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The North Star Metric:
Delivering high value to your market is not just a matter of altruism; it’s genuinely the best thing you can do for your business. It’s far easier to acquire and retain customers with high-value products, you can charge more for them, and they keep competitors at bay. Many modern product companies understand this and consider growing value-to-customer their most important goal. That’s where the North Star Metric comes in. A North Star Metric (NSM) is a number that sums up the core value we deliver to the market. In the words of growth expert Sean Ellis, it’s your value footprint.
Evidence-Guided
Itamar Gilad
Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz say, in their excellent book Lean Analytics: “A good metric is comparative. Being able to compare a metric to other time periods, groups of users, or competitors helps you understand which way things are moving. Increased conversion from last week” is more meaningful than “2% conversion.” A good metric is understandable. If people can’t remember it and discuss it, it’s much harder to turn a change in the data into a change in the culture. A good metric is a ratio or a rate. Accountants and financial analysts have several ratios they look at to understand, at a glance, the fundamental health of a company. You need some, too… . A good metric changes the way you behave. This is by far the most important criterion for a metric: what will you do differently based on changes in the metric?”
Radical Focus SECOND EDITION
Christina Wodtke
Triggers might include: If a customer calls to cancel their subscription, schedule an interview. If a customer has a question about feature x, schedule an interview. If a customer requests a customization, schedule an interview. Triggers can change week over week. The key is to clearly communicate to your customer-facing team who you would like to interview and to make it easy for them to schedule the interview. Give them a script to follow. It might be as simple as this: If the customer trigger occurs, then say: “I’d love for you to share your feedback with our product team. Can we schedule 20 minutes for you to talk with them?” If they say “Yes,” have your colleague schedule the interview.
Continuous Discovery Habits
Teresa Torres
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