From Gut Feeling to Revenue Precision: Predictive Deal Scoring

Sales leaders know the challenge: spotting the deals most likely to close while managing those at risk. Without the right tools, sales forecasting often becomes guesswork, leading to missed targets and wasted opportunities. Predictive Deal Scoring is here to change that. At Dear Lucy, we’ve created a solution that leverages data to replace uncertainty with clarity, helping you focus your efforts on what truly drives results and ensuring every deal gets the attention it deserves.

What Is Predictive Deal Scoring?

Predictive deal scoring is an powerful data-driven method for estimating the likelihood of closing deals in your pipeline. Each deal is assigned a numerical score, with higher scores indicating a stronger chance of success. By analyzing patterns in your company’s historical sales data and ongoing activity, predictive deal scoring identifies what success looks like for your business and applies those insights to current deals.

Unlike manual scoring—often based on intuition or incomplete information—predictive deal scoring analyzes deal data, tracks changes over time, and evaluates sales activities related to each specific customer. The result is a clear, unbiased ranking of deals, helping sales teams prioritize their efforts effectively and focus on opportunities with the highest probability of closing.

This approach eliminates the pitfalls of subjective judgment and ensures that every decision is backed by data, not guesswork. Whether you're using Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive predictive deal scoring seamlessly integrates with your CRM to provide actionable insights that drive better outcomes.

What Are the Key Benefits of Predictive Deal Scoring?

By leveraging predictive deal scoring, organizations can unlock consistent revenue growth while improving efficiency and decision-making across their GTM operations.

More Accurate ForecastinG

Rely on data, not guesswork, to create reliable revenue forecasts and make informed business decisions.

Smarter Deal Prioritization

Focus on the deals most likely to close and allocate resources to the right opportunities.

Early Warning System

Spot risks early and take proactive action to prevent deals from slipping away.

Team Alignment

Ensure sales, marketing, and customer success teams are on the same page with a unified, data-driven view of deal priorities.

How Dear Lucy’s Predictive Deal Scoring Works

Dear Lucy's predictive deal scoring analyzes in real-time what winning looks like in your company over a rolling 12-month period. It compares open deals in your pipeline against this benchmark and assigns a score from 1 to 99 to each deal, indicating the likelihood of the deal closing successfully.

To make insights even clearer, each deal is also given a star rating that highlights specific factors where the deal excels or where it may be at risk. This layered approach provides actionable guidance to help your team focus and take the right steps to close more deals.

Our predictive deal scoring evaluates the following key factors:

Total Activity Count

How active the deal has been in terms of calls, meetings, and tasks.

Future Activity Count

Scheduled activities that indicate ongoing engagement.

Recent Activity Count

The level of activity in the recent past.

Deal Length

The total time the deal has spent in the pipeline.

Deal Probability

Likelihood of closing, based on sales reps' input or CRM stage probabilities.

Time in Stage

How long the deal has stayed in its current stage, signaling potential delays.

Close Date Change Count

The frequency of changes to the expected close date.

Deal Size

The total value of the deal.

Overdue Day Count

Deals past their expected close date are flagged as risky.

Deal Value Change Count

Adjustments to the deal value.

The algorithm continuously evaluates your pipeline and adapts as new data flows in, ensuring scores remain accurate and actionable.

Open Pipeline Review with Deal Scores helps you identify high-priority deals, risks, and revenue opportunities in real time.

How to Customize Deal Scoring for Maximum Accuracy

One of the most valuable aspects of predictive deal scoring is its ability to adapt to your unique business dynamics. Unlike generic scoring systems, Dear Lucy allows you to fine-tune and customize the scoring process to reflect what truly drives success in your organization. This customization ensures the scoring models are accurate, actionable, and relevant to your specific needs.

Here are three powerful ways to customize deal scoring with Dear Lucy:

Select Relevant Sales Activities

Not all activities carry equal weight in determining a deal’s success. With Dear Lucy, you can choose which activity types to include in the scoring model, such as calls, emails, meetings, tasks, or notes. This ensures that the model considers the actions that have the most impact in your sales process.

Adjust Factor Weighting

Every business operates differently. Some may prioritize high activity counts, while others focus on deal size or stage progression. Dear Lucy lets you adjust the weighting of each factor to match what actually influences winning deals in your pipeline. This ability to choose and adjust ensures the scoring system is perfectly tailored to what drives success in your business.

Dear Lucy’s intuitive slider to customize what truly drives deal success in your business

Create Multiple Scoring Models

Sales dynamics vary across different segments of your business. You can design multiple scoring models tailored to specific needs, whether for new business versus upsell opportunities, different territories or regions, or even separate teams or product lines. By implementing these tailored models, you can ensure that each part of your business benefits from scoring insights specifically designed to drive success within its unique dynamics.

Choose Benchmark Data Filters

Not all data is relevant when creating a reliable benchmark. With Dear Lucy, you can choose exactly what to include, ensuring the scoring process reflects the most impactful factors and delivers highly accurate results for your business.

From Predictive Deal Scoring to Insights

Once deals are scored, the next step is turning those scores into actionable insights. This is where Dear Lucy's dashboards come into play, providing a clear visual representation of your pipeline and helping you understand where to focus your efforts.

Key Metrics Displayed in the Dashboard:

Deal Score-Based Forecasts

A comprehensive view of expected revenue, categorized by deal scores.

Hot Opportunities

A focused list of high-priority deals most likely to close.

Deals at Risk

Clear indicators of deals that need immediate attention to stay on track.

Pipeline Review

A snapshot of your entire sales pipeline segmented by scores, helping you monitor progress and align your team’s efforts.

Turn data into action: Predictive Deal Scoring Insights provide a clear view of opportunities, risks, and priorities to drive smarter sales decisions

These visuals ensure that you can easily identify areas of strength and risk, empowering your team to make informed, data-driven decisions at every step of the sales process.

Accelerate Your Sales with Predictive Insights

Stop relying on guesswork and start leveraging data to hit your targets consistently. Predictive Deal Scoring empowers sales teams and leaders to make smarter decisions, optimize resources, and turn your pipeline into a revenue engine while driving data-driven success.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Microsoft Dynamics and Pipedrive. Book a call with our expert to learn more!

Mastering Sales Goals: From Strategy to Execution

Sales goal setting is the backbone of any successful sales strategy. Clear, actionable, and measurable goals not only motivate sales teams but also create a roadmap for revenue growth and long-term success. Yet, crafting effective sales goals isn’t as simple as setting a revenue target and hoping for the best. It requires strategic planning, tailored objectives, and real-time tracking to stay on course.

In this blog, we’ll explore how to set sales goals that truly drive results and keep your team focused consistently and effectively throughout the year.

Understanding Sales Goals and Objectives

Before diving into the details, it’s important to distinguish between goals and objectives:

• Goals are long-term, overarching outcomes you want to achieve, like increasing annual revenue by 20%.

• Objectives are short-term, measurable steps that guide you toward achieving those goals, such as increasing your pipeline coverage or scheduling more meetings.

Both are essential for a successful sales strategy. Goals provide direction, while objectives break the journey into actionable steps.

Defining Data-Driven Roadmaps from Past Performance

In order to set clear, data-driven objectives to achieve your sales goals, it’s crucial to start by analyzing past performance. Understanding what actions and strategies were required to achieve previous sales levels provides the foundation for future planning.

Reverse Engineering Growth

By examining historical data, you can reverse-engineer your sales process to pinpoint the key drivers of success. For example:

• How many leads and meetings were needed to close a specific revenue target?

• What conversion rates were achieved at each stage of the pipeline?

• Which teams or territories outperformed, and what factors contributed to their success?

Practical Tip: Use these insights to develop a clear, data-backed roadmap that ensures your objectives are both realistic and growth-focused.

Actionable Sales Dashboard by Dear Lucy embedded in HubSpot CRM.

Impact of Strategy on New Goals

Once you have analyzed past performance, it’s essential to incorporate strategic decisions into setting your new goals and objectives. This involves making deliberate choices about where to focus your efforts to drive the greatest growth and return on investment.

Strategy-Driven Goal Setting

• Market Prioritization: Identify which markets, territories, or customer segments offer the highest growth potential.

• Key Growth Drivers: Define what will fuel your growth strategy—whether it’s larger deal sizes, increased sales volume, or expanding into additional territories.

• Team and Resource Focus: Align your teams and resources with these priorities, allocating more to high-potential regions or enabling reps to target larger accounts.

Practical Tip: Align your strategic goals with both historical data and future potential. Regularly revisit these decisions to ensure they stay relevant in changing market conditions.

Sales Goal Examples From Boardroom to SDRs

Foundation of Success: Crafting High-Level Sales Goals

High-level goals provide the foundation for the entire sales organization. Examples include:

• Achieving $10M in annual recurring revenue.

• Growing new customer acquisition by 30% year-over-year.

• Increasing upsell and cross-sell revenue by 20%.

Practical Tip: Use historical performance data and market trends to set these goals.

Driving Strategic Outcomes: Board and Management-Level Goals

At the board and management level, the focus is on strategic KPIs that provide a clear picture of the organization’s overall health and growth trajectory. Practical examples include:

• Revenue Growth: Track overall company revenue milestones and year-over-year growth by region or product line. For example, "Achieve $50M ARR in North American markets by the end of the fiscal year."

• Market Share Expansion: Measure penetration into key markets, such as "Increase market share in APAC by 10% within 12 months."

• Efficiency Metrics: Monitor average deal size and sales cycle length, e.g., "Improve average deal size by 15% in new customer acquisition" or "Reduce the sales cycle by 10 days across enterprise accounts."

Practical Tip: Use forward-looking dashboards to visualize these metrics in real time. Highlight trends like underperforming territories or rising conversion rates, and incorporate forecasting tools to support proactive decision-making at the executive level.

Sales Leadership Goals: Driving Team Success

Sales leaders are responsible for translating strategic goals into actionable plans and ensuring their teams are set up for success. Here are practical examples of how to approach this:

• Pipeline Health: Maintain at least 3x pipeline coverage for quarterly revenue targets. For example, "Ensure $1.5M in pipeline for a $500K quarterly target."

• Conversion Rates: Improve win rates at every stage of the sales process. E.g., "Increase stage-to-close conversion from 20% to 25% over the next six months."

• Forecast Accuracy: Deliver forecasts with at least 90% accuracy by regularly reviewing and validating team inputs.

• Regional and Segment Focus: Tailor goals by market and segment, such as "Expand enterprise client pipeline in EMEA by 10%" or "Improve SMB close rates in APAC by 15%."

Practical Tip: Use team dashboards to visualize metrics and track performance. Schedule bi-weekly reviews to adjust strategies and identify support needs for underperforming areas. Regularly celebrate team wins to boost morale and engagement.

Territory and Team Goals: Tailored for Market Maturity

Territories and teams require unique goals based on their specific challenges and opportunities. Here are practical examples:

• Established Markets: Focus on larger deal sizes and improved close rates. For example, "Increase average deal size by 20% in the enterprise segment" or "Improve client retention rates by 15% in mature regions."

• Emerging Markets: Prioritize pipeline building and engagement. E.g., "Generate 50 new qualified leads monthly in APAC" or "Achieve first-touch engagement with 80% of inbound leads within 48 hours."

• Team Metrics: Set clear, measurable goals such as "Achieve 3x pipeline coverage in the North America" or "Increase SMB deal win rate by 20% in underperforming regions."

Key Metrics Focus Area: Territory-specific targets and team-level contributions, segmented by region, product, or client segment.

Practical Tip: Foster collaboration between team leads and regional managers by holding monthly review sessions. Use data-driven insights to reallocate resources to high-potential areas and address performance gaps in real time.

Sales Goal Dashboard by Dear Lucy in Salesforce CRM

Sales Rep Goals: Actionable and Results-Driven

Individual sales reps need clear, actionable goals that reflect their daily responsibilities and contribute to team objectives. Examples include:

• Revenue Targets: E.g., "Close $200,000 in new business this quarter."

• Pipeline Metrics: E.g., "Add 10 qualified opportunities monthly."

• Activity Goals: E.g., "Complete 15 prospecting calls daily and schedule 10 client meetings weekly."

Practical Tip: Use visual dashboards to track progress and provide reps with clear performance indicators. Regularly celebrate wins to maintain engagement and morale.

SDR Goals: Generating Opportunities

Sales Development Representatives (SDRs) focus on prospecting and lead generation. Their objectives should support the initial stages of the sales process, such as:

• Qualified Leads: E.g., "Deliver 25 qualified leads monthly."

• Outreach Effectiveness: E.g., "Send 150 personalized emails and make 50 calls weekly."

• Speed of Follow-Up: Measure response times for inbound leads.

Practical Tip: Align SDR metrics with sales team objectives to ensure seamless collaboration and handoff between prospecting and deal closure.

Visualizing and Tracking Sales Goals

Once your sales goals and objectives are set, the next critical step is to visualize them clearly and track progress consistently. This ensures everyone remains aligned and focused, with the ability to adjust strategies as needed. Use tools like dashboards for real-time updates and visual indicators to simplify complex data into actionable insights. Whether for individual sales reps, teams, or the company as a whole, consistent tracking is the roadmap to achieving success.

Practical Tips for Succeeding

• Build role-specific sales dashboards: Tailor dashboards for each user group, such as sales reps, managers, and executives, to set goals for all key performance indicators (KPIs) that are essential to driving success in their roles.

• Set goals by strategic focus areas: Establish tailored goals for each territory, product line, customer segment, or sales rep, ensuring they align with the unique priorities and opportunities critical to achieving success.

• Track progress in real time: Use traffic light indicators to instantly highlight what’s working (green) and what needs immediate attention (red).

• Embed dashboards for ease of use: Make dashboards accessible directly inside your CRM for sales reps or use them as key materials in sales meetings and strategy reviews.

By following these steps, you can ensure that your sales goals are not only visible but also actionable, creating a clear path to success for every level of your organization.

Conclusion

Effective sales goal setting is a dynamic process that demands alignment across all levels of your organization. By defining clear revenue goals, breaking them down into actionable and measurable objectives, and leveraging tools to visualize and track progress in real time, you can create a roadmap that empowers your team to drive sustained growth and success.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Microsoft Dynamics and Pipedrive. Book a call with our expert to learn more!

Dear Lucy vs. HubSpot: A Comparison for Sales Performance Management

HubSpot is an excellent CRM for managing pipelines and acting as a system of record. But when it comes to sales performance management (SPM)—reporting, forecasting, tracking, and coaching—HubSpot’s limitations become apparent. These two tools serve fundamentally different purposes: CRMs like HubSpot focus on organizing data, while SPM solutions like Dear Lucy act as a system of intelligence, turning that data into actionable insights to drive results. Here’s how Dear Lucy complements HubSpot and bridges the gaps to deliver a complete sales performance solution.

The Pain Points of HubSpot CRM

While HubSpot is a powerful tool for managing customer relationships, it presents challenges for businesses that need deeper analytics and automated workflows:

Limited Reporting: HubSpot’s built-in reporting capabilities often lack the depth and flexibility needed for actionable insights, leading to spreadsheet work and requiring significant manual effort.

Forecasting Constraints: Predictive forecasting tools are minimal or non-existent, making it hard to project revenue and sales performance accurately.

Manual Goal Setting: HubSpot's limited goal-setting features are insufficient for driving performance, often forcing teams to manage goals manually in spreadsheets.

Static Data Views: HubSpot focuses on current pipeline data but lacks historical insights and advanced analytics.

High Manual Workload: Building reports and maintaining data hygiene demand significant effort from SalesOps and RevOps teams.

Sales 1-1 Dashboard by Dear Lucy embedded in HubSpot.

How Dear Lucy Enhances HubSpot with SPM

Dear Lucy’s Sales Performance Management (SPM) solution is designed to complement HubSpot by providing advanced features that eliminate these limitations. Here’s what Dear Lucy offers:

Predictive SALES Forecasting

• Leverage predictive forecasting tools to anticipate revenue trends and sales performance with precision.

• Utilize predictive deal scoring to identify high-potential opportunities and deals at risk, and optimize resource allocation effectively.

• Align sales efforts across teams based on dynamically adjusted predictive forecasts, ensuring focus on impactful actions.

Sales Target Setting and Tracking

• Intuitively set high-level revenue goals and break them down into actionable targets by team, region, product, or individual.

• Establish and track targets for KPIs across each stage of the sales funnel, driving measurable progress in sales activities, pipeline development, conversion rates, deal size, deal length, and other critical metrics.

• Adjust strategy in real-time based on performance tracking, ensuring alignment and accountability at all levels.

Advanced REPORTING AND Analytics

• Access pipeline snapshots, conversion funnel analysis, and cross-object reporting to uncover growth opportunities.

• Gain complete transparency in recurring revenue (MRR/ARR) with automated reporting and forecasting, ensuring clarity and alignment across key revenue streams.

• Reverse-engineer success and analyze data across business units, teams, or individual contributors to identify trends and uncover actionable opportunities for growth.

Visual Performance Dashboards

• Enhance engagement and understanding with interactive performance dashboards that allow users to explore KPI trends and detailed sales data.

• Gain actionable insights through advanced visuals like leaderboards and traffic light indicators, combined with rich media such as images, videos, and GIFs to drive results and address critical gaps effectively.

• Seamlessly embed dashboards inside HubSpot or display them on office TV screens and intranets for enhanced collaboration and transparency. Leverage as effective meeting tool to drive alignment and actionable decision-making.

Coaching and Gamification

• Empower sales teams with actionable coaching through dashboards that provide 24/7 guidance, delivering clear, data-driven roadmaps to align daily actions with strategic objectives.

• Deliver personal performance reviews with OKRs, combining personalized feedback, performance benchmark and tailored development plans to encourage continuous growth.

• Motivate teams with gamified elements like the Wall of Fame, recognizing top performers and fostering a competitive spirit.

Rewarding and Recognizing Sales Performance

• Automate the reward process with performance-based incentives such as commissions and bonuses, streamlining recognition for achievements.

• Track and showcase milestones, providing visibility into individual and team success to foster motivation and engagement.

CRM Data Hygiene Tools

• Maintain clean, accurate CRM data with dedicated hygiene dashboards to reduce overdue and static deals, and incomplete records.

• Ensure reliable data for better decision-making and improved pipeline efficiency.

A quick comparison of Dear Lucy and HubSpot features for Sales Performance Management.

Conclusion: CRM + SPM = Sales Excellence

HubSpot is a delightful CRM for organizing and managing sales pipelines, but it’s not designed for advanced performance management. That’s where Dear Lucy shines—automating workflows, delivering actionable insights, and enhancing team performance. Together, these tools create a comprehensive solution that empowers sales teams to excel. Ready to transform your sales strategy?

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for HubSpot, Salesforce, Salesloft, Microsoft Dynamics and Pipedrive. Book a call with our expert to learn more!

Dear Lucy vs. Power BI: A Clear Comparison for Sales Performance Management

When it comes to optimizing sales performance and leveraging data to drive revenue, businesses often turn to tools like Dear Lucy and Power BI. While both platforms are data-driven, they serve different purposes and are designed for different user needs. Dear Lucy is a Sales Performance Management (SPM) solution built specifically for sales teams, whereas Power BI is a general Business Intelligence (BI) tool. This blog post offers a clear and concise comparison to help you understand which tool is right for your sales team.

Key Differences Between Dear Lucy and Power BI

Comparison: Dear Lucy vs. Power BI for Sales Performance Management

How Dear Lucy Maximizes Sales Efficiency

Dear Lucy is built to transform your CRM data—whether it’s from Salesforce, HubSpot or Pipedrive—into actionable sales insights that drive results. With an intuitive setup, Dear Lucy helps sales teams focus on what matters most: closing deals, hitting targets, and improving performance.

Key Features of Dear Lucy Include:

• Predictive Analytics: Smarter sales strategies with predictive forecasting, deal scoring, and AI-powered insights.

• Performance Tracking: Track and monitor KPIs like sales activity, pipeline progress, and revenue with clear traffic light indicators that align with business objectives.

• Coaching and Gamification: Use data-driven coaching to enhance sales team performance, complete with personalized reviews, measurable OKRs, and a Wall of Fame to recognize top performers and foster a results-driven culture.

• Integration with CRMs: Seamless integration with CRM platforms like HubSpot and Salesforce, ensuring that your sales data flows effortlessly into Dear Lucy for immediate action.

How Power BI Fits into Business Intelligence

While Power BI is a powerful tool for business-wide data analysis, it is not designed with sales-specific features in mind. Power BI excels in creating customizable reports and dashboards for various business functions, but setting up and managing sales performance data requires more effort and technical expertise.

Key Features of Power BI Include:

• Data Integration: Power BI can connect to a wide variety of data sources, making it a versatile tool for cross-department reporting.

• Customizable Dashboards and Reporting: Users can build dashboards that meet their unique business needs but require customization and setup to focus on sales metrics.

• Advanced Analytics: While Power BI supports advanced analytics, it requires data analysts to configure and manage models for forecasting and predictive insights, which are already built into Dear Lucy for sales teams.

• General-Purpose BI: It provides a comprehensive BI tool that spans across departments like marketing, finance, HR, and more, but lacks the sales-focused depth that Dear Lucy provides.

When to Choose Dear Lucy or Power BI

Choose Dear Lucy if:

• You need a sales-specific solution that integrates with HubSpot, Salesforce, Pipedrive or other CRMs.

• You want predictive sales forecasting and actionable sales insights right out of the box.

• You are looking for a quick implementation with minimal setup time, specifically tailored for sales teams.

• You want data-driven coaching and gamification features to enhance team performance.

Choose Power BI if:

• You need a general-purpose BI tool for reporting across multiple business functions (e.g., sales, finance, marketing).

• You have a team of data analysts who can build custom reports and dashboards for sales data.

• You need to integrate multiple data sources beyond CRM data and create complex cross-functional reports.

Dear Lucy Embedded Seamlessly Inside Salesforce for Streamlined Sales Performance

Conclusion

In conclusion, Dear Lucy and Power BI are both powerful tools, but they are built for different needs. Dear Lucy is purpose-built to optimize sales performance by offering ready-made sales analytics, predictive forecasting, and coaching tools for sales teams. It integrates seamlessly with your CRM and provides immediate value with minimal setup.

On the other hand, Power BI is a versatile tool for business intelligence that can be customized to suit a variety of needs across your organization but requires significant effort to tailor for sales-specific purposes.

For businesses looking to optimize sales performance and get quick, actionable insights from CRM data, Dear Lucy is the clear choice. If you require a broader BI tool for cross-department analysis and have the resources to build custom sales reports, Power BI may be more suitable.

Make sure to choose the tool that aligns best with your needs—whether it’s driving sales success with Dear Lucy or analyzing business data across departments with Power BI.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Microsoft Dynamics and Pipedrive. Book a call with our expert to learn more!

Avoid the BI Scoping Trap: Drive Sales Success with SPM

Trailblazing sales leaders often set out to revolutionize their sales management processes. With ambitions of being truly data-driven, they envision solutions that provide:

• Accurate sales forecasts powered by predictive analytics.

• Actionable pipeline analytics for smarter decision-making.

• Goal tracking and performance metrics aligned with business objectives.

• Tools for coaching and gamification to motivate and empower their teams.

• Real-time insights and dashboards to make every sales meeting impactful.

Yet, what starts as an inspiring vision for Sales Performance Management (SPM) often veers into a frustrating, never-ending business analytics project.

From Vision to Complexity: The Common Pitfall

What sounds like a straightforward need—automating sales performance insights—frequently spirals into complexity. Leaders delegate the project to RevOps or data teams, and before long, the scope expands. Workshops multiply, stakeholders pile in, and the focus shifts from sales to broader financial and overall business analytics.

Weeks turn into months, and then years. What began as a plan to streamline sales management devolves into an unwieldy Business Intelligence (BI) project. The outcome?

• A tool that doesn't meet the specific needs of sales leaders.

• A lack of actionable insights or proper goal tracking.

• Sales leaders stuck using manual processes or outdated solutions.

Business Intelligence (BI) vs. Sales Performance Management (SPM)

The key difference lies in focus and time to value:

• Business Intelligence (BI) Projects takes years: Broad in scope, typically designed for management and analysts. These projects emphasize historical data—"what happened"—and are often tied to financial or operational metrics. While valuable for strategic decision-making, they rarely offer the actionable insights that sales teams need in their day-to-day work.

• Sales Performance Management (SPM) is implemented in weeks: Purpose-built for sales leaders, teams, and reps. SPM solutions are laser-focused on driving sales success. They provide real-time visibility into forecasts, pipeline health, and goal tracking, enabling sales teams to act decisively and achieve their targets.

The 7 Key Components of Effective SPM

An SPM solution like Dear Lucy is designed to address all the core needs of sales leaders:

• Sales Forecasting: Predictive forecasting and deal scoring help teams focus on the most promising opportunities.

• Sales Planning and Territory Management: Reverse-engineered growth plans ensure alignment with goals.

• Goal Tracking: Progress is visualized through KPIs and traffic light indicators that show what’s on track and what needs attention.

• Sales Insights: Real-time dashboards foster transparency across all levels of the organization, from boardroom to SDRs.

• Sales Analysis: Advanced analytics reveal trends and pipeline snapshots to inform strategic decisions.

• Coaching and Gamification: Personalized reviews, measurable OKRs, and recognition tools like a Wall of Fame drive performance and motivation.

• Rewarding Sales Performance: Automating recognition and incentives keeps teams motivated and focused.

Sales Performance Management (SPM) solution by Dear Lucy embedded in HubSpot CRM

A Smarter Path to Sales Excellence

To avoid the pitfalls of endless scoping and workshops, focus on these principles:

• Start with a Sales-Centric Vision: Keep the project centered on the needs of sales leaders and teams.

• Simplify Stakeholder Involvement: Involve only the key decision-makers in the scoping process.

• Choose Purpose-Built Tools: Opt for plug-and-play solutions like Dear Lucy that integrate seamlessly with CRMs like HubSpot or Salesforce.

• Prioritize Speed to Value: Aim for solutions that deliver tangible results within weeks, not years.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Microsoft Dynamics and Pipedrive. Book a call with our expert to learn more!

Reverse-Engineer Your Sales Success: The Dashboard That Guides Your Steps Year-Round

Achieving sales success isn’t just about setting ambitious targets—it’s about having a clear, data-driven roadmap to reach those goals. Every sales rep has their unique approach, from different lead sources to varying deal sizes, but regardless of strategy, the key to success lies in knowing exactly what actions will get them there. That’s where Dear Lucy’s smart sales dashboard comes in: it reverse-engineers sales success, giving sales teams a personalized, step-by-step plan that guides their efforts throughout the year.

Navigate Sales with Your Smart Dashboard

Dear Lucy’s dashboard is designed to help sales reps not only hit their targets but exceed them. The heart of the dashboard lies in its ability to reverse-engineer success, breaking down big goals into manageable actions that evolve as the year goes on.

Whether you're an experienced sales professional or refining your strategy, the dashboard provides a clear, actionable breakdown of what needs to be done. It calculates exactly how many meetings, opportunities, proposals, and deals are required to meet your growth target. But here’s the real game-changer: It adapts to your unique sales process. 

Actionable Sales Insights seamlessly embedded in your HubSpot CRM.

Crush Your Quota with Data-Driven Sales Insights

The beauty of Dear Lucy’s dashboard is in its ability to continuously adjust and guide your efforts toward the most effective activities. Here’s how it works: 

Actionable Activity Goals: The dashboard calculates the specific number of meetings, opportunities, proposals, and deals needed to meet your growth target. It sets clear goals for each stage of the sales process and tracks your progress in real-time, guiding your next steps.

Adapting for Deal Size: The dashboard adjusts the required activity volumes based on the size of your won deals. If your average deal size increases, fewer activities—such as meetings and proposals—are needed to reach your target. Conversely, smaller deals will require higher activity volumes to maintain momentum through the pipeline.

Guiding Focus on What Works: The dashboard continuously analyzes your sales efforts and identifies which markets, lead sources, channels, and segments are most effective. By pinpointing where you’re thriving, it helps you focus on the activities that bring the most results.

The brilliance of the dashboard is its dynamic nature, constantly adjusting to keep you on course. By removing the guesswork, it ensures you're always focused on the most impactful activities—delivering consistent results throughout the year.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for Salesforce, HubSpot, Salesloft, Microsoft Dynamics and Pipedrive. Book a call with our expert to learn more!

How to Embed Dear Lucy Inside HubSpot UI: A Quick Guide

Sales teams benefit from having Dear Lucy’s visual sales dashboards seamlessly integrated into their HubSpot interface for quick, actionable insights. Here’s a simple guide on how to embed Dear Lucy into your HubSpot dashboard.

CRM Hygiene Dashboard by Dear Lucy embedded inside HubSpot UI.

In Dear Lucy:

Create a Public Link: Generate a public link for easy embedding.

1. Go to Users > Manage Public Links

2. Add Public Link > Give a Description (name) > Choose the Dashboards you’d like to include > Autoplay Off (no carousel needed)
   

In HubSpot:

Add the Public Link: Go to your HubSpot dashboard and add the public link to seamlessly embed the Dear Lucy dashboard.

1. Choose the dashboard

2. Go to Actions > Add External Content

3. Choose Other Content > Give a Title to your Dashboard > Paste the Dear Lucy Public Link to URL field

By following these steps, you can access all the power of Dear Lucy’s sales performance dashboards without ever leaving HubSpot. Keep your team productive and focused with everything in one place.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for HubSpot. Book a session with our expert to learn more!

Revenue (MRR) Reporting with HubSpot Line Items: Technical Documentation

Introduction

If you’re using HubSpot for CRM and revenue tracking, you may have noticed that native MRR reporting doesn’t always meet specific business needs. Dear Lucy is a fully integrated revenue reporting solution designed for HubSpot, eliminating the need for manual spreadsheets and scattered data. In this guide, we’ll break down the setup and core features of revenue (MRR) reporting with Dear Lucy and how it enables accurate insights - all directly embedded in HubSpot.

HubSpot and Dear Lucy Integration

OAuth Integration – Plug & Play

HubSpot is integrated to Dear Lucy using OAuth making the setup as simple as a few clicks. Dear Lucy pulls data from HubSpot API and stores it into Dear Lucy’s proprietary database.

Data Update Frequency

The default data refresh rate is set to once per hour, allowing for frequent updates without any performance lag. If your team has specific reporting needs, the update frequency can be customized, ensuring you always have the latest insights available.

Transforming Data into Insights

Our robust HubSpot integration seamlessly pulls in all relevant data into Dear Lucy’s proprietary database. Once captured, this data flows into a structured data model, where pre-built algorithms transform the raw information into actionable, comprehensive revenue insights. This enables users to access precise metrics on MRR, forecasted revenue, and a range of custom reporting dimensions, all tailored to their business setup.

HubSpot UI Embedding

Dear Lucy can be seamlessly embedded within the HubSpot UI with the embed external content on a dashboard feature. This allows users to access MRR data directly within the HubSpot environment, making reporting feel like a natural extension of HubSpot itself. No more switching between platforms or dealing with clunky, external add-ons—everything stays right within your existing workspace.

MRR report and forecast by Dear Lucy embedded in HubSpot UI

Revenue (MRR) Report

Data stored in HubSpot: LINE ITEMS, Default Deal Properties and/or Custom Deal Properties

To generate a detailed revenue (MRR) report, Dear Lucy’s integration with HubSpot is designed to capture a wide array of deal data tailored to customer needs, including standard properties, custom properties, and line items. By pulling these data points together, Dear Lucy creates a comprehensive, actionable view of monthly recurring and one-time revenue. A typical setup includes the following data points.

Required Data Points:

• Net Price

• Billing Start Date

• Billing Frequency

• Term

Optional Data Points according to your HubSpot setup:

• Currency

• Description

• Name

• Product

• Quantity

• SKU

• Unit Price

• Other

Sales and Revenue Forecast

Data stored in HubSpot: LINE ITEMS, Default Deal Properties and/or Custom Deal Properties

Dear Lucy supports multiple forecasting models whether it’s weighted pipeline, unweighted pipeline, forecast category based, line item based or Dear Lucy’s proprietary deal scoring based forecast. Dear Lucy pulls the data from HubSpot, stores it in proprietary database, and then leverages advanced algorithms to calculate accurate forecasts.

Required Data Points:

• Amount

• Deal Probability

• Close Date

Optional Data Points according to your HubSpot setup:

• Amount in Company Currency

• Annual Contract Value (ACV)

• Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR)

• Currency

• Deal Name

• Deal Stage

• Exchange Rate

• Forecast Amount

• Forecast Category

• Forecast Probability

• Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR)

• Total Contract Value (TCV)

• Recurring Revenue Amount

• Recurring Revenue Deal Type

• Recurring Revenue Date

• Recurring Revenue Inactive Reason

• Other

Reporting Dimensions and Categories

Data stored in HubSpot: LINE ITEMS, Default Deal Properties and/or Custom Deal Properties

Dear Lucy supports reporting and forecasting across multiple dimensions and categories, including territory, team, business unit, country, and person. These dimensions can also be used for goal setting and tracking purposes. This segmentation allows teams to drill into specific aspects of revenue performance, tailoring insights to unique business needs.

Required Data Points:

• Business Unit

• Deal Type

• Pipeline

• Team

• Person

Optional Data Points according to your HubSpot setup:

• Products

• Country

• Other

Additional MRR Reporting Features

Multi-Currency Reporting

Dear Lucy supports multiple currencies, enabling MRR reports to be automatically converted and consolidated into a unified company currency. Teams can also view revenue data in their local currency, ensuring a cohesive company-wide overview while providing tailored insights for each region.

Goal Tracking and Forecasting

Dear Lucy allows teams to set MRR budgets and revenue goals directly within the platform, offering clear and consistent tracking against these targets. With advanced algorithms, Dear Lucy provides real-time visibility into progress, helping teams stay aligned with revenue benchmarks and quickly identify areas requiring attention. By centralizing MRR goal tracking, teams can continuously monitor performance and make data-driven adjustments to stay on track for growth.

Trend Analysis and Detailed Insights

Dear Lucy’s analytics provide both broad trend analysis and granular insights, offering in-depth visibility into revenue performance. Teams can track fluctuations, pinpoint potential issues, and stay ahead with actionable insights that guide strategic decision-making.

Accessibility and Security

User Management and Access Control

Access to Dear Lucy’s MRR reporting is managed through Dear Lucy’s user management system, which supports SSO (Single Sign-On) for secure, team-wide access. This ensures that only authorized users can view sensitive sales and financial data while allowing flexibility for broader sharing with external stakeholders, such as board members and investors. Users do not need to be HubSpot users, making it easy to extend access beyond your internal team when needed.

Public Links for External Sharing

Public links offer a secure, view-only option for sharing insights. These links make it easy to embed Dear Lucy reports directly within HubSpot’s UI, extranets, or even on office TV screens, enabling quick access and efficient sharing with stakeholders.

Conclusion

MRR reporting for HubSpot just became simpler and far more insightful. By integrating Dear Lucy with HubSpot, teams can finally gain robust MRR insights that scale alongside business needs. Fully board-proof and HubSpot Certified, Dear Lucy is designed to work as a natural extension of your CRM - no additional logins, no data roadblocks, and no spreadsheet headaches required.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for HubSpot. Book a session with our expert to learn more!

Salesforce Reporting vs. Dear Lucy: A Practical Comparison for Sales Teams and Admins

For technical teams like Salesforce admins, RevOps, SalesOps, and data specialists, efficient reporting tools are crucial. Yet Salesforce’s reporting often presents challenges that consume time, demand workarounds, and leave users wanting more intuitive, effective insights. Here’s how Dear Lucy provides a straightforward solution to these limitations, delivering powerful sales reporting, tracking, and coaching features out of the box.

1. Comprehensive Sales Target Setting

With Dear Lucy, sales target setting is both intuitive and impactful, allowing sales leaders to set high-level revenue goals and break them down into actionable targets by team, region, product, and even individual rep. Dear Lucy goes beyond simple revenue goals by enabling users to set targets across each stage of the sales funnel, establishing KPIs that drive action at every step. This ensures that teams are not just working towards end results but are also making measurable progress in pipeline development, conversion rates, and other critical metrics.

By aligning goals across specific funnel stages, leaders gain better insights into where support and focus are needed most—whether that’s nurturing early-stage leads, increasing activity in key accounts, or refining final-stage close rates. Dear Lucy’s flexible target tracking makes it easy to monitor progress and adjust strategy in real time, helping sales teams stay on track and hit goals with greater consistency.

Salesforce Limitation: In Salesforce, target tracking options are limited, particularly when it comes to setting actionable KPIs across the sales funnel. Configuring custom targets and KPIs often requires custom development or third-party plugins, leading many sales leaders to rely on additional tools or manual tracking to manage detailed funnel-based targets. This fragmentation can make it harder to maintain clear alignment and visibility across teams and territories.

2. Visual Performance Dashboards

Dear Lucy’s performance dashboards provide a clear, immediate view of KPIs, performance metrics, and progress against targets. Sales leaders can monitor goals in real time, and visually engaging dashboards make it easy to spot trends and performance gaps at a glance. These dashboards can include leaderboards of top performers, boosting positive competition within the team and celebrating individual successes. Beyond daily check-ins, they’re ideal for weekly sales meetings, enabling the entire team to stay aligned and motivated.

The intuitive design of Dear Lucy’s dashboards ensures that everyone, from sales reps to executives, can quickly interpret and act on insights, driving faster, more confident decision-making across the organization.

Salesforce Limitation: In Salesforce, dashboard customization is limited, especially when it comes to combining multiple KPIs effectively. Additionally, Salesforce’s dashboards often have a technical, data-heavy design that can be challenging for non-technical users to navigate. This complexity limits their effectiveness for sales teams and executives who need immediate, actionable insights without the need for specialized training.

3. Advanced Sales Reporting and Analytics

Dear Lucy empowers sales teams with advanced analytics, including pipeline snapshots, forecasting, cross-object reporting, and tools to reverse-engineer successful outcomes. By analyzing success across business units, countries, teams, or individual contributors, sales leaders can identify the precise activities, timelines, and resources that drive the best results. This reverse-engineering approach enables leaders to break down high-level goals into specific, actionable plans, fostering growth and operational efficiency at every level of the organization.

With predictive deal scoring, Dear Lucy also helps sales teams assess the likelihood of deals closing, allowing them to focus resources on the most promising opportunities. These comprehensive insights help teams stay agile and proactive, adapting quickly to changes in sales dynamics to consistently meet their targets.

Salesforce Limitation: Setting up advanced analytics, pipeline snapshots, and cross-object reporting in Salesforce requires extensive configuration, often demanding technical support and complex customizations. Salesforce’s forecasting tools can also be challenging to tailor to specific needs, limiting their usefulness for quick, data-driven decisions. Many users find themselves relying on external support or additional tools, leading to fragmented data visibility and a heavier administrative burden.

4. One-on-One Coaching

Dear Lucy’s built-in coaching tools support sales leaders in delivering personalized one-on-one feedback and setting OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to drive both sales performance and professional growth. Leaders can leverage team benchmarks to give reps a clear sense of how they’re performing relative to their peers, motivating improvement and encouraging a culture of continuous growth. With data-driven insights linked to specific objectives, sales leaders can guide reps on exactly where to focus to meet targets and exceed expectations.

Salesforce Limitation: Salesforce does not natively support one-on-one coaching, team benchmarking, or OKR tracking within its reporting suite. This often forces sales teams to manually track these activities or turn to external tools for coaching and goal alignment. As a result, data silos emerge, making it harder to maintain a comprehensive view of performance, development, and growth across the team.

5. Streamlined Commissions Tracking

Incentivizing sales reps is simplified in Dear Lucy, where commission tracking and reporting is an integrated part of the system. This feature helps motivate sales teams, making it easy for reps to track their progress towards commission goals and for managers to reward performance transparently.

Salesforce Limitation: Salesforce does not include a native commission tracking feature, which means that most users resort to external tools or spreadsheets for commission management. This lack of integration complicates performance tracking and adds to the administrative workload, detracting from sales effectiveness and transparency.

6. Effortless Setup and Fast Access to Insights

Dear Lucy is designed for ease and speed, allowing sales teams to set up dashboards and reports quickly, without needing extensive technical expertise. Pre-built templates and an intuitive user interface mean teams can get started with impactful dashboards and meaningful reports almost instantly. Updates happen in real time, keeping insights accessible and relevant without requiring ongoing technical support.

Salesforce Limitation: Setting up dashboards and reports in Salesforce is often complex, time-consuming, and costly. The extensive configuration required to tailor Salesforce to specific reporting needs can delay access to insights and frequently necessitates technical support from data engineers or Salesforce consultants. These setup costs and delays can reduce the platform’s overall effectiveness for fast-paced sales teams and drive up administrative overhead.

Read more: Build vs. Buy: Choosing the Right Approach for Sales Analytics

7. Seamless Sharing Capabilities

For sales teams, Dear Lucy is conveniently embedded right inside Salesforce, providing instant access to powerful insights and performance metrics without the need for switching platforms. This seamless integration ensures that sales reps and leaders can easily access critical data while working in their familiar Salesforce environment.

Beyond this integration, Dear Lucy offers flexible sharing options that enhance collaboration both internally and externally. Users can display performance dashboards on office TV screens or embed them within intranets, ensuring that teams stay informed and aligned. The mobile-friendly design also allows sales reps to access essential data on tablets and smartphones, making information available on the go.

Additionally, Dear Lucy simplifies sharing with external stakeholders, such as board members and investors, by providing one-click access to relevant reports and forecasts. This ensures that the right KPIs and insights reach the right audience quickly and efficiently, enhancing collaboration and decision-making at all levels.

Salesforce Limitation: In contrast, sharing reports from Salesforce can be cumbersome. Users often face restrictions on sharing reports with non-Salesforce users, necessitating complex workarounds to circulate insights with external stakeholders. This limitation can hinder effective communication and slow down the decision-making process.

A Clear Comparison: Dear Lucy vs. Salesforce

To help sales leaders and admins make informed decisions, we’ve summarized the key differences between Dear Lucy and Salesforce in the following comparison table. This side-by-side overview highlights how Dear Lucy addresses common challenges faced by sales teams, providing an intuitive and effective solution for reporting, analytics, and performance management.

Key Differences Between Dear Lucy and Salesforce

Why Dear Lucy is the Ideal Alternative for Sales Performance Management

Salesforce has long been a staple CRM, yet when it comes to reporting and analytics, technical users often find themselves working around its limitations. Dear Lucy provides a comprehensive solution that aligns with sales leaders’ needs right out of the box. From intuitive sales target tracking and visually engaging dashboards to seamless coaching tools and commission tracking, Dear Lucy offers what Salesforce reporting often lacks: a streamlined, efficient, and easy-to-use tool that drives sales performance at every level.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers embedded Sales Analytics for Salesforce. Book a session with our expert to learn more!

Unlocking Sales Success with Sales Performance Management (SPM) Software

Achieving top-notch sales performance goes beyond simply setting targets and tracking revenue. It’s about managing the entire sales process in a structured, scalable, and efficient way. This is where Sales Performance Management (SPM) software comes in, providing a streamlined, data-driven approach to optimizing your sales efforts.

What is Sales Performance Management?

Sales Performance Management (SPM) is a comprehensive process designed to help sales organizations track, manage, and improve the work of their sales teams. It goes far beyond tracking quotas and revenue. SPM incorporates forecasting, planning, implementing, monitoring, and even rewarding sales performance at multiple levels.

SPM helps businesses ensure that their sales teams are working efficiently, hitting their targets, and contributing to overall revenue growth in a sustainable way. By aligning strategy with execution, sales leaders gain more control and visibility over sales performance across the organization.

The Key Components of a Sales Performance Management (SPM) Software

An effective Sales Performance Management (SPM) solution brings several crucial elements together to drive better sales outcomes:

1. Sales Forecasting

Accurate sales forecasting is essential to strategic decision-making. SPM software enables sales leaders to make informed predictions about future sales based on historical data and current trends. This includes predictive deal scoring, which uses data-driven insights to assess the likelihood of deals closing, helping sales teams focus their efforts on the most promising opportunities.

2. Sales Planning and Territory Management

Proper territory management ensures that the right resources are allocated to the right accounts and regions. With SPM, businesses can plan territories effectively, ensuring sales coverage is optimized. Additionally, the software allows for reverse-engineered growth plans, where leaders can map out revenue goals by working backwards from desired outcomes, taking into account current pipeline health and conversion rates across different sales funnel stages.

3. Sales Goal Setting

A powerful SPM system allows goal-setting across multiple dimensions—whether company-wide, across business units, for specific teams, territories, or even for individual salespeople. Goals are linked to key performance indicators (KPIs) and funnel stages, ensuring everyone is aligned with broader business objectives.

4. Sales Insights (Reporting and Dashboards)

Real-time insights through reporting and dashboards are the backbone of tracking performance. SPM software provides sales teams and leaders with the data they need to measure their progress towards goals, identify bottlenecks, and capitalize on opportunities. It fosters transparency from the board to SDRs, ensuring everyone has access to the same data and understands the company’s performance. This openness helps drive a healthy competitive sales culture, where sales teams are motivated to improve and celebrate individual and collective success.

5. Sales Analysis (Advanced Analytics)

SPM software often includes advanced analytics, allowing organizations to dive deep into sales data and uncover trends and patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed. This data is critical for sales strategy and improving future performance. SPM platforms can also provide pipeline snapshots, which capture the state of the pipeline at specific points in time, helping sales leaders track progress. The conversion funnel insights allow teams to analyze how leads move through the sales funnel, identify drop-off points, and refine strategies to increase conversion rates.

6. Sales Training and Coaching

Continuous development is key to a high-performing sales team. SPM solutions offer integrated coaching tools that help sales managers provide personalized feedback and training to their teams. Self-service analytics allows team members to access and analyze their own performance data, while data-driven coaching ensures that feedback is based on measurable performance metrics rather than subjective opinions, helping salespeople improve their skills and close more deals.

7. Rewarding Sales Performance

Recognizing and rewarding sales achievements is a core component of SPM. Whether through commissions, bonuses, or other incentives, SPM software helps automate and streamline the reward process based on performance data.

Sales performance dashboard for sales rep by Dear Lucy

SPM Software Integrates with CRM – Not a Replacement

One common misconception about Sales Performance Management (SPM) software is that it’s designed to replace existing tools, like a CRM. This is not the case. SPM software is built to seamlessly integrate with your CRM, not replace it.

While CRM systems are crucial for managing customer relationships, tracking sales activities, and storing key contact data, they often lack the advanced analytics, goal-setting, and forecasting capabilities that SPM solutions offer. By integrating SPM with CRM, companies can harness the power of both systems, ensuring data flows effortlessly between them. This allows sales leaders to access all relevant insights in one place, without duplicating efforts or relying on disconnected systems.

Ultimately, using SPM software alongside your CRM enables you to manage performance in a data-driven, structured way, while still leveraging the CRM for day-to-day sales operations.

The Status Quo: Manual Processes Hindering Performance

Many sales teams today still rely on spreadsheets, emails, and manual processes to manage their sales performance. Sales goals are scattered across various documents, and development plans are tracked manually, leading to inefficient processes, delayed decision-making, and inconsistent results.

For example:

• Sales goals are often managed in disconnected spreadsheets, which are difficult to update and share in real-time.

• Sales coaching plans are kept in isolated documents, leading to a lack of visibility into progress and follow-through.

• Performance tracking is labor-intensive, with manual data entry and analysis that’s prone to error and time-consuming.

These manual processes not only waste time but also hinder overall sales performance. As a result, sales leaders lack the insights they need to make proactive decisions and optimize team performance.

How SPM Software Solves These Problems

SPM software centralizes all of these processes into one unified platform. By automating data entry, goal tracking, and performance analysis, it allows sales leaders to focus on strategy rather than getting bogged down in administrative tasks.

The result? A more efficient, data-driven approach to managing sales performance. SPM software enables sales teams to work smarter, not harder, ensuring they hit their goals and contribute to the company’s revenue growth in a sustainable way.

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Interested?

Dear Lucy offers Sales Performance Management (SPM) across sales solutions like Salesforce, Microsoft, HubSpot and Pipedrive. Book a session with our expert to learn more!