Glossary · Our vocabulary
Yield
Our name for the quality-adjusted metric: Yield rate is the share of submissions that reached a good verdict; Yield value is revenue per hundred submissions.
A term we coined, not an industry standard. See the whole glossary.
Definition
Two related numbers, both computed from verdicts rather than from submissions.
- Yield rate — the share of submissions that reached a good verdict. Sayable in a stand-up: “Completion rate is 41%. Yield is 4%.”
- Yield value — revenue per hundred submissions, which is the version finance recognises.
Why it matters
Because the two numbers move independently, and once you can see both, the disagreements that used to be arguments become observations.
A shorter form completes better and converts worse. A qualifying question costs completion and raises Yield. Every one of those trades is currently made on instinct, defended with best practice, and never measured — because only one side of the trade is visible.
“I’d test form completion rate against qualified-call rate rather than guessing.”
That is the right instinct, described by someone with no tool that does it.
In practice
- Compute over a fixed cohort window longer than your time to disposition, and publish the resolution share next to the number.
- Report Yield rate and Yield value together. Rate alone hides deal-size effects; value alone is hostage to one large deal.
- Segment by traffic source before drawing conclusions, for the same reason completion rate has to be.
- Keep completion rate on the dashboard. It is still the right diagnostic for whether the form works as a form — it is just not the number that says whether it worked.
The common mistake
Comparing Yield across windows shorter than your disposition lag.
This is the way a good metric produces bad decisions. Read Yield too early and the cohort is dominated by whatever resolves fastest — small deals, quick disqualifications — so a window that has not matured systematically understates the variants that attract considered buyers.
The consequence is precise and expensive: you would kill the variant that produces slower, larger deals, using a metric you adopted specifically to avoid that mistake.
Related terms
- VerdictOurs
- Our name for the outcome written back onto a submission: Won, Lost, Disqualified, or Awaiting verdict — plus a value.
- Hindsight split testsOurs
- Our name for split tests ranked on Yield rather than completion rate — where the winner cannot be known at submit time, so the test waits.
- Completion rate
- Submissions divided by the people who could have submitted — and the denominator is the half nobody agrees on.
- Time to disposition
- How long from submission until you know what the lead was worth — the number that decides whether outcome-based testing is possible for you at all.
- Cost per lead
- Spend divided by leads — a metric that improves when your lead quality collapses.