Copy this dashboard creation template + learn best practices

Hey! 👋

Hope you’re doing well! I’ve been excited to see the marketing operations and revenue operations job markets open up a bit, with (what seems like) tons more roles available! The world is healing (maybe?)!

Today, I want to talk about reporting. Reporting in itself isn’t too complicated, but there are some best practices worth following and some common places where people screw it up…and screw up their dashboards in the process. 😅

Let me tell you more about it after a quick note from our wonderful sponsors 💖

Why Your Marketing & Sales Dashboards Aren’t Working (And How to Fix Them)

You open your marketing or sales dashboard, hoping to get clarity, but instead, you get:

• Pipeline numbers that don’t match Salesforce

• A report that says MQLs are up, but revenue is flat

• Leadership asking, “Where’s this number coming from?”

You end up spending more time defending data than using it.

Here are some key ways to fix your reporting so it actually helps your team make decisions. (NOTE: this is 101-esque, though everyone can probably pick up some tips — I’ll be continuing to build upon this and dive deeper as we go!).

1️⃣ Define Your Reporting Goals Before You Build

Before pulling numbers, ask yourself:

• Who is using this dashboard? (Marketing, sales, execs, RevOps?)

• What action should they take based on it?

• Which KPIs actually indicate success?

📌 For marketing teams → Focus on lead quality, conversion rates, and attribution over vanity metrics like clicks.
📌 For sales teams → Prioritize pipeline velocity, win rates, and quota attainment over total deal count.

Every dashboard should be tied to a decision. If a metric doesn’t influence action, cut it out. Too many extraneous metrics can distract executives, who are often strapped for time and can’t be fumbling around with irrelevant data.

2️⃣ Stop Pulling Data From Disjointed Sources

If your dashboards pull from multiple platforms (Salesforce, HubSpot, etc.) but aren’t standardized, you’ll just display…a mess. And you can’t get insights from a mess.

Fix this by:

• Defining one source of truth for each metric. (Example: MQLs = leads specifically marked as MQL by a specific marketing process, not by sales or anyone else).

• Ensuring lead stages and lifecycle definitions match between marketing and sales.

• Automating updates so reports aren’t outdated by the time someone looks at them.

• Standardizing data in key fields, like Country or State.

Pro tip: Set up data validation checks; if lead counts in two systems don’t match by 5% or more, flag it and figure out why (and ideally solve it!) before sharing the dashboard with leadership.

3️⃣ Only Show Metrics That Are Relevant or Drive Action

Executives don’t need CTR trends for the past six months, they need to know whether marketing efforts are turning into revenue.

What to include in leadership dashboards:

• Pipeline contribution from marketing (not just leads, but actual revenue impact)

• Cost per opportunity by channel (CPC doesn’t give leadership the full picture. Track cost per actual opportunity)

• Lead-to-customer conversion rates (Are we getting the right leads? Is our targeted ICP correct?)

• Sales velocity (How fast are deals closing?)

Examples of what you should remove:

• Social media follower counts

• Total email sends

• Raw traffic numbers with no context/understanding of the “why” behind them

Pro tip: Really good execs will want to dig into the “why” behind each metric, so make sure you know the answer for each. As they say on Shark Tank, know your numbers — this is another reason to narrow down metrics, so you can understand each intimately and be able to answer questions or dig deeper on the fly. It’s okay to say “let me look further into that” every once in a while, but it shouldn’t be your standard response or you’ll lose the trust of your audience quickly.

4️⃣ Set Up Alerts for Key Metric Changes

If your MQL-to-SQL conversion rate drops suddenly, you don’t want to find out at the end of the quarter. You also really don’t want to be the recipient of an impatient or frustrated Slack message from your execs — I tell my teams, “we want to catch issues first, we don’t want our customers to bring them to us if we can avoid it.”

Set up:

• Threshold-based alerts (Ex: If conversion rates drop by 10% week-over-week, trigger an email alert.)

• Slack notifications for key shifts in pipeline, win rates, or CAC.

• Weekly email summaries with key trends—no one has time to check dashboards daily.

5️⃣ Align Marketing & Sales on Attribution

If marketing is reporting $2M in influenced pipeline, but sales only recognizes $1M in sourced revenue, there’s a disconnect. This can’t be solved through a dashboard, but if there is a disconnect, a good first step is pulling data and aligning on definitions through discussion.

Fix this by:

• Agreeing on first-touch vs. multi-touch attribution before reporting pipeline numbers.

• Using a shared report for revenue influence rather than separate sales and marketing versions.

• Regularly reconciling pipeline data between teams so no one gets blindsided in meetings.

6️⃣ Build the Right Dashboards for the Right People

Think about the audience first — what’s relevant to them? These are some typical personas and dashboard types:

For marketing teams: Campaign Performance Dashboard

• Lead volume & conversion rates by source

• Cost per opportunity by channel

• Multi-touch attribution breakdown

For sales teams: Sales Performance Dashboard

• Quota attainment % by rep

• Win rate by stage

• Pipeline velocity & stalled deals

For execs: Revenue Operations Dashboard

• Marketing-sourced vs. sales-sourced pipeline

• CAC vs. CLV trends

• Forecast vs. actual revenue

📖 Copyable Template

To get you started, I’ve created a template you can use to brainstorm:

👉️ Check it out and copy it here.

(This is v1, and I am working on creating some sample dashboard templates — please let me know if you have any feedback so I can keep it in mind as I continue to build!)

If you’re struggling to get inspiration on dashboards and just starting out, here are some common dashboards and metrics (check out the template for the full list, the list below is abbreviated):

🔈 Marketing Dashboards

1. Marketing Performance Dashboard

Purpose: Tracks overall marketing impact on revenue and engagement.
Key Metrics:

• Website traffic (total visits, sources, bounce rate)

• MQLs, SQLs, and conversion rates

• Campaign ROI

• Email open & click-through rates

• Cost per lead (CPL)

2. Lead Funnel Dashboard

Purpose: Monitors how leads progress through the funnel.
Key Metrics:

• Lead conversion rates (MQL → SQL → Opportunity → Closed Won)

• Lead velocity rate (LVR)

• Lead drop-off points

• Sales cycle length by segment

3. Campaign Performance Dashboard

Purpose: Evaluates the success of marketing campaigns across channels.
Key Metrics:

• Campaign ROI & revenue impact

• Click-through rates (CTR)

• Cost per acquisition (CPA)

• Engagement metrics (impressions, clicks, conversions)

💰 Sales Dashboards

4. Sales Performance Dashboard

Purpose: Tracks rep productivity and revenue progress.
Key Metrics:

• Quota attainment %

• Deals won vs. lost

• Sales cycle length

• Win rate by stage

5. Sales Pipeline Dashboard

Purpose: Provides visibility into pipeline health.
Key Metrics:

• Open opportunities by stage

• Forecasted vs. actual revenue

• Stalled deals & bottlenecks

• Pipeline velocity

🤝 Revenue Operations (RevOps) Dashboards

6. Revenue Operations Dashboard

Purpose: Aligns marketing, sales, and customer success metrics.
Key Metrics:

• Total revenue & growth rate

• Sales & marketing efficiency ratio

• CAC vs. CLV

• Revenue by channel (new business vs. expansion)

7. Customer Lifecycle Dashboard

Purpose: Tracks customer journey from lead to renewal.
Key Metrics:

• MQL to SQL conversion rate

• Sales velocity

• Time in each lifecycle stage

• Churn vs. expansion trends

To bring it all together, this is my biggest piece of advice: just start analyzing and building. Sometimes, people get anxious and it prevents them from even taking a first stab at creating a dashboard…but the key is to create something for stakeholders to react to! Especially if stakeholders are timid or uncertain themselves. Start with a draft and then iterate based on reception and usefulness.

Dear Sara ✍️

New to marketing operations? On a team of one at your company? Shy/introverted? Wish you could ask a question to an experienced marketing operations professional, without them knowing who you are? Here’s your chance! Submit an anonymous question to me here and I’ll answer a new question in every issue.

Here’s my answer to a question from last week:

I don’t know who this is from, so I’m thanking you for the kind words here! 🥲

This is a great question, and I’m going to give a less-than-popular answer at first — it depends. BUT I can give you some food for thought.

Go on LinkedIn and other job forums and search for the type(s) of job you want next in your career. Think: which type of industries, size of companies, and roles do I want to consider? Do you see Marketo pop up more than Pardot in those roles? Or do you see Salesforce Marketing Cloud pop up more than Pardot? If I were you, I’d do some analysis across desirable job postings and see what the most commonly used tools appear to be. Then, focus on those.*

*HOWEVER, I do generally encourage diversifying away from one brand — the riches are in the niches in consulting, but for internal roles, you want exposure across multiple brands (like Salesforce and Adobe, or Salesforce and HubSpot) so if the market suddenly shifts in an unexpected direction, you can pivot.

How do I know this? Welp, I was specialized in Pardot in 2016, and there was (allegedly) a downturn in Pardot sales, so I was swept up in a market downturn and had a hard time progressing in my career because everyone wanted Marketo or HubSpot talent. Don’t let that be you — any of these companies could face a downturn and stop selling a specific product or sell less product overall, at any time.

In terms of marketing analytics, people are probably tired of hearing me talk about Datacamp.com, but I really love it — it suits my learning style, has immersive “in-product” practice work, and has content all across different areas of data and analytics. I’d check out their offering and see if it appeals to you; and if it does, keep an eye out because they run pretty steep discounts at least twice per year, usually near the summer and holidays/new year.

P.S. For those DMing about my course, I’ve closed new students off for now as I focus on the folks who have signed up thus far, in this first cohort — thank you for your support, and keep your eyes open for new releases of openings in the coming weeks and months!

Want more Dear Sara? I probably don’t advertise this enough…if you want to read previous editions of the newsletter, you can check them out here (just scroll down to the archive).

Thanks for reading,

❤️ Sara