This webinar provides a hands-on guide to building engagement dashboards in Backstory. It walks through creating a win/loss analysis dashboard to identify the engagement patterns that correlate with deal success, and shows how to turn those insights into actionable targets for your team. This article includes time-stamped explanations of key moments in the video so you can quickly jump to the topics most relevant to you.
Why Driving Adoption Is So Difficult
Video: 05:10–06:23
The challenge of behavior change starts with a simple truth: you can't manage what you can't measure.
Key challenges include:
CRM shows what reps say they're doing, not what's actually happening
Traditional "just do more" playbooks are vague and exhausting
Without visibility into what actually matters, organizations fall back on generic advice
The gap between insight and action creates "gut instinct" selling
Backstory provides rich data, but teams need to know how to make it actionable
What We're Building Today
Video: 06:24–9:43
The goal is to build a win/loss analysis dashboard that helps you understand what engagement patterns matter for your specific business.
Areas to analyze:
Types of engagement: Are outcomes tied more to meetings or email exchanges? What's the threshold?
Engagement levels: Do higher account engagement levels actually predict success?
Persona-level engagement: Is it about the number of people involved or the types of people (executives, directors)?
Segmentation: Enterprise vs SMB, new logos vs expansions vs renewals—each may have distinct patterns
Understanding the Four Data Tables
Video: 9:43–12:08
Backstory has four key data tables that view your go-to-market activity from different lenses.
The data tables include:
Activity: The largest dataset—every email and calendar activity ingested, filtered, synced, and matched to CRM (raw flow)
Account: Salesforce account information overlaid with activity engagement data—multithreading, contact breadth (account health)
Opportunity: Similar to account but viewed from an opportunity lens—deal engagement, contact seniority
Team: What reps are doing daily, weekly, monthly—meetings held, emails sent/received, internal vs external time (rep productivity)
Demo: Building Your First Chart (Account Engagement Level)
Video: 12:09–19:48
Step-by-step walkthrough of creating the first visualization comparing account engagement on closed won vs closed lost deals.
Key steps covered:
Creating a new board and naming it (e.g., "Q3 Win/Loss Analysis")
Understanding sections within boards for organizing visualizations
Selecting opportunity data and adding measures (account engagement level)
Using group by (stage) to create bar/column charts
Applying filters: opportunity closed = yes, closed date = Q3, stage = closed won/closed lost
Adding color coding (green for won, red for lost)
Adding value labels, statistics (average/min/max), and adjusting chart size
Duplicating charts to compare quarters (Q3 vs Q2)
Demo: Multi-Measure Charts (Activity Metrics)
Video: 19:49–25:47
Creating charts that compare multiple metrics simultaneously to understand activity patterns.
Metrics to compare:
Meetings held (average)
Emails sent (average)
Emails received (average)
Tips covered:
Using AND vs OR in filters (AND for all criteria, OR for broader dataset)
Cross-object filters for account-level filtering on opportunity charts
Stacking options for multi-measure charts
Best practice: limit to three charts across for readability
Insight: Email Sent vs Closed Lost Correlation
Video: 25:48–27:30
A key insight about what the data may reveal about deal risk.
Key findings:
High email sent count with low replies may indicate reps can't get meetings
This pattern often correlates more with closed lost than closed won—a major risk signal
Reps sending "Hail Mary" outreach on failing deals show high email volume without meetings
Understanding the "why" behind the data helps identify enablement opportunities
If emails aren't engaging, investigate: wrong messaging? wrong contacts?
Demo: Persona Engagement Analysis
Video: 27:31–33:14
Building charts to understand if reps are engaging the right people at the right levels.
Metrics to analyze:
People engaged (average)
New people engaged (contacts without previous engagement)
Meetings with directors
Meetings with VPs
Meetings with executives
Key findings:
Closed lost deals typically show fewer people engaged and lower-level contacts
Closed won deals show higher engagement breadth and more senior-level meetings
Use this data to identify Q4 commits lacking winning engagement patterns
Q&A: Custom Personas (CIO, CMO)
Video: 33:14–36:30
Discussion about creating custom metrics for specific personas important to your business.
Key points:
Technology identifies seniority, department, and role of contacts
Custom metrics can be built for specific titles (CIO, CMO, VP of IT, etc.)
Work with your CSM to create JSON queries that categorize persona engagement
Custom persona data cannot be pushed to Salesforce via native integrations
Legend titles in charts are fixed based on metric names—talk to CSM for naming flexibility
Add Notes in Charts as a glossary/legend or tips on how to use charts in a section for enablement
Demo: Global Filters
Video: 36:31–39:14
Using global filters to segment analysis by different areas of the business.
Filter options include:
Opportunity owner (individual rep view)
Team picker (manager's team view)
Region (EMEA, Americas, APJ)
Account segment (Enterprise vs SMB)
Opportunity type (new logo vs renewal vs expansion)
Configuration options:
Button, dropdown, or team picker display
Viewer permissions (own team only vs subteams)
Object data visibility controls
Tiles to update settings
Demo: Commonly Used Capabilities
Video: 39:15–40:07
One of the most powerful but underutilized features is the ability to click into any chart element.
Drill-down capabilities:
Click any bar to see the underlying opportunities
Click through to the account or opportunity 360 view in Backstory
Click "View in CRM" to jump directly to Salesforce
Use "Explore Further" to open data in a table view
If you have Sales AI, the 360 view becomes even richer
Demo: Tables, Targets, and Comparisons
Video: 40:07–44:41
Tables provide detailed views for frontline managers to inspect their team's performance.
Table features covered:
Adding targets (e.g., 5 meetings per quarter)
Adding time-based comparisons (week over week, month over month)
Visual indicators showing increases/decreases from previous periods
Green/red highlighting for target achievement
Saving table configurations for reuse
Use cases:
Sales manager one-on-ones
Quick visibility into rep performance trends
Identifying who's on target and who needs coaching
Demo: Sharing and Collaboration
Video: 44:42–50:44
Options for sharing dashboards with your organization.
Sharing options:
Default: boards are private to you
Available to everyone: any Backstory user can view
Specific teams: share with selected user groups
Additional features:
Embed boards natively within Salesforce (iframe)—talk to your CSM for setup
Duplicate boards to create variations without starting from scratch
Delete boards (caution: no trash can or recovery option)
Board owners are responsible for keeping content up to date
Announcement: Folders Feature
Video: 50:45–52:25
New folder capability for organizing boards and tables (releasing with quarterly update).
Folder features:
Create folders under "My Content."
Add boards and tables to folders
Publish folders for team access
Admin capability: create org-level folders by role (sales managers, reps, RevOps, marketing ops)
Making It Sticky: Unified Backstory Application Integration
Video: 52:26–54:17
The best way to drive adoption is meeting reps where they already work. If interested in Unified Backstory Application, talk to your AE about free trials.
Unified Backstory Application benefits:
Works like Google Sheets or Excel but syncs in real-time with Salesforce
Can be built inside Salesforce or accessed separately
Brings engagement metrics directly into the rep's workflow
Eliminates multiple clicks to update opportunities individually (no more 7 clicks per opp)
Can include all the metrics identified as important from your analysis
Taking Action with Sales AI
Video: 54:18–55:45
Sales AI helps reps move from insights to action with an LLM-powered assistant.
Sales AI capabilities:
Access to your revenue data (emails, meeting transcripts, notes, CRM)
Ask questions like "Who else should I be reaching out to?"
Get AI-suggested contact lists based on deal analysis
Draft emails directly from the assistant
Move from "reporting the news" to "changing the news."
Resources and Next Steps
Video: 55:46–End
To continue learning and implementing:
Build your own win/loss board and identify trends
Use the digital agent in the Help Center (help.backstory.ai) for quick questions
Access the chat icon directly within engagement dashboards for real-time support
Submit bugs or enhancement requests through the help center
Reach out to your CSM or AE about Unified Backstory Application or Sales AI trials
Provide feedback to help shape future webinar content