KPIs

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Dashboard Design Principles

  • Relevant & Actionability
    • Align KPIs with Business Goals: Ensure the KPIs chosen are directly tied to the strategic objectives of the business
    • Provide Actionable Insights: Select KPIs that can guide decision-making and prompt actionable steps.
    • Balance Leading and Lagging Indicators: Track both predictive (leading) and outcome (lagging) metrics.
  • Clarity & Simplicity
    • Focus on Key Metrics: Avoid information overload by selecting only the most critical KPIs that directly contribute to business goals.
    • Use Clear and Concise Labels: Ensure everyone understands the data without ambiguity.
    • Consistent Formatting: Maintain a clean and professional look for better readability and user experience.
  • Visual Impact
    • Choose Appropriate Chart Types: Use visuals like line graphs for trends and bar charts for comparisons to effectively represent data.
    • Leverage Color Strategically: Use color to enhance readability, highlight trends, and indicate performance against benchmarks.
    • Maintain Visual Hierarchy: Organize information so that the most important data is most prominent.
    • Use White Space Effectively: Improve readability and reduce clutter by incorporating ample white space.
  • Data Accuracy and Consistency
    • Ensure Data Integrity: Verify data sources and calculations to maintain accuracy.
    • Update Data Regularly: Provide real-time or near-real-time data for timely decision-making
    • Maintain Consistent Definitions: Use standardized definitions and calculations for KPIs to avoid confusion and ensure consistency.
  • User-Centric Design
    • Enable Drill-Down Capabilities: Allow users to explore deeper layers of data for more detailed analysis.
    • Understand Your Audience: Tailor the dashboard to meet the specific needs and preferences of its users.
    • Provide Context: Include benchmarks, targets, and historical data to give context to the metrics
    • Test and Iterate: Gather user feedback and continuously improve the dashboard design
    • Consider the Dashboard’s Purpose: Identify who will use the dashboard and what they need to see
    • Mobile Optimization: Ensure the dashboard is accessible and functional on various devices, including smartphones and tablets.
    • Customizability: Allow users to personalize their view or create role-specific dashboard variants.

CRO Dashboard KPIs/Metrics (for Head of Sales)

Track the following metrics vs. target:

  • ARR
  • Bookings (ACV not TCV; overall; new/expansion)
    • Recurring
    • Non-recurring
  • Win rate (overall; new/expansion)
  • Sales cycle time (overall; new/expansion)
  • Average deal size (overall; new/expansion)
  • Forecast (triangulate across manually submitted roll-up; AI/ML algorithm; etc.)
  • Pipeline generation
    • $ and # of qualified opps created in the trailing X (7, 30, 90) days; track this at the company, team, and individual level; Note: When you set & monitor AE self-generated PG targets, you must also set & monitor win rates to avoid garbage in.
    • Key activities:
      • 1st meetings – disco/demo
      • Any meetings
      • PoCs
      • emails sent and/or dials made
  • Open pipeline (weighted/unweighted)
  • Pipeline coverage
    • Pipeline coverage is based on ‘left-to-get’ relative to the company target (as opposed to assigned quota or to the Board target)
  • Critical conversion rates (ex: stage-to-stage; advancing from 1st new business meetings to 2nd technical deep dive discussions)
    • Days in stage (median for won deals; median for lost deals; currently open)
  • Top open deals (new; expansion; renewals)
  • Top lost deals (optionally with loss analysis)
  • Quota coverage (optional); aka “quota deployed”
  • Quota attainment by rep (stack ranked); productivity per ramped rep (split ramping & ramped)
  • At-risk customers (prioritized by size; based on health scores)
  • Retention: (total and/or cohort based)
    • Net dollar retention (NDR/NRR)
    • Gross dollar retention (GDR/GRR)
    • Logo churn rate (or logo retention rate)
  • NPS (optional – nice to have)
  • LTV/CAC (optional – nice to have; costs not usually in CRM so can be challenging; can also break into LTV and CAC; can also just look at sales expense/net new ARR)
  • Push rate (optional) – Can be defined in two ways:
    • (deals at start of Q with close dates in Q that pushed) / (all deals at start of Q)
    • (deals that ever had close dates in Q that pushed) / (all deals that ever had close dates in Q that won, lost, or pushed)
  • Conversion rate: (end of quarter bookings) / (unweighted pipeline at start of Q with close dates in Q)

Filter by the following:

  • Time period: current/next month/quarter; YTD; rolling x days/weeks/quarters; custom
  • Segment: size; geo; industry (aligned to your business)
  • Source (inbound, AE, SDR, partner)

CMO Dashboard KPIs / Metrics

Track the following metrics vs. targets:

  • Bookings (marketing-sourced/attributed)
    • $; ACV; win rate; sales cycle
  • Pipeline (marketing-sourced-attributed; $ & #)
  • Funnel
    • Website
      (note: for each metric, can also look at time in funnel stage)
      • visitors (paid; organic; customers)
      • Visitor-to-Lead conversion rate (or Lead volume)
      • Lead response time
      • Lead-to-MQL conversion rate (or MQL volume)
      • MQL-to-SQL/SQO conversion rate (or SQL/SQO volume which is pipeline $ of # for the web channel)
      • SQL/SQO-to-Closed Won win rate (which is bookings $ of # for the web channel)
      • Other website metrics:
        • Bounce rate (by page, esp. homepage, pricing page, and landing pages)
        • Pages per session
        • Average time on site
    • Email
      • Open rate
      • Click-through-rate (CTR)
    • Paid Search
      • Click through rate (CTR)
      • Cost per click (CPC)
      • Return on ad spend (ROAS)
    • PLG
      • visitor-to-free trial
      • free trail-to-activated user
      • free-trail-to-paid conversion (and/or activated user-to-paid)
    • Partner (TBD)
    • Events (TBD)
  • ROI (by marketing channel or source)
    • Marketing Customer Acquisition Cost (MCAC) = (marketing expense) / (new + expansion ARR booked)
    • Cost per Lead (CPL)
    • Cost per MQL = (program spend) / (MQLs generated); this can be overall or by program
    • Cost per marketing-sourced opportunity = (program spend) / (new pipeline $ generated); this can be overall or by program
    • Cost per Activation(CPA) = cost to acquire a new customer
  • Brand / Social / SEO
    • Share of Voice (esp. with target media outlets)
    • Organic keywork ranking on search engine results pages (SERPs)
    • Brand awareness metrics (TBD)
    • Influencer marketing metrics (TBD)
    • Social media engagement (followers; mentions; sentiment)
    • Content engagement (blogs; webinars; whitepapers; etc.)
  • Customer
    • NPS
    • Customer Engagement Score
    • New feature adoption rate

Filter by the following:

  • Marketing program / channel / source
  • Target accounts (for ABM/ABX purposes)
  • Time period: current/next month/quarter; YTD; rolling x days/weeks/quarters; custom
  • Segment: size; geo; industry (aligned to your business)

CCO / Customer Success Dashboard KPIs / Metrics

Track the following metrics vs. targets:

Financials & Operational Efficiency

  • ARR per CSM (or accounts per CSM)
  • Customer acquisition cost (CAC)
  • Customer lifetime value (CLTV)
  • Customer retention cost (CRC)
    • Customer support
    • Customer success
    • Account management (includes dedicated renewal managers if applicable; hard to split out the costs into those from renewal & expansion)
    • Customer Marketing (hard to split out the costs into those from renewal & expansion)
    • Product & Engineering (hard to split out the costs into those from new, renewal, & expansion)

Customer Health

  • Active users (DAU / WAU / MAU)
  • Customer engagement score (CES)
  • Customer Health Score (overall % at risk)
  • Customer Success CSAT
  • Feature adoption
  • Net promoter score (NPS)
  • Product usage (ex: activation rate = seat utilization = seats assigned / seats purchased)
  • QBR completion rate (note: could also do QBR CSAT)

Onboarding

  • Onboarding completion rate
  • Onboarding CSAT
  • Time to onboard (often defined as time to first value – TTFV)

Retention & Expansion

  • ACV increase at first expansion (% or $)
  • Churn rate = customers churned / all customers at a base date (can be # or $ based)
  • Gross revenue retention (GRR)
  • Net revenue retention (NRR)
  • Reactivation rate
  • Renewal rate = customers renewed / customers up for renewal in period (can be # or $ based)
  • Time to first expansion

Customer Support

  • First contact resolution rate
  • Mean time to first response (TTFR)
  • Mean time to resolution (MTTR)
  • Support CSAT
  • Ticket backlog = # tickets unresolved for x days
    • High priority tickets: > 2 to 4 hours
    • Med priority tickets: > 1 to 2 days
    • Low priority tickets: > 3 to 5 days
  • Ticket deflection (%)
  • Ticket escalation rate

Specific Accounts

  • At-risk accounts
  • Renewals in the next x (~90) days

Customer Education

  • Certification program participation
  • Knowledge base usage
  • Webinar attendance (by customers)

Team

  • CSM attrition
  • CSM quota achievement
  • CSM training completion rate (and/or training hours per CSM)

Other

‘Clean Your Room’ Dashboard

Here are the types of analyses to include on a ‘clean your room’ dashboard:

  • Opportunities with close dates in the next 30 days that have had no activity in the last 7 days
  • Opportunities with no activities in the last n days (esp. with no meetings or inbound emails)
  • Opportunities with no upcoming meetings scheduled
  • Opportunities with days in stage >2x the median the opps that have previously progressed from that stage
  • Opportunities that have pushed more than x times
  • Opportunities with close dates in the past
  • Opportunities with close dates in the week after quarter end
  • Opportunities with no next steps
  • Opportunities with zero or one contacts attached (i.e. not multi-threaded)
  • Opportunities past stage x that do not have a champion identified

In addition, here are several more general metrics for pipeline health assessment:

  • Net Pipeline Created = new opps + increases in existing opps + pull forward opps – decreases in existing opps – pushed opps
    Excludes closed won & closed lost opps since this is a flow not a balance. Total ending pipeline = starting pipeline + net pipeline created – closed won – closed lost. Credit: Bill Binch (source)
  • Coverage ratio = (total value of unweighted pipeline)/(left to get for the period)
  • Weighted coverage ratio = (total value of probability weighted pipeline)/(left to get for the period)
    For higher accuracy, include an estimate of the amount of business to be created & closed in the remainder of the period.
  • Conversion rate = % of open pipeline dollars on Day 1 that were closed won in the quarter
    Note: This is not bookings for the period divided by starting pipeline since bookings also includes pull-forwards an create & close.
  • Modified conversion rate = (closed won bookings for the period) / (Day 1 pipeline)
  • Push rate = % of open pipeline dollars on Day 1 with close dates in quarter that get pushed to subsequent quarters
  • Pull rate = % of quarterly bookings resulting for deals pulled in from future quarters.
  • Stage-to-stage advancement rate = (# of opps that advance) / (# of opps that advance or were closed lost)

ARR

Usage-Based Pricing and ARR

Based on analysis of 10 publicly traded SaaS companies by Ordway (here), the most popular approaches are:

  • 4 x Trailing 3 months (or 90 days) revenue
  • 12 x Trailing month (or 30 days) revenue

Revenue Intelligence & Planning Tools – SaaS KPIs and Analytics

(*) = recommended

SaaS Benchmarks

Customer Lifetime Value (CLTV)

(work in progress)

  • Duration: 5 yr
  • Terminal value: no
  • Present value: no
  • Margin adjust: yes
  • Cohorted: yes

Optimizing CAC Payback

Rule of 40 Decomposition

SaaS KPIs

Note: Partially completed for CCO, CMO, and CSO (thus for CRO). Other roles TBD.

MetricCEOCFOCCOCMOCSOCPOCHRO
ARRx
Avg. Deal Size (ACV)x
Bookings
(new / expansion; by segment; etc.)		x
Customer Retention Cost (CRC)xx
Customers – At Riskx
Customers – Health Scorex
Forecast (incl. accuracy)x
Leads – Funnel Conversion Rates
(incl. landing page conversion)		x
Leads – Time in each funnel stagex
LTV/CACx
NPSx
Opps – Push Ratex
Opps – Top Lost Dealsx
Opps – Top Open Dealsx
Pipeline – Conversion Ratex
Pipeline – Coveragex
Pipeline – Generationxx
Pipeline – Open
(weighted & unweighted)		x
Quota – Attainment
(overall & by rep)		x
Quota Coveragex
Retention – Logo Churnx
Retention – GRRx
Retention – NRRxx
Sales Cyclex
Website Traffic
(paid; organic; referral)		x
Win Ratex
Note: CSO = Chief Sales Officer

Days Sales Outstanding (DSO)

In 3Q23, the public SaaS DSO benchmark was: (percentiles)

  • 25th: 38.6 days
  • 50th: 56.4 days
  • 75th; 68.9 days

Footnotes

1 The author of this blog is employed by Insight Partners who has invested in Discern.io

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