Dr. Consulta is the leading primary care provider in Brazil. It operates 50 clinics across the country and generally sells direct to consumers.

When this framework rolled out, we had just finished a Series B funding round. 4 key metrics were selected and split up between leadership team members.

Each team member then had their own KPIs that all laddered up to the north star metrics (quantitative metrics, denoted by blue dots). They also had 1-2 key projects (which were qualitative and marked here in red).

Ultimately, we grew the business 3x in 12 months. We improved unit economics and profitability while maintaining top-line growth. This implementation method led to us achieving our targets and fueling growth.

We used this framework for the first time after raising our Series B. It was also the first time goals were shared between functions. There was discussion around how to do that fairly to ensure each C-level had roughly the same contribution to a shared goal. We determined clear projects that would help measure the contribution of each team member and adjusted the KPI weighting, to ensure fairness e.g. if the COO had a bigger part to play on 'Breaking Even 5 Clinics,’ the weighting for that metric was higher for her than for the CMO, for example.

Setting the goals: the CEO set the topline metric & financial goals (Revenue, EBIDTA and Cash Flow). I was tasked with determining 2 others and breaking them down for the rest of the leadership team.

After having the Company and CMO North Star Metrics, I had to break them down for my team i.e. marketing. I shared and explained my goals and discussed with them how we might break the Marketing targets down for each of them, so they felt relevant.

I wanted them to feel ownership, so we brainstormed as a team on how to fairly distribute the revenue target, for example.

To make it tangible, we divided the metrics into 'KEY METRICS' i.e. ones that they would get evaluated on - "the output". and ' CONTRIBUTING METRICS' - i.e. ones that if we hit them would automatically lead to the Key Metrics - "the input". [NB: only the 'Key Metrics' carried a weight for the end of year bonus.]

There was a bit of back and forth and the Leads came up with Key Metrics and Contributing Metrics for their area. Once we aligned as a team, I signed it off.

Our process ensured that the entire company was aligned on what had to be done from North Star Metrics to Leadership Team metrics to Marketing Team metrics.

We already had data on the revenue contribution for each channel. We knew it was split equally between each acquisition channel: online, medical center and call center. So, we just split that target 3 ways, for example. For patient visits, it was the same thing: we had conversion numbers per channel and therefore knew how many visitors each channel drove. For other metrics that we needed to massively improve, such as ROI, the bulk of the target sat with me and my Digital Lead as he had the biggest influence on spend (and also reduction of spend by gaining efficiency), so we decided both of us should share that one. Other targets were not shared partially (such as revenue) but as a whole as that made most sense. The Lead Analyst for example could come up with a smarter product mix as well as an overbooking mechanism, and this meant we had a more relevant product to sell, meaning we sold more and as we implemented overbooking, we had more visits and all that led to a faster breakeven of a clinic.

Of course, setting targets is hard and not always fair.

For example, there was pushback on my team regarding the ROI (ROAS) metric. We had to deliver a return of 10 on marketing investment. They felt it was impossible. While I was not able to make that metric go away - the CEO had promised it to investors - I was able to negotiate the % weight of the metric down.

Kat Wendelstadt  

This framework helped us cascade the company’s North Star metrics between the leadership team and from there to the team members in Marketing. It helped all efforts & teams to be aligned on what to had get done.

Cascading North Star Metric Targets to Leadership and Functions at dr.consulta

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