Say you manage a sales team of eight at a growing business. Every month, you run a sales contest. The ranking comes from your CRM, the system where your team tracks its deals. It lists your reps by revenue won.
The problem? The same two reps win every month. By the second week, the newer reps stop checking because they know they can't catch up. It happens with a lot of sales team leaderboards.
A sales leaderboard is a ranking of your reps on the number your team is competing on, shown where everyone can see it. A sales leaderboard app uses your CRM data to display the ranking, so you don't have to update the board by hand.
We'll look at how to choose a contest that gives more reps a reason to compete, then turn it into a leaderboard the whole team can see. You can use the CRM report you already have or build a custom app with OptiDev.
OptiSigns runs the screens in your business. OptiDev, its sister product, builds apps for those screens. You describe what you want in plain words, and OptiDev builds it. A good place to start is the HubSpot dashboard template.
Why a sales leaderboard works better on a screen
Your CRM report is good at its job. It's accurate, easy to filter, and the right place to review the month. But it's built to be opened and studied. Most reps don't open it between calls.
A sales leaderboard runs on a simple idea, the same one behind sales gamification. People work harder when they can see their progress and believe they have a chance to win. Both parts matter. If nobody sees the ranking, it won't motivate anyone. But if only two reps have a real chance of winning, the rest of the team may lose interest.
A screen fixes the first part. A ranking you walk past ten times a day becomes part of the day. Reps notice when someone moves up, and you don't have to announce it. The same goes for any employee leaderboard, in sales or anywhere else in the business.
But a screen only helps if the ranking gives most of the team a reason to look. That comes down to what you rank.
Decide what to rank before you build anything
Here's the rule: rank something most of your team can move this month. If only two people can win, you've built a board for two people.
Revenue won often favors the reps with the biggest existing accounts. ‘New Pipeline’ gives your team a different way to compete: the value of new deals each rep brings in this month. Just make sure the target is fair across territories and lead assignments. So this month, the contest is ‘New Pipeline’.
Three rules keep the board fair:
Show the leaders without leaving others out. Put the top five on the screen, and keep the full ranking in your CRM so every rep can see their own progress.
Add a team total against a goal. The whole team wins something together, not just the rep at the top.
Celebrate the latest win. Show the most recent deal and who won it, so good news gets its moment.
Then reset it every month. A sales contest is a short race toward one goal, with a prize and an end date. The best sales contest ideas give a different rep a real chance each time. So next month, you can rank something else.
Some things stay off the wall. Keep commission, pay and each rep's detailed numbers in your CRM or in private conversations, not on a shared screen.
You'll write these rules straight into your request when you build the board.
If your CRM already ranks it your way, show it
Someone will ask, "Can't we just put the CRM report on the screen?" Sometimes, yes. If your report already ranks what you want and reads well from across the room, show it. OptiSigns puts a CRM dashboard you already have on your screens. Here's how OptiSigns shows a HubSpot dashboard.
For your team, though, the report won't do. It ranks revenue won, shows every rep and has no team goal.
If your ranking lives in a spreadsheet today, that works until someone has to update it every day. Here's how to turn the spreadsheet into a dashboard. Either way, the next step is to build your own.
Build your own sales leaderboard app
In OptiDev, you start from the HubSpot template. It's already a sales board made for a screen, showing the deals your team has won and the ones moving through your pipeline. You connect your HubSpot account once, and the template uses it. If your business keeps its deals in another system, the idea is the same. OptiDev builds a real, working app with its own database, sign-in, and hosting.
Then you describe the board in plain words:
"Build a sales leaderboard for the screen by our sales desks. Show the top five reps on the new pipeline this month, our team total against this month's goal, and our latest win. Large text that reads from across the room. Update every 15 minutes."
The last line is a choice worth making: how fresh does the board need to be? For a monthly contest, a 15-minute update interval is a reasonable place to start.
One thing the board can't fix on its own: it's only as fair as the data behind it. That makes accurate CRM data even more important. If a deal is logged late or assigned to the wrong rep, the leaderboard won't show the right score.
When the month ends, you don't rebuild. You just describe the next contest: "rank by how many new deals each rep opened this month." Count focuses on the number of new deals. Value focuses on their size. Changing the metric can give different reps a chance to compete.
You could also buy sales leaderboard software. That usually means a gamification subscription, priced per rep each month. Building your own means the board ranks exactly what your business is competing on. Here's what a custom internal tool really costs. Worried about your deal data? How OptiDev Secures Every App You Build explains it.
Put it where the team works
When the board looks right, you publish it to OptiSigns from inside OptiDev and pick the screen by the sales desks. It shows up in OptiSigns like any other content. Publishing to OptiSigns requires the Admin role in your OptiDev workspace, so make sure you have it or ask your workspace admin for help. The OptiDev docs have the exact steps.
Not every rep sits by that screen. A private OptiDev app is open only to members of your workspace and to your OptiSigns screens, with no public link. So a rep working from home who's a workspace member opens the same board in a browser.
Have more than one office? Here are more ideas for your screens. To set up the screen itself, from the player to the sleep schedule, see our office screen guide.
Start with next month's contest
Picture the end of next month. One of the new reps is in the top five for the first time, and the whole team watched it happen.
If your CRM already ranks what you want, show it with OptiSigns. If it doesn't, start with the HubSpot dashboard template. Tell OptiDev what to rank, who to show and how often to update it. Build a sales leaderboard app that gives your team a reason to keep watching. Any business with a sales team and a screen can try it for the next contest.
Start building, no credit card required. Already on OptiSigns? Sign in to OptiDev with the same login.
