I don’t think it is not an exaggeration to say that an excellent proposals dashboard can significantly change how your sales proposal process operates.

There are hundreds of moving parts in your sales proposal process that impact your overall performance. A proposals dashboard highlights these occurrences using simple, real-time data visualizations. For vehicles, you can immediately see the speed of your driving,  how much fuel you have in your vehicle tank, and so much more.

In a much similar way, the function of a proposals dashboard is to provide real-time information related to a proposal, right from initial contact to final negotiation and closure. Otherwise known as your key performance indicators (KPIs). It breaks down your data into understandable visual information allowing you to identify what’s working right in your sales and where you need to improve.

What is a proposals dashboard?

Proposals dashboard is a software that enables businesses to create, manage, and track proposals. It allows sales teams to efficiently collaborate on proposals and track their progress from start to finish. The software also helps businesses measure the effectiveness of their proposal process.

Sales proposal dashboards cover your most critical sales KPIs, such as: 

1. Revenue
2. Winning rate
3. Average deal size
4. Sales proposal velocity
5. Average proposal cycle length

Do I need a proposal dashboard in the sales process?

Think about going a day without a device to know the time – no clock, no phone, no watch. Most of us would get by but it would almost certainly result in a lot of anxiety and wasted energy as we would be continuously relying on others for help. Just like that, without a dashboard, your sales teams would continuously ask their colleagues to pull data related to the proposals that they can’t access or spend too many be hours trying to track the process.

Like the poor individual without a clock or a phone or a wristwatch, your sales team can also manage this for a while, but ultimately, they will require a dashboard for the whole proposal process. So the answer to the question ” Do I really need a dashboard in the sales process?” is YES!!!

What are the advantages of proposals dashboard?

Dashboards are a great way to visualize your sales process and track your progress. They can help you to identify areas where you need to focus your efforts and improve your sales proposal process. Dashboards can display data in a variety of formats, including graphs, pie charts, and bar charts. This makes it easy to see how your sales proposals are performing and track your progress. Dashboards can also be customized to include information specific to your business.

Oversee multiple KPIs and proposal metrics at once

A better way to manage the proposal process is to use a dashboard. Sales proposal dashboards provide an efficient and effective way to manage the sales proposal process. They offer a centralized location for all the information related to a proposal, from initial contact through to final negotiation and closure.

Sales teams are constantly challenged to find new ways to improve proposal response times and win more deals. In many cases, sales teams rely on spreadsheets to track and manage the proposal process. While this may work for a small number of proposals, it can quickly become unmanageable as the proposal volume grows.

Easy to read and understand

You don’t have to be a data analyst to read and understand the proposals dashboard. Dashboards are incredibly simple to read; anyone can recognize proposal dashboards with a single glance. Proposals dashboards are designed in such a manner that even persons without prior knowledge of sales, finance, proposals, or marketing can readily interpret the data displayed on the screen.

Visualize sales-driven strategies and drive profits

Sales proposal dashboards provide an efficient way for sales teams to visualize their proposal pipeline and track the progress of individual proposals. Sales proposal dashboards can be customized to track any data relevant to the sales process, such as the status of each proposal, the amount of time spent on each proposal, and the amount of money at risk in each proposal.

Refine your proposal process

Sales proposal dashboards can help sales teams identify bottlenecks in the sales process and make changes that will improve their efficiency. Sales professionals are always looking for ways to improve their processes and close more sales.

While many sales professionals use dashboards to monitor their progress, they may not be using them to their full potential. Dashboards can be used during the proposal process to help you gather and track data, create proposals quickly and easily, and track the success of your proposals.

Examples of Helpful Sales Proposal Dashboards

• Proposal Performance Dashboard: The proposal performance dashboard provides a comprehensive view of overall performance of a company, its sales proposal team members/ sales reps considering sales proposals sent. You can get visibility into sent proposals, won proposals/ completed deals, monthly deal closure rate, number of proposals sent, number of proposals viewed, conversion rates. 
• Proposal Pipeline Dashboard: Proposal pipeline dashboard shows how a sales proposal is moving through the pipeline of proposal stages like create, sent, client view, signing, accept, reject, payment, etc. A proposal pipeline dashboard is an interactive tool wherein you can drill down through proposals data.
• Proposal Conversion or Win/Loss Dashboard: Proposals Conversion Dashboard tracks the win/loss rate for the proposals you send to your clients/ prospects.
• Proposal Conversion Trends Dashboard: This dashboard presents historical data of proposal conversion rate on month-on-month basis or year on year basis.
• Proposal Funnel Dashboard: As the name suggests, proposals funnel dashboard presents sales proposals flowing through the sales funnel stages like Draft, sent, viewed by client, signed, paid. 
• Proposal Engagement Dashboard: Proposal engagement dashboard provides a set of clear indicators about how clients have engaged with the proposals your company has sent. 
• Proposal Activities Dashboard: It breaks down the activities your proposal team members are completing on a daily basis; it also enlist important events when client views, signs, rejects proposal. 
• Live Proposals Dashboard: This dashboards tells you what is at stake at the moment. How many of your proposals are out for client-review and waiting for their decision. 
• Proposal Content Dashboard: This dashboard helps you monitor usage patterns of sections used in your proposals/ regularly used proposals (i.e. templates) and it generates insights to most popular sections, engagement rate, visit duration, exit rate, etc.
• Client-Proposal Interaction Dashboard: With this dashboard, you certainly understand the interest levels of your prospect/client in your proposal but it goes beyond to help you qualify the interest level. 
• Team Performance Dashboard: The team performance dashboard provides a complete view of the performance of each sales rep member involved in writing, sending proposals. 

Wrap up,

In short, dashboards provide a number of advantages for sales proposal processes. They help salespeople to coordinate and track their work, visualize data to identify trends and opportunities and make better decisions. As a result, proposals are more likely to be accepted and deals are more likely to be closed.