Measuring Deal Success

I met a sales team that tracks 27 different metrics. But none of them matter. They measure: - Calls made - Emails sent - Meetings booked - Demos delivered - Talk-to-listen ratio - Response time - Pipeline coverage But they all miss the most important number: How often prospects share your content with others. This hit me yesterday. We analyzed our last 200 deals: Won deals: Champion shared content with 5+ stakeholders Lost deals: Champion shared with fewer than 2 people It wasn't about our: - Product demos - Discovery questions - Pricing strategy - Negotiation skills It was about whether our champion could effectively sell for us. Think about your current pipeline: Do you know how many people have seen your proposal? Do you know which slides your champion shared internally? Do you know who viewed your pricing? Most sales leaders have no idea. They're optimizing metrics that don't drive decisions. Look at your CRM right now. I bet it tracks: ✅ When YOU last emailed a prospect ❌ When THEY last shared your content ✅ How many calls YOU made ❌ How many stakeholders viewed your materials ✅ When YOU sent a proposal ❌ How much time they spent reviewing it We've built dashboards to measure everything except what actually matters. The real sales metric that predicts closed deals: Internal Sharing Velocity (ISV) How quickly and widely your champion distributes your content to other stakeholders. High ISV = Deals close Low ISV = Deals stall We completely rebuilt our sales process around this insight: - Redesigned all content to be shareable, not just readable - Created spaces where champions could easily distribute information - Built analytics to measure exactly who engaged with what - Trained reps to optimize for sharing, not for responses Result? Win rates up 35%. Sales cycles shortened by 42%. Forecasting accuracy improved by 60%. Stop obsessing over your activity metrics. Start measuring how effectively your champions sell for you. If your CRM can't tell you how often your content is shared internally, you're operating in the dark. And that's why your forecasts are always wrong. Your move.

In the near future, “Closed Won” will disappear from revenue dashboards. Because the deal isn’t done at signature, it’s essentially just the starting point. Right now, GTM teams celebrate “Closed Won” like it’s the finish line. Ring the gong, pop champagne, pass the account to CS. But adoption determines renewal, value delivered determines expansion, and relationships determine advocacy. If you only measure success at contract signature, you’re missing the real revenue lifecycle. Here’s how to redefine “deal health”. Adoption milestones → Track product usage as the leading indicator of retention. Expansion readiness → Measure growth signals like new hires, funding, or usage spikes. Advocacy potential → Identify customers who are ready to refer, review, or speak on your behalf. This isn’t about adding new metrics, it’s about rewriting the funnel. The companies that win will expand their dashboards beyond “Closed Won” to measure adoption, expansion, and advocacy as part of the true revenue funnel. The leaders who design that funnel won’t just be CROs, they’ll be CS leaders, who are finally being recognized as the architects of sustainable revenue growth. ----------------------- Hey, I’m Nicholas 👋 I run Lucidly, the customer intelligence platform for post-sale revenue growth. I post every weekday morning (8:30am PST) about retention, expansion, and building a SaaS from the ground up. Follow for ideas you can put to work the same day. DM anytime.

A VP of Sales once told me, word for word: "My reps sound like donkeys on the phone." Funny line, real quote, and completely useless for a deal. No CFO on earth funds "less donkey." You can't build a business case out of adjectives. So I asked one question: "What metric is suffering most as a result of that?" His answer changed the whole conversation: "Close rates. We're at 30% and we're supposed to be at 33%." Now there's a deal. Three points of close rate, applied against his pipeline and deal sizes, is worth real money. The rest of the sales cycle was me proving I could move that number. Here's the part most reps miss. Some metrics your buyer names have no dollars attached. Product adoption. NPS. Engagement scores. When you hit one of those, you're one layer short. Find the metric behind the metric: "What's driving you to prioritize this among everything else you could be working on?" Watch how it plays out. A buyer says product adoption is low. No dollars there yet. One layer deeper: customers who don't adopt, churn. Gross retention is sitting at 77% on a $10 million book, so $2.3 million walks out the door every year. Lift that renewal rate to 80% and you've found $300,000. Now the deal has a number. Same thing with "employee engagement is down." Behind it: first-year engineering turnover. Which means paying recruiters to refill the same seats, burning salary on people who quit right as they get productive, and shipping slower because the team keeps resetting. Two questions to steal: "What metric is suffering most as a result of this?" "What's driving you to prioritize improving it right now?" Keep asking until the metric has dollars attached. Dollars get deals funded. Adjectives get deals stalled. P.S. Quantifying the problem is one of the 11 skills our research tied directly to bigger deal sizes. See the full breakdown → https://lnkd.in/g63fcp2D

9 Months 9 KPIs: Metrics That Matters... When I stepped into FMCG sales 9 months ago, I thought success was all about energy, hustle, and persistence. I visited countless stores, pitched endlessly, and focused on hitting my targets. But as the months rolled by, I realized something crucial: The game-changer? Tracking the right KPIs : 1. Sales Growth Rate: Let’s start with the big picture—growth. If your sales aren’t growing, everything else is secondary. How to measure: ((Current sales – Previous sales) ÷ Previous sales) × 100. Pro tip: Aim for double-digit growth in emerging markets and 5-7% growth in mature territories. 2. Strike Rate: Imagine visiting 100 stores but converting only 30 into orders. That’s a 30% strike rate. How to measure: (Successful sales visits ÷ Total visits) × 100. Pro tip: Boost this number with better pre-visit planning and sharper pitches. Aim for 50% or higher. 3. SKU Penetration: The magic happens when you go deep, not wide. How to measure: (SKUs per store ÷ Total available SKUs). Pro tip: Focus on adding 3-5 new SKUs per store every quarter to grow your market share. 4. Perfect Order Rate: A great order isn’t just big—it’s perfect: delivered in full, on time, and error-free. How to measure: (Perfect orders ÷ Total orders) × 100. Pro tip: Target a 95% or higher perfect order rate to build retailer trust. 5. Productive Coverage: It’s not just about visiting stores; it’s about making them count. How to measure: (Stores with orders ÷ Total stores visited) × 100. Pro tip: Aim for 70-80% productive coverage. For unproductive visits, ask, Why didn’t they buy? 6. Out-of-Stock Rate (OOS): Stores can’t sell what they don’t have. How to measure: (Stores without stock ÷ Total stores visited) × 100. Pro tip: Keep OOS below 5%. If you’re above that, re-evaluate your supply chain. 7. Sales per Outlet (SPO): Want to know your store’s potential? Look at SPO. How to measure: Total sales ÷ Number of stores visited. Pro tip: Increase SPO by driving high-margin products in high-potential outlets. 8. Coverage: What percentage of your target stores are you even reaching? How to measure: (Stores visited ÷ Total target stores) × 100. Pro tip: Coverage of 90% or higher ensures you’re not missing sales opportunities. 9. Order Frequency: How often do your stores order? Once a week? Once a month? How to measure: Count orders per store over a period. Pro tip: Frequent orders lead to fresher stocks and better shelf presence. Encourage bi-weekly orders or more. #sales #fmcg #KPIs #salescareer #saleslife #salesleadership

I told a founder last week to fire her best salesperson. She thought I was joking. I wasn't. Her best closer was hitting 130% of quota every quarter. By every dashboard, he was the team's MVP. She was about to promote him to VP of Sales. I asked her one question: "What's his renewal rate?" Long pause. He was closing massive deals — and 60% of them were churning in under a year. That's not a great salesperson. That's a great storyteller closing customers who shouldn't have bought. Every deal he closed was costing her more in CAC and customer success than it returned in revenue. The dashboard told her he was the best on the team. The unit economics told her he was the most expensive employee in the company. Most founders only look at the top of the funnel. New logos. Closed-won. Pipeline coverage. The metrics that feel like winning. But the real test of a salesperson isn't whether they can close. It's whether the customers they close stay. A "B-player" who closes smaller deals at 90% renewal is worth ten times the A-player who closes bigger ones that churn. The math isn't even close. She didn't fire him. She moved him to a hunter role with renewal-weighted comp. Within two quarters, he was hitting 110% of a much harder number — and the company was making money on his deals for the first time. The dashboard finally told the truth. What metric is making your team feel successful while quietly losing you money?

Most CS teams confuse activity with impact. They measure success by customer engagement: touches, emails sent, QBRs held, support tickets closed. I measure success by three things that matter: 1. Product usage patterns. Are they using the features that drive retention? Are they going deeper or staying surface-level? Usage tells me more than any conversation. 2. Expansion velocity. How fast are they adding seats, add-on’s, or moving upmarket? Growth happens when value is obvious. If I need to sell them on expansion, I’ve failed to deliver on our customer success program. 3. Customer behavior. Do they show up to webinars, consume our thought leadership content? Reference us in their own strategy? Renew without negotiation? Behavior signals belief. The best CS orgs I've built required less customer engagement, not more. When you nail onboarding, product adoption, and value delivery, customers don't need hand-holding. Your CSM calendar shouldn't be full. That's a red flag, not a success metric. If your team spends more time in meetings than analyzing data and fixing friction, you're running a relationship management org, not a growth engine. What do you measure? #CustomerSuccess #ChiefCustomerOfficer #SaaS #RevenueGrowth #CSLeadership

𝐁𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐁𝐚𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 𝐒𝐡𝐞𝐞𝐭: 𝐌𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐮𝐫𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐌&𝐀 𝐒𝐮𝐜𝐜𝐞𝐬𝐬 𝐟𝐨𝐫 𝐒𝐌𝐄𝐬 I’ve guided BENELUX SMEs through M&A, where success hinges on more than just financials. With 50-70% of M&A deals failing to deliver value due to integration issues (PwC, 2025), non-financial KPIs like cultural alignment and engagement are vital for SMEs in fast-paced markets like the Netherlands and Belgium. Here’s how to measure M&A success beyond the numbers, drawing on real-world insights to inspire your next deal. 📍 𝐖𝐡𝐲 𝐍𝐨𝐧-𝐅𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐢𝐚𝐥 𝐊𝐏𝐈𝐬 𝐌𝐚𝐭𝐭𝐞𝐫: Financials like ROI are key, but cultural fit drives 30% of M&A value (McKinsey & Company, 2024). Engaged teams boost productivity by 22% (Gallup, 2025), critical for SMEs with lean resources. 📍 𝐂𝐮𝐥𝐭𝐮𝐫𝐚𝐥 𝐀𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐧𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: Use a dedicated survey tool, like Culture Amp to measure employee sentiment in real-time, ensuring fit in Belgium’s formal culture or NL’s collaborative vibe. A 20% alignment boost cuts turnover by 15% (Bain & Company, 2025). 📍 𝐄𝐦𝐩𝐥𝐨𝐲𝐞𝐞 𝐄𝐧𝐠𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐦𝐞𝐧𝐭: Track engagement via SurveyMonkey pulse checks. High engagement correlates with 18% higher morale in MENA-like relational settings (Harvard Business Review, 2025), adaptable to BENELUX SMEs. 📍 𝐂𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐫 𝐑𝐞𝐭𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧: Monitor retention rates post-M&A. EY (2025) notes aligned integrations retain 15% more customers. Tools like HubSpot track client interactions, vital for service-focused SMEs. 📍 𝐂𝐚𝐬𝐞 𝐒𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲: Coolblue (Netherlands): This e-commerce SME used Agile sprints to align teams post-2023 acquisition, tracking engagement via Culture Amp, achieving 12% higher retention. 📍 Case Study: Vandelanotte (Belgium): This accounting firm used Waterfall’s structured onboarding in a 2024 merger, with SurveyMonkey showing 85% employee satisfaction. My expertise at Global PMI Partners shows that non-financial KPIs unlock lasting value. BENELUX SME leader? Contact me at Global PMI Partners for a consultation to track your M&A success. Share your KPI tips below! #MergersAndAcquisitions #MandAStrategy #SME #BENELUX #CulturalAlignment #BusinessGrowth #Integration #KPIs #Growth #Synergy #Strategy #Readiness

Something I never really thought of evaluating until we did over $100M... Tracking the retention rate of each salesperson.... This helps me understand what salespeople setup deals for long-term success vs. short term commission. Here are the 3 top retention KPIs I'm working on tracking per rep that you can use to your advantage: 1. Net Revenue Retention (NRR) This metric provides a comprehensive view of the revenue impact of an AE's deals, including expansions and churn. It shows whether their customers are growing with you or shrinking over time. Key Insights: - AEs closing high-NRR deals are selling to the right-fit customers with growth potential. - Highlights which AEs drive long-term account value through upsells and renewals. Customer Churn Rate Churn directly reflects the health of customer relationships and whether the AE set proper expectations during the sales process. It’s simple and highly actionable. Key Insights: - High churn rates signal that AEs may be closing poor-fit deals or overpromising. - Helps focus coaching efforts on improving deal qualification and expectation-setting. First-Year Retention Rate The first year is critical for customer success and retention, often reflecting how well the AE positioned the solution to meet customer needs during the sales process. Key Insights: - A low first-year retention rate suggests misalignment in the initial sales process or poor onboarding handoff. - Pinpoints which AEs are delivering deals that are most likely to stick around. Think about you can evaluate and track retention rates of new customers per rep. Any other data you'd want to track to scale your success? LMK below.

Most PE-owned companies struggle because they're chasing: → Deals too small (high effort, no profit) → Deals too large (18-month sales cycles kill momentum) Here's how Craig Group finds the perfect deal size in the first 30 days: Step 1: Data Deep Dive → Pull the last 24 months of closed deals → Measure customer satisfaction scores → Calculate true profit per deal → Track implementation costs → Map sales cycle length Step 2: Find the Sweet Spot Customers - what customers are in 3-6 month sales cycles? - what customers are 65%+ gross margins? - what customers have the highest NPS scores? Real example: We had a company chasing $50K-$1M deals. After analysis: - $50-100K deals = No profit - $750K+ deals = 12+ month cycles - $250-500K deals = 4-month cycles, 70% margins We refocused all marketing and sales on their ideal sweet spot customers. The result? → Doubled pipeline velocity → Reduced CAC by 35% → Increased win rates by 40% → Focused only on $250-500K opportunities Find your Goldilocks zone of best-fit customers to unlock revenue and profits faster.

There are 68 working days left in 2025. Not nearly enough to chase every “maybe” in your pipeline. Here's a way to avoid wasting time on deals that feel good… but will never close: When I was at Outreach, I had 12 large ENT deals sitting in Q4 pipeline. And I was drowning. I realized I was prioritizing the deals with buyers who picked up my calls, scheduled meetings, and were fun to talk to. But my VP stopped me cold: 👉 “Are they doing what buyers do?” That became my gut-check question. Because talking to you ≠ buying from you. So I built a simple Deal Grader (A–F, just like back when I was teaching). Here are the 8 criteria that actually predict "closeability": 20 pts: Compelling Event (IPO, board meeting, turnaround plan, new leadership) 20 pts: Fast-Paced Org (do they move faster than your average customer?) 10 pts: Real Champion (not a “contact” — someone giving you inside baseball) 10 pts: Invests Heavily in Related Tech (already shows budget + priorities) 10 pts: Specific Goals w/ Metrics (6% increase ≠ “we just want to improve”) 10 pts: Responsiveness (consistent, proactive, not ghosting between steps) 10 pts: Low Number of Obstacles (no nightmare integrations or 12-step paper process) 10 pts: Deal Size Drivers (for some: end users, for others: # of sites, etc.) Add it up. Grade it out of 100. If it’s a D? Drop it. If it’s an A? Double down. I used this to quickly sort which of my 12 deals were worth real attention. It worked then — and I still use it today with Enterprise reps in my Accelerator sessions. Stop wasting your last 68 working days chasing deals that talk nice but won’t buy. Deals don’t close because they “feel good.” Deals close because buyers do what buyers do. Curious — what’s your #1 personal “deal grading” rule? The one question you always ask yourself to know if it’s real?