Ali Goldstein Norup is the CEO and Founder of kpiReady (Techstars Class 115), a startup that helps with customer success / account management reporting for B2B clients. Prior to starting kpiReady, Ali gained more than 10 years of experience in business development and relationship management, including several years at JPMorgan. In addition, she is an executive advisor of GDPRsimple, a SaaS solution for privacy implementation. In November, 2019, Ali presented her KPI’s talk to the students at LaunchPad Propel in New York city.
Ali’s presentation begins by challenging the students’ commonly known definition of a KPI as a key performance indicator. “It can also be a key predictive indicator,” she shares. This distinction is central to her philosophy that key predictive indicators (leading versus lagging) are critically important to establishing a healthy sales funnel.
Walking through a sample (B2B) sales funnel is the next step in Ali’s presentation, and helping students understand what each step along the way is will help them ultimately understand their business’s potential. She clearly defines the differences between each group as she moves down the funnel and challenges students to think about the predictive indicators of each taper.
Ali also highlights the idea to students that funnels are not only helpful in anticipating sales and the buyer journey. She also explains they can be remarkably useful in the areas of talent and recruitment, marketing and communications, and more.
Ali shares several strategic KPI takeaways throughout her presentation including:
- That KPIs require putting numbers and cadence to reporting.
- That those numbers should tell a story focusing on what their audience cares about.
- That the practice of reporting may be as important as the information shared.
Ali concludes per presentation by sharing the top three categories of KPIs for any startup in any industry and also her top ten KPIs across multiple categories:
