If you manage a sales team and spend too much time drowning in dashboards, you’re not alone. Most analytics tools promise “actionable insights,” but what you really get is a pile of charts and a headache. This guide is for sales managers who want to get more from Motidash analytics without wasting hours poking around or sitting through another demo.
Here’s how to actually use Motidash to find out what matters, skip what doesn’t, and get honest clarity about your team’s performance.
1. Get Your Foundations Right—Clean Data or Don’t Bother
Before you even think about advanced tips, check your basics. Motidash (see motidash.html) can only do so much if your data is a mess. If your reps aren’t logging activities, or you’re importing sloppy CRM exports, you’ll just get fancy graphs of bad info.
Quick checklist: - Audit your sources: Is everyone logging deals the same way? Are custom fields consistent? - Spot-check a few reports: Are you seeing weird gaps or obvious duplicates? - Fix now, not later: It’s way easier to correct data problems early than to try and “adjust” your reports every week.
Pro tip: Garbage in, garbage out. Don’t skip this step because it’s boring—it’s the only way to trust what Motidash shows you later.
2. Use Saved Views—Don’t Rebuild the Same Report Each Week
Motidash lets you save custom report views. Most sales managers ignore this and rebuild filters every Monday morning. That’s a waste of time and just increases the odds you’ll miss something.
How to use them: - Build a report once (say, “Deals Closing This Month, by Rep”). - Hit “Save View” and name it something obvious. - Share it with your team or keep it private.
What works:
Saved Views are great for recurring meetings or quick check-ins. You can even bookmark them for one-click access.
What doesn’t:
Don’t go overboard. If you have 30 saved views, you’ll never use half of them. Stick to the 3-5 you actually review each week.
3. Get Beyond the Leaderboard—Dig Into Pipeline Quality
Leaderboards are sales comfort food: easy to understand, zero nutrition. Motidash dashboards love to show “Top Reps This Month,” but that barely scratches the surface. If you want to actually move the needle, look at pipeline quality.
How to do it: - Use filters to break out deals by stage, age, or source—not just total value. - Compare “stuck” deals (90+ days in stage) with fresh ones. - Look for pipeline gaps—do you have enough early-stage deals to hit next quarter’s number?
What’s worth your time:
- Trends over time: Are deals moving faster or slower than last quarter?
- Conversion rates: What percent move from proposal to close?
What to ignore:
- Vanity metrics. “Meetings booked” is nice, but does it actually lead anywhere?
- Single-week snapshots. They’re noisy and often misleading.
4. Customize Your Dashboards—But Don’t Go Chart-Crazy
It’s tempting to make a dashboard with every widget Motidash offers. Don’t. You’ll end up with a wall of spaghetti you never look at.
Ways to keep it useful: - Start with 3-5 key metrics (pipeline value, close rate, activity by rep, etc.) - Use summary widgets for quick health checks. - Add one “deep dive” widget for a specific question you’re chasing this month.
Pro tip:
If you can’t explain what a chart means in one sentence, it probably isn’t worth keeping.
What to skip:
Don’t bother with every “trend” or “heatmap” unless you have a reason. They look cool but rarely drive real action.
5. Set Up Alerts for What Matters (Not Just What’s Easy)
Motidash can send alerts for just about anything—stalled deals, new leads, quota milestones. The trick is to only get pinged for stuff that actually needs your attention.
Tips: - Set alerts for deals stuck past a certain stage or age. - Get notified if a big deal is pushed or lost—not every tiny update. - Use team-wide alerts sparingly. If everyone’s getting pinged constantly, they’ll start ignoring all notifications.
What works:
Well-tuned alerts let you jump on problems before they become disasters.
What doesn’t:
Generic activity alerts (“Tom logged a call!”) are just noise.
6. Use Comparison Reports to Spot Patterns (and BS)
Motidash’s comparison features are underrated. They’re how you can sniff out patterns that aren’t obvious from a single view.
How to use them: - Compare this quarter’s pipeline to last quarter’s—by rep, region, or deal size. - Look at win rates by lead source. Are those “hot” leads from Marketing actually closing? - Stack up activity numbers against actual results. Is more calling really leading to more deals?
Why it matters:
If someone’s gaming the numbers (logging a million calls, but closing nothing), you’ll see it fast.
What to watch for:
Don’t draw big conclusions from small sample sizes. If you only have a handful of enterprise deals, trends can be random.
7. Export and Blend Data When Motidash Hits Its Limits
Let’s be honest: No analytics tool does everything. Sometimes you’ll want to export data from Motidash and blend it with finance or support stats.
How to handle it: - Use the CSV export. Don’t waste time copying and pasting. - Pull in just what you need—don’t dump the entire database unless you like Excel crashes. - Combine with outside data (like customer churn or payment status) for bigger-picture insights.
Pro tip:
If you’re regularly exporting to do the same analysis, suggest it as a feature to the Motidash team. (But don’t hold your breath—roadmaps move slow.)
8. Build a Reporting Cadence—And Stick to It
Fancy reports are useless if they only get reviewed once a quarter. Set a regular rhythm for reviewing key reports, and hold your team to it.
What works: - Weekly pipeline reviews (using your saved views). - Monthly deep-dives on conversion rates or stuck deals. - Quarterly lookbacks to spot longer-term trends.
What doesn’t: - Ad hoc, whenever-you-remember reporting. That’s how problems slip through the cracks.
9. Skip the Fluff—Focus on Reports That Drive Decisions
It’s easy to get buried in “nice to have” stats. If a report doesn’t change what you do, or how you coach your team, ditch it.
Ask yourself: - Does this report help me spot a risk early? - Will it actually change my next one-on-one or pipeline review? - Is anyone on the team using this to work smarter?
If the answer is no, stop wasting your time.
10. Don’t Be Afraid to Iterate—Your Reporting Needs Will Change
What works today may not work next quarter. Sales cycles shift. Teams grow. Don’t lock yourself into one set of dashboards.
Keep it simple: - Review your saved views and dashboards every month. Kill the ones you don’t use. - Ask your team what they actually look at. If nobody can remember, it’s probably not valuable. - Tweak as you go. There’s no prize for getting it perfect the first time.
Wrap-up: Keep It Simple, Stay Skeptical, and Iterate
Advanced reporting in Motidash isn’t about showing off a wall of charts—it’s about finding the few numbers that actually help you run a better sales team. Start with clean data, stick to a handful of useful views, and don’t get distracted by every shiny new widget. The best reports are the ones you use, not the ones that look fancy in a slide deck. Review, trim, and keep moving. Real progress is about small tweaks, not analytics heroics.
Now, get back to selling. The dashboards will still be here tomorrow.