Key Growth Metrics Founders Should Track

You probably track result metrics. But do you track the levers behind them? Everyone wants to grow key metrics: AOV, LTV, etc. However, most dashboards stop there. They show what happened, not what to fix. Here’s what you should be managing: → AOV ↳ Average Discount ↳ Cross-sell Success Rate → Gross Profit ↳ COGS ↳ Net Return Impact → Conversion Rate ↳ Add-to-Cart Rate ↳ Checkout Completion Rate → CAC ↳ Product Page View Rate ↳ Ads CTR → Repeat Purchase Rate ↳ Time Between Purchases ↳ Email Click Rate → CSAT ↳ On-Time Delivery Rate ↳ Ticket Resolution Time → Organic Traffic ↳ Coverage Issues ↳ Keyword Rankings No one grows AOV by watching AOV. And growth comes from managing what’s underneath. This cheat sheet is a reminder: If you want to grow this… manage that. 📌 Save this. Share it with your team. Which of these levers do you track today?

The most common mistake I see among founders of 7 & 8-figure consumer businesses is simply focusing on the wrong long-term KPI's. Here are my 10 north-star indicators of sustainable business growth: 🚀 ✦ Brand’s EBITDA (net-profit) is growing year on year (even if revenue is flat or has slow growth). ✦ Brand has a long-term business strategy tied to storing cash reserves and being an attractive acquisition prospect within their market (or going public) (and has been communicated to their internal team at large). ✦ Brand has a tight grip on its MER (marketing efficiency ratio) with a nuanced framework—to deploy a 7, 8 or 9-figure marketing budget across many verticals. ✦ Brand’s CLTV (customer lifetime value) is improving YoY. ✦ Brand has a dialed-in organic social strategy that helps across the entire funnel from awareness to conversion to nurturing loyal customers — and has major mindshare of the idea customer profile in their market. ✦ Brand has a thorough understanding of how each paid advertising platform historically performs for them and are spending/monitoring across all channels (even if spending very little on an individual channel). ✦ Brand is selling across multiple sales channels, with DTC being an above average % of sales. (Why? Because margins are better at scale, brand experience is controlled, and first-party data is more available). ✦ Brand is able to rely on a plethora of first-party data to drive intelligent decisions across the entire business. ✦ Brand’s product development is vertically integrated (to the extent it can be) and the product catalog has achieved a breadth of “functional integration.” ✦ Brand sentiment is positive and improving over time amongst ICP of each age/stage range (both younger and older generations), as well as internal employees and the job market. ✦ There is a positive correlation between the brand’s reputation and their gross margin (capital 'B' Brand). ✦ Brand is financially able to engage in strategic M&A as a part of business growth and marketing, if the opportunity should arise and make sense. ——— These are things to strive for. A brand with even half of these characteristics is in a good place. The problem is that it's easy to be myopic in carrying out operations and lose sight of the big picture. 

Most SaaS founders chase revenue, but the real problem is what they’re not tracking. They focus on: - Sales - Scaling - Signups But behind the scenes, pricing leaks are quietly draining profits. A small tweak in pricing could 2x retention. But without the right metrics, they never see the problem. Pricing isn’t just a number, it’s a growth engine hiding in plain sight. Here’s what you should be measuring: → LTV → CAC → NRR → MRR → ARR → ARPU → Churn Rate → Price Sensitivity → Discount Impact → Expansion Revenue SaaS growth isn’t just about more customers, It’s about pricing them right. P.S. Which pricing metric has made the biggest impact on your SaaS growth? ♻️ If you find value, let others benefit too. __________________________________________ Ready for more SaaS pricing insights? Follow me, Marcos Rivera🔔

The Metric Most Founders Track That Doesn’t Matter I’ve seen hundreds of dashboards. Some built by analysts. Most built by founders. And almost all of them obsess over this one metric: Total Pipeline Value. Here’s the problem: $500K in pipeline means nothing if you don’t know: 1. How much of it is actually winnable 2. How long it takes to close 3. Whether it’s the right type of deal in the first place Vanity pipeline is just noise. When we were scaling Forecastr, we stopped tracking “total pipeline” and started focusing on: 1. Pipeline Coverage Ratio 2. Sales Velocity 3. Stage-by-stage conversion rates With this, a lot of things changed: → Better forecasting → Better hiring decisions → More closed deals Most dashboards look impressive. But they don’t help you make better decisions. We learned that the hard way. Now we help other teams avoid the same trap using the exact model that helped us grow from $100K to $3M ARR. If you want to see how 1,500+ founders are tracking the metrics that matter (and ignoring the ones that don’t)… I'm happy to walk you through it. Just send me a DM.

83% of leaders demand ROI above all else. Yet most track metrics that destroy growth. I met with a prospect last week who was celebrating 20,000 website visitors. Problem: Not a single one converted to a lead. Most marketing leaders are dangerously attached to metrics that look impressive but drive zero leads or revenue. They're not measuring what matters. They're measuring what's easy. The cost isn't just wasted budget. It's lost revenue growth. Each stage serves a purpose: 1. Traffic Metrics 🌊 → Shows movement, not money → Clicks and sessions → Website traffic trends → CTR and bounce rates 2. Awareness KPIs 👀 → Measures mindshare growth → Social engagement depth → Brand mention velocity → Content consumption time 3. Lead Metrics 💸 → Actually drives business → Qualified leads generated → Pipeline contribution → Customer acquisition cost The framework for success is more than just a KPI it's how it connects to the end goals: Revenue Connection 🎯 → Cost per qualified opportunity → Pipeline velocity by channel → Marketing-influenced revenue Executive Clarity 👔 → Clear metrics your CEO understands → Example: "Marketing sourced 42% of Q2 pipeline" → Impact: Secured additional budget mid-year by channel Attribution Accuracy 📊 → Captures true customer journey → Maps touchpoints to conversion → Shows what actually drives sales Leading Indicators ⚡ → Predicts future revenue → Flags opportunities early → Guides resource allocation 💥 Actionable takeaways: 1. Audit your dashboards: Sort KPIs by funnel stage 2. Stop mixing metrics: Traffic ≠ Awareness ≠ Revenue 3. Align team goals: Everyone needs to know which metrics matter when What KPIs do you measure for success? 👇 ___ ♻️ Share this with a marketing leader drowning in meaningless metrics ➕ Follow Jennelle McGrath for more frameworks that drive real results