The DataHero Blog

Analyzing your Salesforce pipeline is crucial to understanding where your current big deals come from, how your sales reps are contributing to those deals, and reaching the ultimate goal of increasing sales. Salesforce offers a great way to track and store data answering these questions, and now DataHero can help you make sense of all of it through data visualization. To start with a more beginner’s approach to pipeline analysis try this video here.

To demonstrate the power of DataHero’s integration with Salesforce, I’ll show you how easy it is to answer these five insightful questions to help you improve team performance

1. What is your win/loss ratio for each sales rep?

2. How much time do sales reps spend in each stage of the pipeline?

3. How does that time spent in each stage affect the win/loss ratio?

4. How can I analyze and improve my lead quality?

5. How should I divide my sales regions to maximize sales?

For this post we’re using a report based on your opportunity pipeline with the following custom fields: win/loss counts, open vs. active opportunities and duration for each stage.

Begin by connecting DataHero to your Salesforce account and importing your opportunity pipeline report.

Win/Loss Ratio

Step 1: Go to the data view page for your salesforce pipeline report

Step 2: Click Create a New Chart

Step 3: Drag the following attributes onto the chart canvas:

• Opportunity Owner
• Win/Loss

You instantly have a chart that shows your win/loss ratio by sales rep:

 

Then simply toggle the Percent button in the top left corner of the chart canvas and you’ll get the win percentage by sales rep.

Stage Duration by Sales Rep

Now how do we see in which stages of the pipeline each rep is spending their time?

Step 1: Create a New Chart

Step 2: Drag the following attributes onto the chart canvas:

• Stage Duration
• Stage
• Opportunity Owner

Now you know where this specific sales representative is spending time within the pipeline.

If we want to see that as a percentage just change the chart type to stacked column (click the type button at the top of the chart canvas) and toggle the Percentage button again.

Average Stage Duration by Win/Loss Ratio

Now let’s see how our reps’ use of time impacts their success ratio.

Step 1: Create a New Chart

Step 2: Drag the following attributes onto the chart canvas:

• Stage Duration
• Stage
• Win/Loss

Step 3: Click “Go Back To Editing Your Chart” in the top left corner of the chart page and click Average in the dropdown menu above Stage Duration.

This shows you the average amount of time spent for winning versus losing deals across all of your reps. For example, you can see in “Negotiate and Close” stage below, exceeding about 65 days during this stage will probably lead to a loss. It’s best to keep this step to around 25 days on average.

To see this chart for an individual rep, add opportunity owner as a filter by dragging that attribute onto the lower portion of the chart canvas. Then select the rep you’d like to see. This chart suggests that if your trial period in stage 4 takes over 20 days, it’s probably best to let that deal go and move on to another one.

 

Lead Quality

If you make the distinction of active vs. open opportunities, this a great way to evaluate lead quality. Open opportunities are when a customer has established there is a need, they want more information, but there are no actionable next steps to move this opportunity along in the pipeline.  Active opportunities are ones where there are actionable steps for the sales team to progress on.

Step 1: Create New Chart

Step 2: Drag the following attributes onto the chart canvas:

• Date
• Opportunity ($)
• Active/Open

Dividing Sales Regions

Step 1: Create a New Chart

Step 2: Drag the following attributes onto the chart:

• State
• Opportunity ($)

Use maps to see where your sales opportunities are versus where your reps are. Then you can decide whether you want to reassign a particularly skilled sales rep to a region that has more opportunities or re-divide your sales regions.

Filter this map by sales rep by dragging Opportunity Owner onto the lower portion of the chart canvas where it says “Create Filter” then select the Opportunity Owner you’d like to see.

This is the graph you will get after filtering on Opportunity Owner:

These are just a few examples of the insights you can get using Salesforce and DataHero.  DataHero’s pipeline analysis works with all kinds of categories, date formats and other attributes to segment and analyze your pipeline and opportunities data.

To get started today, sign up for a free DataHero account and start unmasking the answers in your Salesforce data.