Customer Lifetime Value
Gross-margin-adjusted revenue a newly acquired customer is expected to generate over its lifetime: average annual revenue per customer x gross margin % / annual revenue churn rate. Reported as an absolute currency amount per customer. Common pitfall: using revenue instead of gross profit, or an uncapped lifetime (1 / churn with churn near zero), inflates LTV and every ratio built on it. — Sales KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier)
No public third-party standard anchors this KPI yet, so I'mBoard authors and maintains the definition — transparently labeled as editorial tier. See the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system and the back-attribution workstream.
Rogue ID: sales.ltv
Type: Currency
Domain: Sales
Definition
Gross-margin-adjusted revenue a newly acquired customer is expected to generate over its lifetime: average annual revenue per customer x gross margin % / annual revenue churn rate. Reported as an absolute currency amount per customer. Common pitfall: using revenue instead of gross profit, or an uncapped lifetime (1 / churn with churn near zero), inflates LTV and every ratio built on it.
Formula
LTV = (Average annual revenue per customer x Gross Margin %) / Annual revenue churn rate. Use gross profit, not revenue, and cap the implied lifetime (commonly 5 years) so near-zero churn cannot produce an unbounded value.Why it matters
The value side of the customer-unit economics ledger — paired with CAC it tells the board whether each acquired customer returns more than it cost.
How to interpret
Read LTV only alongside CAC (see LTV/CAC). The absolute value varies with ACV and retention; the ratio to CAC is the comparable number.
Related KPIs
sales.cacsales.ltv_cac_ratiosales.gross_margin
Source
I'mBoard editorial — authored and maintained by I'mBoard, first published 2026-04-01. No third-party standard is cited for this KPI; when one emerges, the definition is back-attributed and promoted to the published tier (a minor version bump). Read the ontology methodology for the published vs editorial tier system, attribution rules, and dispute process.
Stage relevance
| Company stage | Priority |
|---|---|
| Series A | Recommended |
| Series B | Recommended |
| Series C+ | Recommended |
| Public | Recommended |
Suggested for stages: Series A, Series B, Series C+, Public.
Default owning functions
- Sales
- Finance
Machine-readable
- This KPI as JSON:
/api/ontology/sales/ltv.json - All Sales KPIs:
/api/ontology/sales.json - Full catalog:
/api/ontology/index.json
Sales Key Concerns
Free-text narrative of the critical issues, pipeline risks, or blockers in the sales motion that require board attention this period. Distinct from sales.pipeline_risk_factors (which is forecast-specific) — this is the full-stack sales-org concerns list including hiring, comp, churn-cluster patterns, large-deal slippage, and competitive losses. Common pitfall: under-reporting concerns because the team wants to show progress — boards explicitly invite this surface so they can help, and a board pack with no concerns surfaces is itself a yellow flag (either the team is hiding something or not introspecting deeply enough). — Sales KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).
LTV/CAC
Customer lifetime value divided by the fully-loaded cost to acquire that customer (LTV / CAC), expressed as a multiple (e.g. 3.0 = 3:1). The headline unit-economics ratio: how many dollars of lifetime gross profit each acquisition dollar returns. Report the same LTV and CAC definitions published as `sales.ltv` and `sales.cac`. Common pitfall: a ratio quoted without its LTV/CAC definitions, or one that does not reconcile with the reported LTV and CAC. — Sales KPI, I'mBoard-authored (editorial tier).