Why Customer-Led KPIs Are Your Growth Engine (Part 1 of 2)
The Forget The Funnel Podcast
Exploring Challenges in Key Performance Indicators for Product Success
Exploring the limitations of active user metrics and introducing the concept of Product Qualified Leads as a more valuable indicator of product success.
If you’re measuring everything, you’re measuring nothing. It’s so important for you to pick a handful of key performance indicators (KPIs) for your team to focus on — or they won’t end up moving the needle on anything.
But how do you pick KPIs that matter, so you can motivate and incentivize your team to drive customer value (and ultimately, growth)?
Instead of transactional measures of success, focus on customer-focused KPIs that let you measure moments of value. You need to know which parts of your product drive customer value and measure your ability to move them from one milestone to the next.
In this episode of the Forget the Funnel Podcast — the first of two episodes on customer-led KPIs — Claire and Georgiana define customer-led KPIs and share why metrics that focus on helping customers solve problems are more actionable and motivating for your team.
Discussed:
- The definition of KPIs and why each team needs them.
- Why focusing on transactional measures is a problem — and why measuring experiential moments in the customer relationship is the way to go.
- The prerequisites for setting customer-led KPIs and the importance of knowing which parts of your product drive value for the customer.
Key Moments:
2:30 - Georgiana defines KPIs and shares why they’re a critical metric. She explains that when you measure everything, you’re measuring nothing, so your team needs to focus on a few KPIs.
3:47 - Claire and Georgiana differentiate transactional measures of success — like trial-to-paid conversions or entering a credit card — from customer-focused KPIs, which measure experiential moments in the customer relationship.
6:40 - Georgiana explains why transactional measures of success can be problematic KPIs (even though lagging indicators like MRR and churn do matter).
10:37 - Claire shares why it’s a mistake to measure your growth team by lead numbers rather than focusing on lead quality or the value they can get down the line. Gia also speaks to success indicators that can be misleading, like daily, weekly, and monthly users, and breaks down MQLs, SQLs, and PQLs.
16:10 - Claire asks Georgiana to share about the prerequisites for defining customer-led KPIs that tie your team’s success to customer value.
19:29 - Georgiana talks about how common it is for product teams to get so excited about their offering that they throw the kitchen sink at new customers because they’re not sure about what parts of their product they should introduce to customers in which order.
21:30 - The pair ends the episode by talking about converting customers in a low-touch way: You need to know the parts of the product that drive value and measure your ability to help customers get from one milestone to the next.
As always, you can learn more about Forget The Funnel here:
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