What are some of the *worst* KPIs to commit to achieving?

When it comes to selecting KPIs, one of the biggest traps teams can fall into is committing to metrics that fail to pass the crucial "so what" test, don't drive specific actions, or are too vague and not SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound). These types of KPIs can lead to misdirected efforts, wasted resources, and can be detrimental to the business's overall strategy and growth. Here are some examples of what, in my opinion, can be considered the worst KPIs to focus on, primarily due to their lack of alignment with these essential criteria:

Vanity Metrics:

- Examples: Social media likes, page views, number of downloads.

Despite their appeal, they often don’t lead to meaningful business outcomes or answer the "so what" question in terms of real impact.

Activity-Based Metrics Without Context:

- Examples: Number of calls made by sales reps, number of emails sent.

These metrics focus on quantity over quality, failing to provide actionable insights into the effectiveness of these activities.

Overly Complex or Obscure Metrics:

- Examples: Highly technical metrics that are not easily understood.

Their complexity and lack of clarity mean they don’t drive specific, understandable actions.

Single-Point Success Metrics:

- Examples: Hitting a specific revenue number, one-time project completions.

They often promote short-term thinking and don't necessarily align with long-term strategic goals.

Broad, Non-Specific Goals:

- Examples: 'Increase brand awareness', 'improve customer satisfaction'.

Without specificity, it's difficult to measure success or understand the required actions to achieve these goals.

Lagging Indicators as Sole Targets:

- Examples: Revenue earned, total profits.

While they are important as key performance measures, they don’t provide real-time insights for proactive decision-making.

KPIs Not Aligned with Current Business Strategy:

- Examples: Metrics focusing on areas not aligned with the business’s current strategic direction.

They lead to efforts that don't contribute to the business's core objectives.

The KPI that I tend to disagree with the most is hiring targets (I am using the term KPI very loosely here as some revenue ops are not involved with headcount planning). It is, of course, important to push businesses to grow, particularly when sales territories are too enriched and one salesperson cannot handled all the business themselves (undermanning = loss of revenue simply due to workload!). HOWEVER, this is a dangerous, double edge sword. When we set hiring targets without thorough capacity analysis, it can lead to some pretty serious, compounding problems. Most obviously would be the tendency to hire ANY one vice THE one. Substandard hiring leads to salesperson underperformance, which leads to higher cost book, lower margins, overtasked first line leaders, etc. Ultimately, if you end up over saturating your sales force (i.e. carrying a group of unproductive sales people), it could lead to layoffs. Throwing more people at a problem, especially in mature businesses, is rarely the right answer.

The worst KPIs I've seen are those that encourage the wrong behavior or provide a false sense of security that the business is doing better than it really is. Take pipeline coverage, for instance.

Pipeline coverage is a fundamental KPI. There's no sales ops team in the world that doesn't measure pipeline. But the best teams know that when identifying the right KPIs, quality is just as important as quantity.

Having a large quantity of pipeline means nothing if there's no thought behind how the quality of that pipeline is assessed. Sure, it might be great on paper to have a 5x coverage or a 10x coverage against next quarter's target, but how do you know you can "trust" that pipeline? The KPI is only meaningful if you have confidence that it is real, i.e., if you have systems to pressure test and accurately benchmark that metric.

Any KPI where you either do not understand the mechanisms to drive that KPI or cannot influence the outcome is a bad choice.

Not understanding what would be necessary to hit a KPI is a recipe for failure because you can't give direction to the people who have to take that action. Let's say there was a KPI to reach some higher level of CSAT but no one knew what the underlying causes of low CSAT are because of a lack of data and feedback from customers. It would be unwise to commit to achieving a CSAT improvement since you're flying blind as to what to change and what to have various teams work on.

Likewise committing to a KPI you can't influence is unwise. I think this might happen to a lot of RevOps teams where they feel obligated to sign up for a business outcome like number of new logos or a revenue growth rate. At the end of the day, RevOps can set incentives and strategies and allocate resources to achieving an outcome but we don't create demand in the market or sell anything to customers so it's really hard to commit to this since your fate is largely in other team's hands.