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Your funnel looks great on slides. Awareness. Acquisition. Activation. So clean. So linear.
But the KPIs behind it? They don’t match the flow. They don’t connect.
So that “growth story” you’re telling? It’s just that — a story.
“We’re Hitting Our Numbers!”
Yeah? Cool. But are you actually growing?
I’ve seen teams high-five over crushing lead gen goals, only to realise the leads were garbage. Why? Because no one checked if Marketing’s KPIs were actually tied to Sales outcomes.
This is what happens when you optimise in silos. Every team tunes their own violin. The result? A car crash! Not a symphony!
You don’t need more KPIs. You need smarter ones. You need to connect the dots.
Metrics Are Dominoes, Not Darts
You don’t throw one KPI at a target and hope for a bullseye.
You knock it over and see what it hits.
- Improve onboarding speed? Maybe retention goes up. Maybe support tickets flood in.
- Boost ad spend? Could get more leads, or just more garbage clogging your pipeline.
- Cut costs? Great, until quality nosedives and your NPS goes negative.
The point is - metrics move together, whether you like it or not. Most businesses treat them like isolated levers. In reality, it’s a messy web of inputs, outputs, and unintended consequences.
AAARRR: Not Just a Pirate Scream
(AKA the funnel everyone talks about but nobody tracks properly)
The Pirate Funnel: Awareness, Acquisition, Activation, Retention, Revenue, Referral.
Cute acronym. Neat framework. Usually just a checklist of where things break.
Great framework — but often, it’s just a checklist of failure points.
- Awareness: Impressions are up? Cool. Still doesn’t mean they care.
- Acquisition: Conversion rate climbing? What’s the CAC? Who are you actually acquiring?
- Activation: Are users actually doing what matters or just clicking around before ghosting?
- Retention: The silent killer. Your churn rate is the business equivalent of internal bleeding.
- Revenue: ARPU flatlining? You’re not scaling; you’re treading water.
- Referral: NPS looks fine until you realise most of your “promoters” don’t promote anything.
These aren’t isolated phases. They’re dominoes. One wobbles; the whole thing goes sideways.
KPI Interconnectivity: The Untapped Power Play
This is where operators separate from spreadsheet jockeys.
When KPIs align across the funnel, they don’t just inform — they enforce. Not just visibility. Not just alignment. Accountability. Impact. Movement.
- Marketing drives qualified demand.
- Sales activates value fast.
- Product delivers sticky experiences.
- Customer Success engineers retention.
- Revenue teams track lifetime value, not just deals.
- Advocacy becomes strategy, not an afterthought.
But only when KPIs connect — that’s when the real revenue engine kicks in.
One where inputs and outcomes are traced, tested, and tuned in sync. You need clarity on what metrics move others and which ones just make noise.
3 KPI Shifts That Actually Matter
1. From Lagging Indicators → to Leading Signals
You need metrics that warn, not just report.
Track things like:
- Time-to-value during onboarding → not just 90-day retention
- Sales velocity trends → not just closed-won counts
- Product adoption depth → not just logins
You want KPIs that scream “Here’s what’s coming,” not whisper “Here’s what already died.”
2. From Siloed Metrics → to Interconnected Signals
The handoffs are where companies fail.
- MQLs hit target — but sales chokes? Useless.
- Deals close — but CS gets blindsided? Costly.
Interconnectivity is the difference between activity and impact.
- Link CAC and LTV across acquisition and retention
- Connect onboarding pain to churn risk before it hits
- Tie upsell success to health trends — not just NPS fluff
When metrics connect, teams can’t hide. No more “not my department”. Every input traces to an outcome — or it gets cut.
3. From Static Targets → to Adaptive Metrics
Static KPIs are a corporate hallucination. Markets shift. Products evolve. Your metrics should, too.
Examples:
- Support metrics flex with ticket volume and user growth
- Sales targets adapt to macroeconomic headwinds
- Activation goals shift with product launches
This isn’t moving goalposts. It’s playing the real game.
So What’s the Play?
Start here: Map your metrics like a crime scene.
Map every metric across the funnel.
Every stage hides failure points. Every signal causes ripple effects.
What leads? What lags? What causes what? What’s real — and what’s just noise?
Track inputs and outcomes. Distinguish motion from progress. Stop celebrating vanity. Start isolating leverage.
The future belongs to companies whose KPIs move like a symphony, not a garage band — where every funnel stage plays in sync, and every metric hits with purpose.
Build causal chains. Kill the noise. Track what moves.