Metrics to Evaluate Customer Impact on Business Strategy

He delivered perfect metrics. She fumbled through a messy slide deck. He got fired. She got promoted. Because she spoke in dollars. Board meeting. Twelve minutes in. Director of Customer Success presents glowing NPS scores. Zero questions from the executives. Next slide: Engineering shows server uptime at 99.97%. Polite nods around the table. Then Marketing presents one number: Customer acquisition cost dropped 23% to just $3,000. Suddenly everyone's awake. Questions for thirty minutes straight. Additional budget approved on the spot. Here's what I learned watching from the back of that room: Numbers without dollar signs are just statistics. Numbers with dollar signs are how businesses make decisions. Last quarter, somewhere out there in the corporate world, a Head of Support rewrote her quarterly review. Version 1 (what she originally wrote): "Response times improved 15% this quarter. Customer satisfaction jumped to 4.8 stars. Team morale is at an all-time high." Version 2 (what got her promoted): "Faster response times retained $890K in at-risk accounts. Higher satisfaction converted $1.1M in expansion opportunities. Improved team retention saved $200K in recruiting, hiring, and training costs." Same achievements. Completely different reception. Her original presentation got polite applause. Her rewrite received accolades. Operational metrics → Financial impact Team performance → Business outcomes Customer feelings → Revenue protection "We reduced bugs by 60%" becomes "Prevented $400K in churn from technical issues." "Users love the new interface" becomes "UI improvements drove $153k in expansion” "Training improved team skills" becomes "Skills development cut support costs $150K annually." Every metric in your company connects to money. Your job is drawing those lines clearly. Because executives don't fund good feelings. They fund good business.

CMOs call marketing an engine for growth. CFOs call it a primary lever of enterprise value creation. One speaks in brand equity, customer acquisition, engagement, and monetization.  The other speaks in margins and profitability. When these departments don’t align,  ↳ Investments get slashed,  ↳ Performance stalls,  ↳ Growth suffers. But when marketing and finance work with UNIFIED language and data.   Companies make smarter investments. Here are four key metrics that help CMOs and CFOs speak the same language: 1. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) Formula: Total marketing spend ÷ New customers acquired CFOs ask, “How much are we spending per new customer? Can we lower it?” CMOs ask, “Which channels bring most efficiency, can we shift our budget?” CFOs want cost control, CMOs want better-performing channels.  ↳ Tracking CAC aligns both executives. 2. Customer Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula: (Avg. Purchase Value × Purchase Frequency × Margin Rate × Activity Rate) CFOs ask, “Are we making enough long-term revenue to justify CAC?” CMOs ask, “Should we increase LTV through engagement or monetization?” A CFO sees it as profitability over time, A CMO sees opportunities. ↳ Higher LTV justifies marketing investment. 3. Cash Payback Period Formula: CAC ÷ Gross Margin per Customer per Month CEOs ask, “How long before we earn back what we spent?” CMOs ask, “Which channels pay back fastest?” CFOs want liquidity, CMOs want reinvestment speed. ↳ A shorter payback period means faster growth cycles and less financial risk. 4. LTV:CAC Formula: Customer Lifetime Value ÷ Customer Acquisition Cost. CFOs ask: "Our financial plan requires a 3x ROI in 3 years-can you deliver?" CMOs ask: "Should I optimize for faster payback or a 3-year LTV:CAC target?" CFOs want financial justification, CMOs want strategic growth. ↳ A shared LTV:CAC view aligns investment decisions. CFOs and CMOs don’t need to agree on everything,  but they do need to align on the data that drives GROWTH. Start with blended performance, Then look at leading indicators for Paid. The last thing you want is debating attribution with a CEO or investor, When you're not even aligned on the core metrics above. Don't manage marketing as an expense,  Manage it as an investment. Track the right numbers, speak the same language, and watch your business grow. Which of these metrics does your company focus on the most? Drop a comment below. * * * I talk about the real mechanics of growth, data, and execution. If that’s what you care about, let’s connect.

CMOs want pipeline. CFOs want unit economics. Marketers tend to segment with metrics like customer count, ACV, or win rate. These are good at first. But they’re incomplete. The next level is to segment like a CFO Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) is a great bridge. CLV doesn’t just measure deal size or ease of closing. It captures *the full value* of a customer or segment over time: initial purchase, gross margin, retention, and expansion. It’s a great metric to tie marketing strategy to business outcomes. Here's an example... Which customer would you rather acquire? Customer A - $120K ACV. - Closed in 60 days - Costs $60K/yr to serve. - Churns in year 2. Customer B - $60K ACV. - Closed in 90 days - Costs $20K/yr to serve. - Expands in year 2 to $80K. - Expands in year 3 to $100K. Clearly B is more valuable in the long-term. The 5-year value (CLV) is ~6x higher. But a lot of times this dynamic gets missed when thinking about ICPs and segments because we stop with pipeline metrics. CLV helps divide your market by long-term value. This is especially key in an ABM motion where you are making big investments into relatively small segments of accounts. You want to spend resources on the accounts that your CFO will love. Want help measuring CLV by segment? DM me. I'm thinking I'd make a template for this during the holidays. #B2B #marketing #sales

I believe businesses exists long term to deliver customer value. Not to build a perfect process or a clean CRM. While those does help, Let's focus on the things that really matters- deliver value to your customers. And if you never measure it, you never know if you improved. The easiest step is to try Theysaid CPV, adding a CPV question besides your normal NPS or CSAT question. As a mad woman who is obsessed with customer value, sharing my understanding of 5 levels of measuring customer value. Level 1 : Usage metrics. ✅ Product usage ✅ Time in App ✅ Seats bought vs Used level 2: Standard customer metrics ✅ Time to value ✅ Health Scores ✅ Ticket Resolution ✅ CSAT ✅ NPS Level 3: Measure value delivered ✅ TheySaid CPV (Customer Perceived Value) ✅ Each department records customers’ desired problems to be solved ✅ Customer advisory board program ✅ Customer interview program (including win / loss analysis) Level 4: Embedded ✅ Metrics for customer-value delivered is a company goal and owned by a C-Level Executive ✅ Customer-value delivered is measured throughout their lifecycle via a cross-departmental program (for example TheySaid Pulse Program) ✅ Empower team members to take action using customer data ✅ Real time actions on customer problems Level 5: Customer-led growth ✅ The CEO builds the entire company on delivering customer value  ✅ Customers receive consistent experiences throughout their journey, not hit or miss depending on departments ✅ Ideal Customer Profiles come from customers that get the most value Marketing content is driven by customer needs ✅ Potential customers are qualified with use cases that will deliver the most value ✅ Product roadmap driven by quantified customer requests #customervalue #CPV #CustomerPerceivedValue #nps #netpromoterscore #csat

As CX programs are being cut, it’s becoming clear that those focused solely on survey scores are at risk. To truly drive value, B2B CX programs must tie their efforts to financial outcomes—a critical connection many programs miss. One simple but powerful metric to consider is order velocity—the frequency of customer orders, regardless of size or type. By combining the order data with good survey questions, you can track how improved customer experiences lead to faster order velocity. While it’s not the final financial metric, it gives you an early indication of CX impact. Order velocity works especially well in industries with less frequent transactions, like B2B insurance. For example, if brokers typically average six policies yearly, an improved experience should lead to more orders the following year. If not, it could signal that your surveys aren’t targeting the right issues or that other factors, like pricing, are having a larger impact. Remember, there’s often a delay between shifts in customer attitudes and changes in behavior. In industries like health insurance, a boost in CX scores during mid-year could drive more orders by Q4. In manufacturing, the timeline might vary—tactical orders may rise quickly, while long-term sales like turbines could take years to reflect the change. For a more holistic view, pair order velocity with client-specific metrics like margin per client or number of categories ordered. Order velocity is relatively easy to track and is a great entry point for deeper insights. Reporting on this invites questions from leadership—and when the right questions are asked, it paves the way for gathering more valuable data. #CX #CXROI #Customerexperience