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How to Create a Business Development Dashboard in Looker

Cody Schneider••7 min read

Building a business development dashboard in Looker transforms your complex CRM reports and activity logs into a clear, actionable roadmap for growth. Instead of sifting through multiple reports to understand performance, you can view your entire pipeline, from initial outreach to qualified opportunity, in one place. This guide will walk you through the essential steps, from defining the right metrics to building an interactive dashboard that your whole team can use.

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First Things First: Why a Business Development Dashboard? Isn't That Just a Sales Dashboard?

While they are closely related, a business development dashboard has a distinct focus. A traditional sales dashboard often concentrates on bottom-of-the-funnel metrics: quota attainment, closed-won deals, and revenue forecasting. These are vital, but they only tell the end of the story.

A business development (BD) dashboard monitors the health of the entire top of the funnel. It's designed to answer questions like:

  • Are my BDRs conducting enough outreach activity to build a healthy pipeline?
  • Which channels are generating the highest quality leads?
  • How efficiently are we converting new contacts into qualified meetings?
  • Where are the bottlenecks in our early-stage process?

In short, the BD dashboard gives you a leading indicator of future sales. A strong BD pipeline today means a healthy revenue forecast next quarter. A weak one is an early warning sign that trouble is coming.

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Laptops Closed: Planning Your Dashboard Before You Build

The most common mistake people make is jumping straight into Looker and randomly pulling in data. A successful dashboard starts with a clear plan. Before you write a single line of LookML or create your first "Look," take a moment to answer these questions with your team.

Step 1: Define Your Audience and Their Goals

Who is this for? The metrics that matter to a Head of Sales are different from what an individual BDR needs to see minute-to-minute. Tailor the dashboard to its audience.

  • For BDRs/SDRs: Focus on daily and weekly activity metrics. How many calls did I make today? How many emails have I sent this week? Am I on track to hit my meeting quota?
  • For BD Managers: Focus on team performance and pipeline efficiency. Which reps are hitting their numbers? What are our lead-to-opportunity conversion rates? Is the team's pipeline value growing?
  • For VPs/Executives: Focus on high-level outcomes and trends. How does our pipeline generation this quarter compare to last quarter? What is the ROI on our different lead sources?

For this guide, we'll focus on building a dashboard for a BD Manager, balancing a view of individual activity with overall pipeline health.

Step 2: Identify Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

Once you know who you’re building for, choose the specific metrics that will give them the answers they need. Group them into logical categories.

Activity Metrics (Is the team doing the work?)

  • Calls Made: The raw number of dials.
  • Emails Sent: The volume of outbound emails.
  • Meetings Booked: The number of first meetings a BDR sets. This is often a BDR's primary goal.
  • Activities by Rep: Charting all activities to compare performance and identify coaching opportunities.

Pipeline Metrics (Is the work producing results?)

  • Leads Generated: The total number of new contacts added to the funnel.
  • Leads by Source: Where are our best leads coming from (e.g., inbound marketing, cold outreach, events)?
  • Opportunities Created: The number of leads that have been qualified and moved to the next stage of the sales process.
  • Pipeline Value Created: The total dollar value of the new opportunities generated by the BD team.

Effectiveness & Efficiency Metrics (How well is it working?)

  • Lead-to-Meeting Conversion Rate: The percentage of leads that result in a booked meeting.
  • Meeting-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate: The percentage of initial meetings that become qualified sales opportunities.
  • Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate: Your overall top-of-funnel conversion rate for new leads through to qualified opportunity.
  • Sales Cycle Velocity (First 2 Stages): How long does it take for a lead to become a qualified opportunity?
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Step 3: Map Your Data Sources

Where does this information live? For most BD teams, the data is primarily in a CRM tool like Salesforce or HubSpot. You might also need to connect to an outreach sequencing platform, like SalesLoft or Outreach. Looker needs to be connected to these sources, and your data team needs to have modeled this data in LookML, defining the "Dimensions" (the things you group by, like 'Lead Source' or 'Rep Name') and "Measures" (the things you count or calculate, like 'Count of Leads').

A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Looker Dashboard

With your plan in place, it’s time to build. We’ll construct a manager’s business development team dashboard that monitors team activity and pipeline creation.

Step 1: Get Familiar with Your "Explores"

In Looker, you start building visualizations from an Explore. An Explore is a starting point for a query, designed by your data team to let you easily pull related dimensions and measures. For a BD dashboard, you'll likely use Explores related to Opportunities, Leads, and Activities from your CRM data.

Step 2: Create Individual "Looks" for Your KPIs

A "Look" is a single chart or data table that answers one question. You build these individual Looks first, then assemble them on a dashboard. Here’s how you’d create a few core Looks.

Look #1: Meetings Booked By Rep (Last 30 Days)

  1. Navigate to your "Activities" or "Opportunities" Explore.
  2. In the left-hand pane, find and select a dimension for the BDR Name.
  3. Find and select a measure for the Count of Meetings Booked. If you don't have this, you can create it with a custom filtered measure looking at activities of type = "Meeting".
  4. Add a filter for Activity Date and set it to "is in the last 30 days".
  5. Under Visualization, choose the Bar Chart option.
  6. Click Run. You should see a bar chart with each rep’s name and their total meetings booked.
  7. Click the gear icon and Save as a Look. Give it a clear name like "Meetings Booked by Rep - L30D".

Look #2: Lead-to-Opportunity Funnel

A funnel chart is perfect for visualizing conversion rates through different pipeline stages. This requires data that's already set up for pipeline tracking.

  1. From your "Leads" or "Opportunities" Explore, select stage-related measures to represent your funnel (e.g., “Contact Created Count”, “Meeting Booked Count”, and "Opportunity Count Created").
  2. Add a filter for the Created date, so your dashboard focuses on the timeframe you’d like to measure.
  3. Under Visualization, choose the Funnel option.
  4. Looker will display the funnel and often show conversion percentages between steps.
  5. Now you can see exactly where leads are dropping off.
  6. Save as a Look with a descriptive title so you can add it to your dashboard later, such as "Lead Conversion Funnel - This Quarter".

Look #3: New Pipeline Value by Lead Source (This Quarter)

  1. Use your "Opportunities" Explore, and select the dimension for Lead Source.
  2. Next, add measures for Pipeline Value.
  3. Add a filter for Created date, set to "This Quarter".
  4. Under Visualization, choose a Bar Chart.
  5. Click Run. You should see a breakdown of where your largest opportunities are coming from.
  6. Save as a Look with the title "New Pipeline Value by Source - This Quarter".

Repeat this process for all your key metrics. Build individual looks for Activity Volumes, Lead Count by Source, and other key KPIs you defined earlier.

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Step 3: Assemble Your Dashboard

Once you have a collection of saved Looks, it’s time to arrange them on a dashboard.

Step 1: Begin Building Your Dashboard

  1. Navigate to Dashboards and click New Dashboard.
  2. A new “Untitled Dashboard” will appear. Name it something clear like “Business Development Performance Dashboard”.
  3. Click Add Tile. A window opens so you can add Looks from your saved options. Structure the dashboard starting with high-level metrics (like KPIs and quarter-level trends).

Step 2: Set Up Your Filters

Flexible filtering options make dashboards dynamic. Add filters that allow your viewers to browse data themes, such as:

  • Date Ranges: Let users select the timeframe they want to view.
  • Team Perspectives: Filter by BDR names or aggregate team performance.

Final Thoughts

Creating a business development dashboard in Looker involves planning, setting clear data goals, and developing individual data visualizations based on what matters. It transforms CRM data into a real-time view of your entire sales process and can provide insights you might overlook otherwise. Whether you’re tracking pipeline value, conversion rates, or activity levels, an effective dashboard gives you a comprehensive understanding of your BD efforts without needing to dive deep into reports.

Leverage Looker to answer questions quickly with organized data. Use the dashboard as a tool for clarity and insight, driving performance and growth forward.

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