From 16 to 5 to 1!

The stock market last week, oh my. The good news for advisers is that you can focus on customer service! The folks at Fisher Investment believe in making sure you offer multiple touch points for customers: some want face-to-face contact, others prefer the phone and still others like sticking to email, letters or video. Wow, letters.

Metrics for startups. Hey, only 16 of them!

Here I thought that lists should come in threes, sevens or tens. But I am not going to argue with the really smart folks at Andreessen Horowitz (their podcast is excellent, BTW) when they offer a list of 16 metrics that are common of confusing. They do their best to untangle them. Pretty important list for many of us in the subscription business.

If 16 metrics is too many, may I offer you five goals?

Adam Marcus from OpenView Venture Partners says an interesting investment for his firm has the following qualities: (1) 60% of their sales reps hit quota (I prefer 80% hitting at least 80% of quota), (2) Sales and Marketing payback in less than one year (in other words, you earned enough in year 1 from a customer to pay back the sales and marketing investment to get them), (3) 85% logo retention, (4) “negative churn”, where you get make more  money from your current customers each and every year and (5) sales rep ramp in one quarter or less. After looking at all that, I’d like me some of that investment as well!

If five is too many, how about ONE?!

Customer Lifetime Value. The ONLY metric that matters. That said, apparently 58% of us don’t even measure it! It can be a skirmy metric, but we should all try. My job here is done; I got you down to one.