Step 1: Know what to measure and know why you should be measuring it.

• Know your numbers and look behind the story of each data presented to you by those numbers.
   
• Look on the threads over time through a nice dashboard.
   
• Health over vanity.
  • Know the metrics that identify the health of your system.
     
  • Health metrics are more important than vanity metrics.
     
  • Vanity metrics are like your total revenue.
     
• Start looking at which KPI is important from your marketing system, sales system, and operations system.
  • Marketing
    • Know the number of your leads and keep track of how many of them turned to be a genuine opportunity.
       
  • Sales
    • Know your team's efficiency through your sales conversion rate.
    • How efficient is your team in turning all your qualified leads into buying customers?
       
  • Operations
    • How much money is coming in and how much money comes out?
       
• Layer down to uncover and single out the specific metric that has a red flag.
   
• Identify and focus on ratios and trends. Measure the performance of your systems.

Step 2: Set up your account in Google Data Studio.

• Go to https://datastudio.google.com.
   
• The Reports tab has the end state of your dashboard.
   
• The Data Sources tab is your database. You may use Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and other CRM platforms.
   
• Export the data that you want to measure from your CRM.
   
• Import the data in Google Sheets.
   
• Google Data Studio is particular with dates.
  • Make sure your location is set correctly by going to "File" > "Spreadsheet settings".
     
  • Highlight the entire column with dates.
     
  • Click on "Format" > "Number" > "More Formats" > "More date and time formats".
     
  • Set the format to be year (4 digits), month (2 digits), day (2 digits) accordingly without any breaks in between.
     
• To import your data into Data Studio, go to the Data Sources tab > Click "Create" > Select "Data Source" > Select which file type you are uploading.
   
• If you're importing from Google Sheets, select Google Sheets, name your Data Source file accordingly.
  • Browse and search through the search bar. Select the spreadsheet and worksheet.
     
  • Click "Connect".
     
  • On the next page, you will be presented with your columns and what type of data they are.
     
  • Make sure that columns pertaining to your money are set to currency and dates columns are set to dates.
     
  • Once formatted, click on the "Export" button located at your upper right-hand corner.
     
  • Look and inspect the presented data.
     
  • On the upper part of your right hand are the different visualizations.
     
  • On the lower part, you can see the Data tab.
    • Data Source - your spreadsheet.
       
    • Date Range Dimension - a way of filtering what shows on your screen by date.
       
    • Dimension - how you want to see the data?
       
    • Metric - what information you want to see by the dimension?
       
  • Drag and drop from Available Fields (right part) to add/manipulate data.
     
  • Hit the "Save" button.
     
• Create a report by going back to your Report tab and clicking on "Blank Report". This would then take you to something like a word document.
  • Bring in your data on the canvas by clicking on "Data" found on the right part.
     
  • Select which Data Source you want to show on the report.
     
• To create your sales conversion rate metrics:
  • Add a table from the "Add a chart" button.
     
  • Pick the necessary dimension and metric (ratio of one sale versus total opportunity).
     
• Hit the "View" button if you'd like to see the final changes.
   
• You may also add in a date filter.
   
• If you'd like live feedback of your metrics, connect with your CRM if it's available.
   
• You may also use Zapier to push data into spreadsheets.
   
• You may set up a primary dashboard to see a comprehensive view of your metrics and set up different dashboards to view specific metrics.

System Notes

• Start by asking what question you want answered to know which metrics you need for your dashboard for better and smarter business decisions.