Motion–economics fit
Motion–economics fit is the test of whether a segment’s average contract value can support the cost of the motion used to sell into it.
The arithmetic is simple and frequently skipped. A field motion costs a fully loaded seller, a sales engineer’s time and a multi-month cycle. If the segment’s contract value cannot repay that inside an acceptable payback period, the motion is unviable no matter how well it is executed.
The failure is rarely a decision. It happens by drift: a motion designed for enterprise gets pointed at mid-market because pipeline is short, and the resulting deals look fine individually while destroying the blended economics.
Where it breaks
One selling model is applied across segments with tenfold differences in contract value, and blended CAC payback hides which half is unprofitable.
Related terms
- Go-to-market motion
- A go-to-market motion is a repeatable path by which a specific offer reaches a specific segment, including the channel, the qualification standard, the selling model and the economics that make it viable.
- Unit economics
- Unit economics is the per-unit relationship between what it costs to acquire and serve a customer and what that customer returns over their lifetime.
- Coverage model
- A coverage model specifies how many accounts of what type each seller or team is responsible for, and what level of attention each account tier receives.
- Capacity planning
- Capacity planning derives how many productive selling resources are required to hit a revenue target, given ramp time, attrition, productivity and coverage assumptions.
Field notes on this
- Write the stop rule before the pilot starts
A market-entry pilot with no decision rule written before exposure cannot end. It gets extended until it is the default motion, without anyone choosing that.