Sales dashboards are supposed to make your life easier. Too often, they end up as cluttered charts no one understands, or worse, ignored entirely. If you’re trying to wrangle Setsail dashboards to fit your team, your KPIs, and your actual day-to-day workflow, this guide’s for you.
I’ll walk you through what’s actually worth customizing in Setsail (here’s Setsail if you need the basics), how to do it without getting lost in the weeds, and how to keep things useful for different sales roles. No fluff, no “data-driven synergy.” Just clear steps and honest advice.
Why Customizing Dashboards Matters (and When It Doesn’t)
A dashboard should answer, fast, “How am I doing?” or “Where do I need to focus?” If it doesn’t, people stop using it. Customizing dashboards by sales role—rep, manager, exec—means everyone sees what matters to them.
But don’t go overboard. Not every metric is worth tracking, and not every widget needs a home. If you try to show everything, you’ll end up showing nothing.
Pro tip: Start simple. Add complexity only when people ask for it.
Step 1: Get Clear on Who Needs What
Before you touch a dashboard, figure out who you’re building for. Here’s how it usually breaks down:
- Sales reps: Care about their own pipeline, activities, and targets. They want to see: “What’s on my plate? Am I on track?”
- Sales managers: Need a bird’s-eye view. Pipeline health by team, who’s lagging, what deals need attention.
- Sales leaders/execs: They want bottom-line KPIs—revenue, forecasting, trends. No one cares less about “calls made” than your VP.
Don’t: Try to create a “one size fits all” dashboard. You’ll make everyone unhappy.
Do: Ask each group, “What do you look at every day? What do you ignore?” Build around that.
Step 2: Map Out Your Must-Have KPIs
Setsail lets you track a ton of stuff. Most of it doesn’t matter. Stick to what drives action.
For Sales Reps
- Current pipeline (by stage)
- Activities completed vs. target (calls, emails, meetings)
- Upcoming tasks & next steps
- Win/loss breakdown (optional—don’t obsess here)
For Managers
- Team pipeline (by rep, by stage)
- Activity metrics by rep
- Deal slippage (what’s pushing out, what’s stalled)
- Coaching opportunities (where reps are stuck)
For Leaders
- Revenue vs. target (by team, territory)
- Forecasting (how likely are we to hit quota?)
- Conversion rates by stage
- Top deals/risk deals
Ignore: Vanity metrics. If it doesn’t change your behavior, skip it.
Step 3: Build Role-Based Dashboards in Setsail
Setsail’s dashboard builder is pretty flexible, but like most tools, it lets you dig your own grave if you’re not careful. Here’s how to avoid that:
- Create a separate dashboard for each role.
- Don’t try to cram everything into one view.
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Name dashboards clearly: “Rep Dashboard,” “Manager Overview,” etc.
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Add widgets with a clear purpose.
- For each widget, ask: “Who needs this, and why?”
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Limit to 5-7 widgets per dashboard. Less is more.
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Use filters and segmentation.
- Show reps only their own data.
- Managers get team-level views.
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Execs see company-wide numbers.
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Arrange by priority.
- Top = most important metric (the one thing you want them to notice).
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Group related widgets together.
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Test with real users.
- Have a rep, manager, and exec look at their dashboards.
- Ask: “Does this actually help you do your job?”
- Cut the stuff no one mentions.
Pro tip: Keep a “sandbox” dashboard for experiments. Don’t mess with the main view until you’re sure.
Step 4: Customize Data Sources and Calculations
Setsail pulls from CRM and sales tools, but it’s only as good as your data. If your CRM is a mess, your dashboard will be too.
- Check field mappings. Make sure pipeline stages, activity types, and owner fields are correct. Garbage in, garbage out.
- Set up custom KPIs if needed. Sometimes, the built-in stuff doesn’t cut it. If you have a unique sales process, create your own formulas—just don’t get too clever.
- Refresh data schedules. Make sure your dashboards update as often as you need (daily is fine for most, real-time is overkill for all but the most frantic orgs).
Don’t: Overcomplicate with too many custom metrics. The more you have, the harder it is to trust your numbers.
Step 5: Make It Visual—But Not Distracting
People love charts. Setsail will let you make as many as you want. Most of them are useless.
- Stick to bar charts, line graphs, and simple tables. If you need a legend, it’s too complicated.
- Use color to highlight, not decorate. Red = bad, green = good. Don’t get fancy.
- Avoid pie charts. They look nice but are hard to read at a glance.
- Add trend lines if you want to show progress. But don’t clutter the view.
Pro tip: Every chart should answer a specific question. (“Are we ahead or behind?” “Which rep is struggling?”)
Step 6: Review and Iterate
No dashboard is perfect out of the gate. Here’s how to keep it useful:
- Check usage. Is anyone actually looking at these dashboards? Setsail can show you.
- Ask for feedback. Once a month, ask each role: “What’s missing? What’s useless?”
- Prune regularly. Remove stale metrics. If no one’s acted on it in a quarter, kill it.
- Document changes. If you tweak something, let users know. Surprises erode trust.
Don’t: Rely on dashboards to change behavior by themselves. They’re a tool, not a magic bullet.
What to Ignore (Mostly)
Every platform—including Setsail—has bells and whistles that sound cool but rarely help:
- Gamification features: Fun for a week, then ignored.
- Leaderboard widgets: Fine for contests, but they usually just annoy people.
- Hyper-granular filters: No one needs a dashboard showing “calls by zip code on Tuesdays.”
- Embedding dashboards in 10 other tools: More places = more confusion.
Stick to what’s actionable and easy to find.
A Few Real-World Tips
- Get buy-in early. If you build dashboards in a vacuum, you’ll end up redoing them.
- Keep permissions tight. Only edit access for admins; everyone else views.
- Don’t be afraid to start over. Bad dashboards waste more time than no dashboards.
- Favor clarity over “insights.” If users have to ask what a number means, fix the label or drop the widget.
Wrapping Up
The best Setsail dashboards are the ones people actually use—because they’re simple and focused on the right KPIs for the right role. Don’t let the tool drive your process. Start with what your team needs, build only what solves a real problem, and keep things as simple as possible. Iterate when people ask for more, not before.
Less is more. Keep it useful. And if no one looks at a dashboard for a month? Have the guts to delete it.