A leading metric (sometimes called a leading indicator) tries to predict the future. For example, the current number of prospects in your sales funnel gives you a sense of how many new customers you’ll acquire in the future. If the current number of prospects is very small, you’re not likely to add many new customers. You can increase the number of prospects and expect an increase in new customers. On the other hand, a lagging metric, such as churn (which is the number of customers who leave in a given time period) gives you an indication that there’s a problem — but by the time you’re able to
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