When you have a long sale-cycle, how do you line up KPIs with product adoption/ activation goals?

Longer or more unpredictable sales cycles make it challenging to know if your GTM approach is working. While it's tempting to focus solely on closed deals as a measure of success, waiting months for validation isn't ideal. You need to identify and measure the key moments that show momentum along the way.

This became clear when launching our AI product at Zendesk. Customers were excited about the potential, but some were uncertain on how to prove value. One big cross-functional effort that’s helped us address this has been creating a standardized "value realization framework" that maps directly to customer outcomes. This keeps everyone focused on business impact rather than feature checklists, and prevents deals from spiraling into endless evaluation cycles.

And by aligning our sales process with clear product adoption milestones, we created a consistent path to success that extends beyond purchase. So the same metrics we track in trials and pilots become customers' early adoption goals — proving that when you nail the path to value during the sales process, you can set the foundation for successful activation and long-term growth.