The Problem (Quick Summary)

You log into Salesforce every morning, and you're immediately lost. Which deals need your attention? Who should you call first? What's about to fall through the cracks? You end up spending 20 minutes clicking through records, trying to figure out where to start your day. By the time you've found your priorities, you've already lost momentum—and probably missed a critical follow-up.

Why This Matters

Here's the brutal truth: most CRM dashboards show you what already happened (last month's revenue, closed deals, activity counts), but they don't tell you what to do next. It's like having a fitness tracker that only shows yesterday's steps—interesting, but not helpful when you're deciding what to do today.

For sales reps, this means wasted time every single morning. Managers lose visibility into which deals are stalling. The team treats Salesforce like a reporting burden instead of a tool that actually helps them sell.

The cost? Deals slip through the cracks because nobody noticed they went cold. Follow-ups get missed. Priorities get confused. Your best reps waste time just figuring out where to focus.

When you have a "Next Steps" dashboard, Salesforce becomes your personal assistant. It tells you exactly what needs attention right now, prioritizes your day automatically, and catches problems before they become disasters. It's the difference between Salesforce working for you versus you working for Salesforce.

Understanding the "Next Steps" Dashboard: Your Daily GPS

Think of a regular dashboard like looking in your car's rearview mirror—it shows you where you've been. A "Next Steps" dashboard is like your GPS navigation—it tells you where you need to go and what turn to make next.

Most dashboards show metrics:

  • "You closed $50K last month" (past performance)
  • "You have 15 open opportunities" (static inventory)
  • "Your team made 200 calls" (activity counting)

A Next Steps dashboard shows actions:

  • "These 5 deals have no scheduled follow-up" (urgent action needed)
  • "Call these 3 prospects today" (today's priorities)
  • "This deal has been stuck for >10 days" (intervention required)

The key difference: One is reporting (looking back), the other is directing (looking forward). It's the same Salesforce data, just organized around the question "What should I do right now?" instead of "What did I do before?"

The Solution: Build Your Next Steps Dashboard

Implementation Difficulty: ⭐☆☆☆☆ (1/5)
Development Required: Declarative tools (no coding needed)
Time to Implement: 45 minutes to 2 hours

What You'll Need

  • System Administrator access or permissions to:
    • Create Reports
    • Create Dashboards
  • Existing Salesforce setup:
    • Opportunities with Stage field populated
    • Tasks or Events being used for follow-ups
    • Active sales pipeline (not required, but makes it more useful)
  • Optional but helpful:
    • Understanding of your sales process stages
    • Knowledge of what "stalled" means in your organization (e.g., 7 days, 14 days)

The 5 Essential Components of a Next Steps Dashboard

Before we build it, let's understand what makes this dashboard powerful. You'll create 5 reports, each answering a critical question:

Component 1: Opportunities Without Any Activities

Answers: "Which deals have no scheduled follow-up at all?"
Why it matters: These are the deals most likely to go dark. No scheduled task or meeting means nobody is actively working them.

Component 2: Opportunities With Overdue Activities

Answers: "Which deals have tasks I should have already completed?"
Why it matters: Overdue tasks mean broken commitments. These deals need immediate attention to get back on track.

Component 3: Opportunities With Activities Due Today

Answers: "What's on my plate right now?"
Why it matters: Your daily to-do list, automatically generated. These are your priorities for today.

Component 4: High-Probability Stalled Opportunities

Answers: "Which deals are stuck and need intervention?"
Why it matters: Deals that sit idle rarely close. These opportunities need intervention—a different approach, executive involvement, or a tough conversation—before they quietly die in your pipeline.

Component 5: High-Value Late-Stage Deals

Answers: "Where's my biggest opportunity to close revenue?"
Why it matters: These are your biggest, most closable opportunities right now. They deserve your best effort and focus because they represent immediate revenue potential.

Step-by-Step Implementation

Phase 1: Admin Setup - Create Custom Report Type (One-Time, 15 minutes)

This step requires System Administrator access. If you're not an admin, share these instructions with your Salesforce administrator.

Why this is necessary: Salesforce's standard Opportunity reports can't reliably show opportunities WITHOUT activities. To do this, we need a custom report type that connects Opportunities to Activities using a special relationship that says "show me opportunities even if they have no activities."

Phase 2: Create Your 5 Core Reports (30 minutes)

Now that the custom report type exists, any user with report creation permissions can build these reports.

Report 1: Opportunities Without Any Activities

What this report shows:
All open opportunities that have absolutely no tasks or events scheduled—past, present, or future.

Why this matters:
These deals are drifting with no planned follow-up. They're the highest risk of being forgotten.

Report 2: Opportunities With Overdue Activities

What this report shows:
All opportunities where there's at least one task or event that was supposed to be completed but wasn't.

Why this matters:
Overdue tasks mean broken commitments to customers. These deals need immediate attention.

Report 3: Opportunities With Activities Due Today

What this report shows:
All opportunities where you have a task or meeting scheduled for today.

Why this matters:
This is your daily action list. It tells you exactly which deals need attention right now.

Pro Tip: 💡 If you see hundreds of results, you might need to refine with additional filters like "Amount greater than $X" or "Stage equals [specific stages]" to focus on deals that actually matter.

Report 4: High probability Stalled Opportunities

What this report shows:
Opportunities with high probability (e.g., >50%) that have been sitting in their current sales stage for too long, based on the Stage Duration field.

Why this matters:
Stage Duration is a built-in Salesforce field that automatically calculates how many days an opportunity has been in its current stage. This gives you accurate, automatic tracking of deal velocity without needing custom formulas. You can instantly see which deals have been stuck too long and need intervention.

Pro Tip: 💡 Tracking days in stage: Stage Duration is automatic and always accurate—no Field History Tracking or custom formulas needed. It's a standard field available in Salesforce.
Report 5: High-Value Late-Stage Deals

What this report shows: Opportunities above a certain dollar threshold (e.g., $10,000+) that are in late stages of your sales process (like Proposal, Negotiation, or Verbal Commit) with close dates in the next 30 days.

Why this matters: These are your biggest, most closable opportunities right now. They deserve your best effort and focus because they represent immediate revenue potential—close one of these and you hit your quarterly target.

Phase 3: Build Your Dashboard (15 minutes)

Once you have your reports ready, combine them into a single dashboard that becomes your daily command center.

What you need to do: Create a new dashboard in Salesforce and add each of your reports as table components. Arrange them in priority order—what you need to do immediately should be at the top (Today's Priorities), followed by urgent issues (Overdue Activities, No Activities), then strategic focus areas (High-Value Deals, Stalled Deals).

Why this arrangement matters: The visual hierarchy mirrors your work priority. When you open Salesforce, you see your immediate actions first, then potential problems, then opportunities to capitalize on. This transforms a collection of reports into a workflow guide.

Optional optimizations:

  • Set the dashboard as your Salesforce home page so it's the first thing you see when logging in
  • Schedule an email delivery every morning at 7 AM for a proactive start to your day
  • For managers: Create a team version by using "All Opportunities" filters and grouping by Owner—instant visibility across your entire team

The dashboard works on mobile too, making it easy to check priorities between meetings or while traveling.

Quick Wins: What to Do Right Now

  • If you're a Salesforce Administrator (30 minutes):
  1. Create the custom "Opportunities with/without Activity" report type (15 minutes following Phase 1 above)
  2. Create the 5 core reports using the appropriate report types
  3. Build a test dashboard and share it with one manager to validate

If you're a sales rep or manager (10 minutes):

  1. Check if your admin has already created the "Opportunities with/without Activity" report type (search for it when creating a new report)
  2. If not, send them this article and request the setup
  3. Once it's ready, create just ONE report: "Opportunities Without Any Activities" and bookmark it—start checking it daily

If you have 1 hour (after admin setup is complete):

  1. Build all 5 reports following Phase 2 guidelines
  2. Create your dashboard with the 5 components
  3. Set it as your home page so you see it when you log in
  4. Show one teammate and encourage them to build their own

Bonus for Managers:

  • Once your own dashboard is working, create a team version by cloning your reports and changing filters from "My Opportunities" to "All Opportunities"
  • Group results by "Owner" to see your entire team's next steps at a glance
  • Use this in weekly pipeline reviews instead of manually digging through data

Bottom Line

A Next Steps dashboard transforms Salesforce from a passive record-keeper into an active assistant that tells you exactly what to work on each day. The initial setup requires admin support and takes about 1-2 hours, but once it's running, your team will save time every single morning and stop missing critical follow-ups. The dashboard becomes your daily GPS for navigating opportunities—showing you not where you've been, but where you need to go next.