often the best way to harness your team’s enthusiasm for victory with healthy team rivalry. 

In this article, we’ll explore when might be a good time to run successful sales contests. We’ll also give you some ideas for sales competitions you can run in your team today. 

When should I run a sales competition?

Sales contests can be particularly useful if: 

• Morale is low, and you want to give people a boost (especially during an economic downturn)
• You’ve launched a new product or service, and you want quickly to get as much traction as possible 
• It’s your peak sales season, and you want to make the most of every opportunity

Every sales professional – from the bright-eyed, optimistic rookie, to the grizzled, lone-wolf veteran – can occasionally use a boost of motivation to improve their performance. Like anyone, even seasoned sales professionals can experience career lulls. Sales competitions are a great way to get your people out of a rut. 

Remember not to exclude your most senior, highest performing, or even junior salespeople from these contests. Instead, you should hold various sales competitions (like the ones described in the next section of this article) which allow everyone to take part – and win! Not just the top earners. 

11 sales contest ideas and examples

Chances are, you already have incentives like commissions or bonus plans. A good sales contest shouldn’t only focus on the top sellers. Use your sales performance incentive fund (SPIF) to create a contest that everyone can win based on their strengths and contributions to your team’s overall success. There are other important metrics your sales competitors can track and reward. 

Here are some sales contest categories for sales managers to consider, along with some guidance on how you can run them in your business:

1. Customer retention or winback – It’s well known that acquiring new customers is more costly and challenging than retaining existing ones. This means recurring customer revenue is the company's lifeblood. A Forbes article reports that customers often need to subscribe to a product for between one and five years before contributing profit to the company. It makes sense that salespeople responsible for the most renewals deserve recognition and reward, making them feel appreciated and acknowledged for their efforts.
   
   If you're considering a Customer Retention or Winback contest, you can set up Renewal Rate and Winback dashboards in your CRM platform like Salesforce, HubSpot, or Pipedrive to track the effectiveness of account managers in nurturing customer relationships and preventing contract churn.   
   
2. Freshman or Newbie of the Year – I recently worked for a company that recognized promising first-year salespeople who may not have the highest closed revenue numbers. Still, they demonstrated they could generate opportunities, win the trust of partners and prospects, and close a respectable amount of business along the way. The Trailblazer of the Year prize was highly coveted by newcomers. A separate “Rookie Leaderboard” can help track progress here. 
   
   Rewarding top new hires based on a combination of sales KPIs like CRM activity statistics, pipeline volume, and lead response times might be your best bet for this sales contest, especially if your products and services have long sales cycles. 
   
3. Top case study earner or positive customer review generator – Success stories and positive reviews are valuable social proof for companies across all industries. Customer video testimonials, success story one-pagers, and reviews on websites like Capterra, G2 and GetApp are powerful sales enablement resources. Gaining enough trust and loyalty to convince a client to go public with praise for your business can pay dividends for years to come. You’d be surprised how happy most marketers are for a chance to speak with customers. Especially ones like me who used to be sales reps themselves.   
   
   Sales reps can earn points or digital badges for each customer review or testimonial they obtain, with additional bonuses for high-quality or video testimonials. You can determine how many points a review should rank vs testimonials and written case studies. 
   
4. Top Upseller and Cross-Seller – Your most experienced salespeople have likely figured out the best ways to increase the value of deals, by selling add-ons like premium support, consulting and training services. Running a sales competition based on successful deal value upgrades will shine the spotlight on seasoned salespeople, and set an example for others. 
   
   Create a sales leaderboard that is connected to your CRM and tracks how many deals include professional services, add-on modules, or even top-tier subscriptions. Celebrate your reps who go the extra mile to increase deal margins and revenue.   
   
5. Most Resilient or Most Improved – Everyone loves a comeback story or a tale of someone who faced great adversity but succeeded anyway. Have you noticed the performance of some of your core salespeople has taken an unexpected turn? Coach them to uncover why their performance is lagging and reward them when they get back on track. When economic or competitive factors threaten your deals, rewarding reps who persevere and find ways to win deals can be a great motivator for all. 
   
   Let’s say one of your mid-to-top-tier sales reps had a rough quarter (or two) but rallied to hit quota late in the year. Rewarding their tenacity based on quarter-over-quarter CRM data is a great way to motivate others to persevere when every deal matters.  
   
6. Most Productive Salesperson – Some salespeople are hunters chasing down big deals, and others are farmers who keep existing customers happy and often sell add-ons or value-added services. You can track the achievements of these team members with digital badges or virtual trophies as they pass performance milestones.
   
   Building relationships, meeting customers, building pipeline and presenting solutions require lots of time and energy. Even if a sales rep isn’t the top seller in a quarter, they may be destined for a great one down the line. If you reward the effort behind the results, it helps your team focus on hunting for orders instead of waiting for bluebirds to drop in their laps. 
   
7. SalesOps Awards – For many companies, getting a sales order from a customer is only the beginning of processing a transaction and recognizing the revenue. Ensuring contract terms (like payment and shipping terms) are acceptable and pricing approvals are in place can often tie up deals at quarter or year-end. Rewarding salespeople for consistently bringing in audit-worthy business with healthy margins is another great way to reward good behavior and encourage continuous improvement. 
   
8. Buzzword Bingo – Salespeople are always encouraged to listen to prospects and customers actively and not to use jargon or acronyms in case they might be confusing. Motivate your sellers to listen to customers attentively by having them check boxes whenever a customer uses keywords during conversations, especially words that signal they see the value in your products and services, and a deal may be on the horizon. 
   
9. Raffles – Randomly rewarding your sales team with raffle tickets for a job well done (like closing a deal over a certain clip level, earning a positive customer review, or being an asset to the team) is a great way to boost morale. 
   
   Awarding a virtual trophy or ticket every time someone goes above and beyond can build suspense up until a weekly or monthly draw can build your team’s appetite for greater rewards for bigger contests. 
   
10. Team-Based Contests – Individual competitions and prizes are one way to promote healthy competition, though pitting groups against each other is a great way to foster relationships and shake things up. It might help new hires get into the winners’ circle and build a taste for victory. 
    
    Depending on the size of your sales team, it could make sense to run a “Team A vs Team B” contest once in a while. I remember a sales contest like this we held for a software company I worked for, where each team had a couple of senior account executives, a few sales development reps, a customer success manager, and a premium support rep. The shared victory helped multiple territories and lines of business to meet their numbers instead of limiting the success and celebration to one or two. 
    
11. Team Mate or Mentor of the Year – Recognize the members of your team who go above and beyond by helping their peers with proven tricks of the trade or even helping out on sales calls. This kind of recognition demonstrates you recognize signs of leadership and may motivate team members to aspire to a career path within your company. You can track peer nominations quarterly or annually on a shared dashboard. 
    
    Many companies have peer appreciation programs with small tokens of appreciation awarded to those who support their colleagues. Set up an Airtable form to collect nominations, and then track their peer awards throughout the year to recognize those who realize there’s “No I in Team.” 
    

The power of sales gamification

Sales contests are great motivators, and go beyond traditional sales commissions or bonuses that are usually paid monthly, quarterly, or annually. They also create friendly competition between your team and incentivize reps to increase their activity level and strive for customer satisfaction. I remember the excitement I felt when I was getting close to qualifying for a President’s Club trip. 

Psychological benefits of sales contests include:

• A sense of accomplishment and recognition for the winning or top-performing reps
• Social connections between teammates can emerge from the competition. 
• Reduced stress can result when work feels less like a grind and more like a competition.
• Increased focus and skill retention—Make tools like sales playbooks, competitive battlecards, or performance dashboards an integral part of the contest. If these resources help your sellers succeed in the contest, they’ll learn to make them part of their regular arsenal. 
• Improved feelings of engagement and pride for continuously improving in many sales 
• It can be challenging to shift motivation into a higher gear. Sales contests can remind your team what it’s like to perform at their peak and return to their winning ways.  

Sales reps often admit they are “coin-operated,” meaning monetary rewards are high on their priority list. Others are more motivated by merchandise prizes, executive recognition, or experiences like travel or outings for their family. 

Use dashboards for TV or desktop

A custom, real-time KPI dashboard can bring your sales contest to life by displaying competition metrics and rankings. By embedding the dashboard into the tools you use (such as Slack) or displaying it on a TV on the office wall, you will ensure that the contest is constantly top of mind. 

This is also a great introduction to the power of performance dashboards in your everyday sales. Helping reps become more aware of their KPIs helps them focus on improving them.  

With Geckoboard, you can build a KPI dashboard to support your contest in minutes. It integrates with Salesforce, HubSpot, Pipedrive, spreadsheets and over 90 different data sources. 

Implementing gamification and competitions: Best practices

Before you start your next sales contest, make sure you: 

• Have fair and transparent competition rules in place. Integrate your competition dashboard with trusted data sources like your SaaS CRM app to minimize any doubt that the results are authentic. It helps to keep dashboards updated with real-time data.
• Encouraging team participation and feedback. Don’t assume what motivates your team; ask them what incentives would drive them to increase their activity levels and focus on generating better outcomes. 

I worked in business development for a company whose motto was Management by Measurement, which was integral to their business practices. Deciding on your team’s most important performance metrics and ensuring they are trending in the right direction is crucial to your company’s growth.  

Ready to make sales team competitions part of your sales culture?

Helping your sales team compete in healthy ways within your company can help you identify your peak performers and those who need coaching or mentoring. Sales commissions and bonuses are a powerful performance motivator. Yet many sales professionals of all experience and skill levels need a boost of adrenaline now and then to keep their motivation and activity levels high.  

Supercharge your sales team’s motivation and performance. Start planning a series of sales competitions to track and reward your sales team and make them feel valued and driven. For more information about Geckoboard sales competition dashboards, visit our dashboard examples page.