Tool 11 of 32 · a day
Value-Source Audit
Whether the thing customers actually pay for is being fed or starved, read from behavior and twelve months of numbers.
In Pattern, once misplaced effort is on the table, from behavior, support, the dashboard, and twelve months of history.
What it is for
To find out whether the company still knows which part of what it does is the reason customers pay, and whether that part is being fed or starved.
The failure it catches
The company no longer knows where its value comes from, so it starves the engine while polishing everything else, and the metric that predicts the death is on no dashboard.
Why it works
Behavior outranks surveys, and twelve months of history outranks this month's story. If the number that tracks the real value is missing from the dashboard and declining in the data, the starvation is already visible, often years before revenue confirms it.
How to run it
- Ask users, or better, read their behavior: what would they miss most if it vanished tomorrow.
- Ask support what people thank the company for.
- From the answers, name the one to three numbers that would genuinely show the health of that specific thing, with this business's own nuance, not generic funnel numbers.
- Check whether those numbers appear anywhere on the dashboards leadership actually reads, and pull their last twelve months of history.
- Check whether engineering is built for a scale the usage does not remotely justify.
How to read the result
If the number that tracks the real value is absent from the dashboard and declining in the data, the engine is being starved while other things get polished. When companies decline, the value number falls first, then activation, then new customers, then revenue, often with years between them. Waiting for revenue to confirm a problem means finding out last. For a company still searching for its market, the external half of this audit is Market Reality. Sequencing consequence: re-feed the engine first. It is usually operationally cheap, because it was the first thing dropped, and it produces the sign of life that shields deeper work.
How to run it well
- Behavior outranks surveys. If usage data contradicts what users say they would miss, the behavior is the answer.
- Name numbers with this business's nuance, not generic funnel numbers wearing a suit.
Where it breaks
- Users say one thing and do another; behavior outranks surveys.
- Generic numbers wearing a suit, signups, newsletter conversions, do not count as value numbers unless they tie directly to the thing customers would miss.
What would prove it wrong
A business whose named value number collapsed while retention and revenue held for years would break the order-of-collapse reading.
What we watch
Whether the named value number falling first, then activation, then new customers, then revenue, keeps showing up, or whether revenue sometimes falls first.
Ask yourself
- What would customers miss most if this product vanished tomorrow, judged by what they actually do, not what they say?
- What do people thank the company for?
- Are the one to three numbers that would show that specific thing healthy on any dashboard leadership reads?
- What did those numbers do over the last twelve months?
- What was the first thing that got dropped when times got hard, and was it the thing customers pay for?