A hub for the comparison pages on this site: churn and dormancy, win rate and close rate, pipeline coverage and weighted pipeline, OTIF and fill rate, gross margin and contribution, KPI and metric, leading and lagging indicators, concentration ratio and Herfindahl index, share of wallet and market share, renewal and retention, and more. Each page gives both definitions, computes both on the same rows, and says which to use when. This page lists them with the one-line difference for each.
Two terms, one meeting, and ten minutes lost before anyone notices they mean different things. These pages draw the line for each pair.
| Pair | The line between them | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Churn and dormancy | Churn is an ending with a date; dormancy is a silence past the customer's own pattern, and comes first | Churn vs dormancy |
| Renewal, retention and churn rate | Renewal counts contracts due; retention counts customers or revenue across a period; churn is the complement of one of them, and it matters which | Three definitions that get swapped |
| Gross and net retention | Gross caps each customer at what they paid before; net lets expansion cover losses | Gross retention and net retention |
| Share of wallet and market share | One is your share of a customer's spend; the other is your share of a market's | Share of wallet vs market share |
| Whitespace and share of wallet | The same gap, read by product or by customer | Whitespace and share of wallet |
| Penetration and coverage | Same numerator, different question: do they buy it, or have we spoken to them | Penetration vs coverage |
| Concentration ratio and Herfindahl index | One adds the top few shares; the other squares every share and sees the whole distribution | Concentration ratio vs HHI |
| Gross, contribution and net margin per customer | Product profit, customer profit, business profit; manage customers on the middle one | Gross vs contribution vs net margin |
| Bookings, billings and revenue | Signed, invoiced, recognised: three dates and three totals for one deal | Bookings, billings and revenue |
| Pair | The line between them | Page |
|---|---|---|
| Win rate, close rate and conversion rate | Won over decided; won over created; stage over prior stage | Win rate vs close rate vs conversion rate |
| Pipeline coverage and weighted pipeline | One win rate for everything, or one per stage; they agree only when the stage rates are measured | Pipeline coverage vs weighted pipeline |
| Coverage and capacity | What the accounts are owed, and what the team can give | Sales coverage and sales capacity |
| Level and trend | The number, and its direction; the direction usually matters more | Level and trend |
| Pair | The line between them | Page |
|---|---|---|
| OTIF, fill rate and on-time delivery | Date only, quantity only, or both on the same order; OTIF is always the lowest | OTIF vs fill rate vs on-time delivery |
| Spot and contract lanes | Two pricing regimes and two lists for one shipper | Spot versus contract lanes |
| Chain and site | Share at the group, and share at each kitchen | Chain versus site |
| Pair | The line between them | Page |
|---|---|---|
| KPI, metric and measure | A number; a defined number; a defined number somebody owns and acts on | KPI vs metric vs measure |
| Leading and lagging indicators | The warning and the result; a leading one has to be shown to lead | Leading vs lagging indicators |
| Dashboard, report and list | Monitor, understand, act; only the list has an owner per row | Dashboard vs report vs list |
| Norm and benchmark | Your own similar customers, or someone else's average | Norm and benchmark |
| Identity and reconciliation | The sum that must hold every time, and the work of explaining why two files disagree | Identity and reconciliation |
| Association and cause | What a company's own data can show, and the sentence that says it honestly | Association and cause |
| Sales analytics, sales intelligence and revenue intelligence | Your numbers; other companies; your conversations | Three categories compared |
| Pseudonymisation and anonymisation | Reversible with a key, or not reversible at all | Pseudonymisation vs anonymisation |
Almost every pair on this page fits one of three shapes.
Same numerator, different denominator. Win rate and close rate; penetration and coverage; case fill and order fill. Ask what is underneath.
Same word, different data. Sales intelligence as a purchased database or as insight into your own ledger; retention of customers or of revenue. Ask what it runs on.
Same data, different level. Chain and site; gross and contribution margin; measure, metric and KPI. Ask at what level the decision is made.
The benchmark pages say what each number should be, the worked examples compute each on ten rows, the Excel guides build them in a spreadsheet, and the glossary has the short definition of every term here. Covirage states the definition on every table it computes, so the pair in question is settled before the meeting starts.
Because they share a numerator, or a word, and nobody states the denominator. Win rate and close rate both count won deals. Churn and dormancy both describe customers not buying. OTIF and fill rate both describe deliveries. The difference is underneath, and it is rarely on the slide.
Each gives both definitions in one table, computes both on the same small set of rows so the difference is visible as arithmetic, says which decision each is for, and lists the ways the two get mixed up. Most also link to a worked example, a benchmark page and an Excel guide for the same measure.
The pair that came up in your last meeting. Failing that, KPI versus metric, because deciding which numbers anyone owns comes before defining them precisely.