Value Metric Test
Three tests that separate a pricing metric from a value metric. The customer already counts it, the customer controls it, and it tracks the customer's value. Every vendor has a pricing metric because every vendor has to bill on something. Only some of them have a value metric.
What it is. Every vendor bills on something. That something is a pricing metric. A pricing metric becomes a value metric when it also tracks what the customer is getting, and the difference decides whether a buyer can compare two quotes or negotiate a renewal.
Countability is not the test. Tokens are countable. Conversations are countable. Countable is what makes a metric billable, not what makes it useful.
When to run it. On any quote where the vendor proposes a metric you have not bought on before. Also at renewal, on metrics you already accepted, because the ones that fail tend to fail more expensively at scale.
The three tests.
Does the customer already count it? The number exists on their books for reasons that predate the software. Leases. Units. Square feet. Contracts. Claims. Loans.
Does the customer control it? The number moves when somebody in the business makes a deliberate decision. If the vendor's system decides the number, the customer is buying an obligation rather than a price.
Does it track the customer's value? More of the metric means more of the work the product does. The bill and the benefit move together.
Pass all three and it is a value metric. Fail any one and it is a pricing metric wearing the language of value.
What a bad answer looks like. A metric the vendor invented for the quote. A metric the vendor's own system generates. A metric that meters the vendor's cost of goods. And a metric with no published benchmark, because a number nobody else quotes cannot be judged expensive or cheap.
What to do with it. Ask two questions. What does this metric cost me when the product is wrong or inefficient, and can you price on something my business already counts.
One honest limit. Not every product fits a value metric, and forcing one produces a worse outcome than an honest pricing metric quoted plainly.