How to Create a Quarterly Sales Report in Looker

Creating a quarterly sales report in Looker gives you a powerful way to review performance, spot trends, and guide your strategy for the next 90 days. This guide walks you through the essential steps, from defining your key metrics to building the visualizations your team will find useful. We’ll cover how to structure the report and the best practices for presenting the data clearly.

First, Define the Purpose of Your Report

Before you even open Looker, it’s vital to know what you're trying to achieve. A great quarterly sales report isn't just a collection of charts, it’s a story about your team's performance. Start by answering a few basic questions:

• Who is the audience? A report for the sales team will focus on rep performance and pipeline health. A report for the executive team might focus on top-line revenue growth, sales cycle length, and ROI on sales activities.

• What questions should it answer? Are you trying to find out which sales reps are hitting their quota? Do you need to understand which lead sources are performing best? Are you curious about the average deal size this quarter compared to last?

• What actions will this report drive? The ultimate goal is to make better decisions. A good report should help your team decide where to focus their energy - whether that’s on a specific deal stage, a geographic region, or a particular customer segment.

Choose Your Key Sales Metrics

Once you know your goals, you can select the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that tell your story. Avoid stuffing your dashboard with every metric possible. Instead, focus on a handful that align with your quarterly objectives. A cluttered report is an ignored report.

Here are some of the most effective sales KPIs to track on a quarterly basis, broken down by category:

Revenue & Performance Metrics

• Total Bookings/Revenue: The most fundamental metric. This is the total value of all deals closed within the quarter. It's often visualized as a single large number or a trendline comparing performance to previous quarters and the quarterly goal.

• Quota Attainment: This shows the percentage of target revenue achieved by the team and by individual reps. A bar chart is perfect for comparing rep performance side-by-side.

• Average Deal Size: Calculated by dividing total revenue by the number of deals closed. Tracking this helps you understand if you’re moving upmarket or if deal values are shrinking.

• Win Rate: The percentage of opportunities that turn into closed-won deals. A low win rate might signal problems with qualification, your pitch, or competitive pressure.

Pipeline Health Metrics

• Sales Pipeline Value by Stage: A snapshot of your entire pipeline, broken down by deal stage (e.g., Prospecting, Qualification, Proposal, Negotiation). A funnel or stacked bar chart provides a great visual for where value is concentrated.

• Deal Velocity / Average Sales Cycle Length: The average time it takes to close a deal from the first contact to the final signature. A shorter sales cycle means you're generating revenue faster.

• Lead Response Time: How quickly your team follows up with new leads. In modern sales, speed is a huge competitive advantage. Tracking this can highlight major opportunities for improvement.

Activity & Efficiency Metrics

• Leads Generated: The total number of new leads that entered your pipeline this quarter. It’s useful to segment this by source (e.g., Organic, Paid, Referral) to see which channels are most effective.

• Activities per Rep: The number of calls, emails, and meetings logged by each team member. While activity doesn't equal results, it provides context if performance is lagging.

• Lead-to-Opportunity Conversion Rate: The percentage of raw leads that are qualified by your team and converted into active sales opportunities. This measures the quality of your incoming leads and the effectiveness of your initial qualification process.

Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your Report in Looker

Once you’ve outlined your KPIs, it's time to build the dashboard in Looker. This process assumes your company’s data team has already set up your LookML data models and connected your data sources, like Salesforce or HubSpot.

Step 1: Create a New Dashboard

Your dashboard is the canvas for your report. It will house all your charts, graphs, and KPIs in one view.

1. Navigate to the folder where you want to save your report.

2. Click the New button and select Dashboard.

3. Give your dashboard a clear, concise name, such as "Sales Performance - Q3 2024."

Now you have a blank dashboard ready for your visualizations.

Step 2: Build Your First Visualization (Tile)

Each chart or graph on your dashboard is called a "Tile." Let’s start with a simple KPI: Total Revenue for the quarter.

1. From your blank dashboard, click Add Tile.

2. You'll be prompted to choose an Explore. An Explore is a curated starting point for a query, often tied to a specific data model like "Deals" or "Opportunities." Select the one that contains your sales data.

3. In the Explore interface, you’ll see Dimensions (your data categories, like ‘Close Date’ or ‘Sales Rep’) and Measures (your numerical data, like ‘Sum of Deal Amount’).

4. To get total revenue, select the measure for deal value (e.g., "Total Amount").

5. Next, you need to filter for the correct time period. Find a date dimension (e.g., "Close Date") and set a filter for "is in the past 1 quarter" or use a custom date range.

6. Click Run to see the data.

7. Under the Visualization tab, select the "Single Value" type to display the number prominently.

8. Click Save returning you to your dashboard, where you can name the tile "Total Quarterly Revenue" and place it on your dashboard.

Step 3: Add Key Performance Charts

Now, repeat the process to build out the other visualizations for your report. Here are three common examples:

Example 1: Quota Attainment by Sales Rep

• Explore: Opportunities or Deals

• Dimension: Sales Rep Name

• Measure: Total Deal Amount

• Filters: Close Date is in the past quarter.

• Visualization Type: Bar Chart. You can also add their quota as another measure and use visualization settings to display a goal line on the chart.

Example 2: Sales Pipeline by Stage

• Explore: Opportunities or Deals

• Dimension: Deal Stage Name

• Measure: Count of Deals (or Sum of Deal Amount)

• Filters: Close date is in this quarter, or the deal is still open.

• Visualization Type: Funnel Chart. This provides a classic view of how deals progress through your pipeline, highlighting potential bottlenecks.

Example 3: Revenue Over Time vs. Previous Quarter

• Explore: Opportunities or Deals

• Dimension: Close Date (grouped by Week or Month)

• Measure: Total Deal Amount

• Filters: Close Date is in the past 2 quarters.

• Visualization Type: Line Chart. By adding a pivot on the Close Date quarter, Looker can generate separate lines for last quarter and the quarter before, giving you a powerful visual comparison.

Step 4: Add Dashboard-Level Filters

One of Looker's most powerful features is interactivity. Instead of creating a static report, you can add filters that allow users to slice and dice the data themselves.

1. On your dashboard, click Add Filter from the top menu.

2. Create a Date filter tied to your "Close Date" field. This allows users to change the report's time frame on the fly.

3. You might also add a filter for Sales Rep or Sales Team. Link this filter to the appropriate field in each of your tiles.

Now, anyone viewing the dashboard can change the quarter or drill down into a specific team's performance without having to ask you to rebuild the report.

Step 5: Arrange, Schedule, and Share

Organize your dashboard logically. Place the most important, high-level KPIs at the top as single value visualizations. Group related charts together. Use text tiles to add headings or explanations where needed.

Finally, automate the report's delivery. Use Looker’s scheduling feature to send a PDF or an image of the dashboard to key stakeholders automatically every week or at the start of each month.

Final Thoughts

Building a powerful quarterly sales report in Looker transforms raw data into a clear narrative of your team’s performance. By focusing on the right KPIs and thoughtfully designing your dashboard, you give your team the precise information they need to celebrate wins, identify challenges, and make smarter decisions for the quarter ahead.

While Looker is a robust tool for deep analysis, creating custom reports often requires a specific skill set and considerable setup time. Many teams spend the first week of a new quarter just wrangling data and rebuilding dashboards. At Graphed, we’ve made this entire process as simple as having a conversation. You can connect sources like Salesforce in seconds and then ask in plain English: "Create a dashboard showing our Q3 Salesforce bookings by rep and compare our pipeline health to Q2." We instantly build a live, interactive dashboard for you, saving you from the complex setup and giving you your time back to focus on strategy, not manual reporting.