Another one - at least for @cryptoandcoffee as no one else might read that - even more Leverage Notes are coming (do not be scared lol):
🔗 https://peakd.com/sales/@uwelang/between-jobs-still-thinking-about-sales-marketing-and-ai
Visual designed via AI
The Metrics Your Board Sees vs. the Ones That Actually Matter
Most SaaS boards look at the same familiar metrics:
- ARR growth
- Net revenue retention
- CAC payback
- Pipeline coverage
These numbers matter.
But they are lagging indicators. They explain what already happened, not what is about to break.
By the time they move, the quarter is usually gone.
What boards often don’t see
The signals that really predict outcomes tend to live much deeper in the CRM:
Win rate trends by segment
Is enterprise demand softening while SMB still looks fine?Average days per stage
Where exactly are deals starting to stall?Percentage of pipeline that is multi-threaded
How many deals rely on a single champion and will quietly disappear?Forecast accuracy by rep
Who consistently overcommits and distorts planning?
None of this is exotic.
It’s just rarely elevated to board-level discussion.
What actually predicts performance
In practice, a few leading indicators consistently outperform classic board metrics:
Velocity changes before volume changes
Deals slow down before they fall out.Stage conversion rates reveal process health
Sudden drops usually point to qualification or value articulation issues.Time to first value predicts retention
Long onboarding almost always shows up later as churn.Champion turnover is an early warning system
When your internal sponsor changes, risk spikes immediately.
These indicators don’t look as clean on slides.
But they are far more actionable.
The real risk
The danger isn’t that boards ask for the wrong metrics.
It’s that sales leaders start optimizing for what gets measured in the boardroom, instead of what actually drives outcomes in the field.
None of this data is hidden.
It’s sitting in your CRM right now.
Most teams just don’t look at it until the quarter is already off track.
Leading indicators beat lagging metrics every time.
Which metric do you personally trust most to predict quarter performance?
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Leverage Notes
Sales, Marketing & AI from the field
@uwelang
Never known forecasting to be accurate with the people I have been dealing with and funny enough this year they under predicted and sold out which is as bad as over predicting.
In my own business - the mood within the team. The better it is, the better the quarter will be. Not because we couldn't have another strike or other unpredictable event, but with the team in good spirits, we'll be able the handle it better.
A good environment also helps all parties to do their job better. The baker focus on the baking and have better results if they're not distracted with quarrels. The salespeople are in a better mood, and nothing sells easier than fresh bread if high quality sold by happy folks.
True dat. mood and positive environment is important - however in certain companies also based on structure/size this needs to be aligned with KPIs as well - as boring as that sounds.
The perks of being a small company, and I chose to remain small on purpose. Too much growth would've diluted our core values for the sake of growth, it would've been too much. In a small team, it's easy to be coherent with what we define as "good business practice".
True - i also enjoy smaller companies whewre i can build and have a lovely environment. But as i wanna build it becomes bigger so i work against my feeling and then dislike when it is bigger.
My issue applying for jobs, some cool tech stuff, cool people, great leadership but they wanna scale in a sometime stoo fast speed (know why, investors want and need need) - most wanna become unicorn ASAP. See this esoecially amongst US HQ companies - nothing bad about this - i can help there but not weanna swutch jobs every 2-3 years
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