What are some KPIs that you find over-hyped and/or unimportant?

This is a great question.   A big one for me is Total Pipeline, or Rolling 12 pipeline. I don't think that metric tells you much without additional context. Sometimes a team can more easily hit their goals with a smaller pipeline and better conversion rates. It's easy to assume your GTM strategy is working when overall pipeline continues to grow but it could also mean you have a pipeine quality issue and we've acquired a lot of low propbability opportunities in companies outside of ICP. Also cus ...Read More

What are some KPIs that you find over-hyped and/or unimportant? Any metric that may look impressive but doesn’t really move the needle on the business is over-hyped or unimportant. It could be any of the following - Vanity metrics - Metrics focused on popularity and not value. Eg: Site Traffic, Social media posts, high # of calls/activities  While high traffic can be good, it's meaningless if those visitors aren't converting into leads or customers. Focus on traffic along with conversion rates i ...Read More

Here are some pitfalls I've seen when defining rev ops KPIs: Focusing on just lagging indicators Missing KPIs that cover the entire GTM market team Focusing on generic leading indicators Lagging Indicators - in rev ops its natural to think about the number of contracts sold and their dollar amount. However, more sophisticated rev ops teams build out a portfolio of leading indicators they regularly analyze to drive contract conversions. Hypothesize all the key activities of your pre-sales and sal ...Read More

So I may get drummed out of the Sales Strategy business for this answer, but I would have to say "raw" Pipe Generation. Yes Yes I know thats crazy! I very specifically included the word raw because I am referring to pipe generation numbers that have not been scrutinized by strategy/sales leadership. I say this because sales people are SMART. They know all the tricks of the trade. If they know they need to have $750k of pipegen each quarter as an example, I have seen time and time again sales peo ...Read More

This might be a little controversial, but I think a lot of the multi-touch media mix attribution models you'll see from vendors and companies are supremely over-hyped UNLESS they are actually helping you make different decisions about your Marketing mix and strategy. Don't get me wrong, there are definitely people out there doing this right, but unless you have unbelievable cookie accept rates and tracking mechanisms across the web (or you're Google), a lot of it is, frankly, made up for the sak ...Read More

I don't think there are many RevOps-related KPIs that are over-hyped or completely unimportant (we're not dealing with Community-Adjusted EBITDA here). The important thing is that you understand your business, the drivers of it, and the activities you want the people in various GTM roles to do for your business goals and needs. KPIs ultimately have to provide insights and value to the business so as long as you're doing that, and there aren't so many metrics everyone's eyes glaze over, you're pr ...Read More

When selecting KPIs for Revenue Operations (RevOps), it’s essential to pass each potential metric through the “so what” test, ensuring it aligns with our organisational goals and drives actionable outcomes. One KPI that often sparks debate is pipeline size and while some might find my stance on this a bit controversial, I believe it's critical to look beyond just the size of the pipeline. Focusing solely on the size of the sales pipeline – essentially, the total value of all opportunities at any ...Read More