Startup metrics
Sales and marketing metrics
Track lead generation, sales funnel conversion rates, pipeline velocity, and marketing channel effectiveness to optimize your customer acquisition engine.
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Getting started
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Financial metrics
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Product and growth
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Customer metrics
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Operations
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Putting it into practice
Sales and marketing metrics tell you how efficiently you convert spend into customers. The goal isn’t maximum leads — it’s maximum qualified customers at the lowest sustainable cost.
Lead generation and qualification
Lead volume means nothing without lead quality. A thousand unqualified leads will overwhelm your sales team and waste their time. Focus on metrics that connect lead generation to actual revenue.
MQL to SQL conversion
Sales Qualified Leads ÷ Marketing Qualified Leads × 100
MQL to SQL conversion rate
If your MQL → SQL rate is below 15%, your marketing and sales teams have different definitions of a qualified lead. Fix the definition before generating more volume.
Lead scoring fundamentals
Score leads across four dimensions:
| Dimension | Signals | Weight |
|---|---|---|
| Demographic fit | Company size, industry, role | High |
| Behavioral engagement | Content downloads, website visits | Medium |
| Intent signals | Pricing page views, demo requests | Very high |
| Timing | Budget cycle, contract renewal | High |
Sales funnel conversion
Track conversion rates between every stage. The biggest drop-off tells you where to invest.
| Stage | Conversion rate | What low conversion signals |
|---|---|---|
| Lead → Opportunity | 10 – 25% | Poor targeting or lead quality |
| Opportunity → Demo | 30 – 50% | Weak value proposition |
| Demo → Proposal | 40 – 60% | Product-market mismatch |
| Proposal → Close | 15 – 30% | Pricing or competitive issues |
| Overall lead → Customer | 2 – 5% | Multiple funnel problems |
A practical insight: improving conversion rate at any stage often has better ROI than generating more leads. Going from 2% to 3% overall conversion is equivalent to increasing lead volume by 50%, but usually costs far less.
Win/loss analysis
Track why you lose deals — the pattern reveals your biggest improvement lever:
- Price/budget — pricing strategy needs work
- Feature gaps — product roadmap signal
- Competitive loss — differentiation or positioning problem
- No decision — you’re selling to people who aren’t ready to buy
Sales cycle length
Average sales cycle
Total days from first contact to close ÷ Number of closed deals
| Deal size | Typical cycle | Primary bottleneck |
|---|---|---|
| $1K – $10K (SMB) | 1 – 3 months | Decision speed |
| $10K – $100K (Mid-market) | 3 – 6 months | Multiple stakeholders |
| $100K+ (Enterprise) | 6 – 18 months | Procurement process |
Shorter sales cycles mean more deals per rep, better cash flow, and more predictable revenue. If your cycle is longer than benchmarks for your deal size, look for unnecessary steps in your process.
Pipeline metrics
Pipeline coverage
Pipeline coverage ratio
Total pipeline value ÷ Revenue quota
Pipeline coverage ratio
Pipeline velocity
Pipeline velocity
(Opportunities × Avg deal size × Win rate) ÷ Sales cycle length
Pipeline velocity combines all the key sales factors into one number that shows how quickly you generate revenue. Improving any one variable (more opportunities, larger deals, higher win rates, shorter cycles) accelerates the whole engine.
Pipeline quality signals
- Opportunity age — deals sitting in the same stage too long are probably dead
- Stalled deals — no activity in 2+ weeks is a warning sign
- Stage progression rates — healthy pipelines move steadily forward
- Forecast accuracy — if your “commit” forecast is consistently off by more than 20%, your pipeline hygiene needs work
Marketing channel effectiveness
Cost per lead (CPL)
Channel marketing spend ÷ Leads generated
Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Full channel cost ÷ Customers acquired
CPL is a starting metric, but CPA is what matters. A channel with $50 CPL and 1% conversion to customer has a $5,000 CPA. A channel with $200 CPL and 10% conversion has a $2,000 CPA — four times better despite higher lead costs.
Attribution models
| Model | Best for | Limitation |
|---|---|---|
| First-touch | Understanding discovery | Ignores nurture journey |
| Last-touch | Crediting closing channel | Ignores awareness |
| Multi-touch | Full journey analysis | Complex to implement |
| Time-decay | Weighting recent touchpoints | Arbitrary decay rates |
For most B2B SaaS companies, multi-touch attribution is ideal but first-touch and last-touch together give you 80% of the insight with 20% of the effort.
Try this in Basedash
Show lead-to-customer conversion rates by channel and marketing spend vs customers acquired for each channel over the past quarter
Connect your CRM, ad platforms, and billing data to see true cost-per-acquisition by channel.
Get started free →Frequently asked questions
- What is a good lead-to-customer conversion rate for B2B SaaS?
- A typical B2B SaaS lead-to-customer conversion rate is 2–5%. This varies significantly by channel — organic and referral leads often convert at 5–10%, while paid leads might convert at 1–3%. Focus on channel-specific rates rather than blended averages.
- How do you calculate pipeline velocity?
- Pipeline velocity = (number of opportunities × average deal size × win rate) ÷ average sales cycle length in days. It measures how quickly your sales pipeline generates revenue. Improving any single variable accelerates the whole engine.
- What is the ideal pipeline coverage ratio?
- Aim for 3–5x pipeline coverage (total pipeline value divided by quota). Below 3x means you're unlikely to hit targets. Above 5x is strong. The exact ratio depends on your historical win rates — lower win rates require higher coverage.