Tools
Models you can run, free.
First-principles calculators — no sign-up, no email wall. Change the inputs and watch the model move. Built to teach the relationship, not to gate a download.
Unit economics
CAC payback · LTV : CACThe two numbers that decide whether growth is affordable: how long a customer takes to pay back what it cost to acquire them, and how much they return over their life.
- Gross profit / customer / year
- $9,000
- Avg. customer lifetime
- 8.3 yrs
- Lifetime value (gross)
- $75,000
The model, in plain terms. A customer is worth their yearly gross profit — ARR × gross margin — for as long as they stay, and they stay 1 ÷ churn years on average.
- Payback = CAC ÷ (annual gross profit ÷ 12) — months of margin to earn back what acquisition cost. Under ~12 is healthy.
- LTV = annual gross profit × lifetime, and LTV : CAC is the return on an acquisition dollar. 3× or better is the common bar.
Illustrative — a first-principles model, not a benchmark dataset. Blended inputs hide the channel-level gaps that Attribution & Channel Economics unpacks.
RevOps maturity
4 foundations · 1–5Rate four foundations — data, process, tooling, insight. Your maturity is gated by the weakest one, so the assessment points at the next move rather than the average.
A CRM of record, but dirty and inconsistent
Written down but not followed
A core CRM with manual exports around it
Basic reporting, argued over monthly
Your weakest foundation is data foundation. Maturity is gated by the lowest one — that’s the next move, not the highest one.
A self-assessment, not a score to defend — the value is seeing which foundation lags. The pattern shows up across the case studies: fix the foundation first.
Attribution readiness
10 conditionsChannel-level CPA is only as trustworthy as the attribution beneath it. Check the conditions you actually meet; the gaps are what to fix before you reallocate budget.
- Multi-touch attribution is in place — not last-touch only
- The attribution window matches the sales motion (≈90d SMB, 180–365d enterprise)
- Marketing spend is captured per channel, consistently
- Cost basis is defined (program-only vs. fully-loaded) and applied uniformly
- Closed-won revenue is joined back to its source
- Source / UTM tracking is enforced at the point of capture
Attribution is the layer channel CPA rides on; miss these and the number quietly misprices every channel. The reasoning is in Attribution & Channel Economics.