The Signal-to-Money Lag Calculator
The Signal-to-Money Lag Calculator
Work out how long a change takes to show up as money.
What’s in it
- A worked example of a ten-person marketing consultancy testing "qualified leads per week" against closed deal revenue
- Twelve months of real-looking data showing both a clean signal (lag of three months) and a volume trap (leads up, money flat)
- Step 1: name the early signal you want to test (with examples: leads per week, quotes sent same day, satisfaction score)
- Step 2: name the money line it should predict (with examples: new customer revenue, closed deal value, contribution margin)
- Step 3: a twelve-month table to fill in with your own signal and money numbers side by side
- Step 4: three spike calculations, an average lag, and a verdict band that reads real signal, inconsistent signal, or hypothesis
- A ready-to-paste prompt that turns your lag into one dashboard sentence and warns you about the volume-vs-conversion trap
How to use it
Open a spreadsheet with your last twelve months of records before you start. Read the worked example first, so you understand what a clean signal and a misleading one look like in the same table. Then work through the four steps in order: name the signal you want to test, name the money line, plot twelve months of both numbers, and find each moment your signal spiked. For each spike, count how many months later the money moved. Average the lags and read the verdict band. Finally, paste the prompt on the last page into your AI assistant along with your three lag numbers, answer the follow-up questions, and put the one dashboard sentence it gives you where your team can see it every month.
An early signal is only useful if it predicts money. Before you lean on one, you have to prove it actually runs ahead of your revenue rather than just feeling like it should. The Signal-to-Money Lag Calculator walks you through checking any candidate signal against twelve months of your own records, so you find your warning window (or find out it does not exist). It is built for small business leaders who want to move beyond activity metrics and put numbers on their dashboard they can actually trust.
- A worked example that traces two signal spikes in a marketing consultancy (one that turns into money and one that does not), so you learn to spot both patterns in your own data.
- A four-step calculator to name your signal, name the money line, plot twelve months of both, and measure the lag between them.
- A ready-to-paste prompt that stress-tests your lag and returns one dashboard-ready sentence, one quality metric to watch alongside the signal, and one trap to avoid.