Sales, SaaS - leverage notes #3

Another one - at least for @cryptoandcoffee as no one else might read that - even more Leverage Notes are coming (do not be scared lol):

🔗 @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