Revenue Glossary

A revenue leak is revenue lost along the customer journey – before the sale (leads that never convert) and after the sale (customers who never return). Most B2C companies have both leaks at once.

The tricky part: a revenue leak is invisible because marketing, sales and service each measure only their slice. Nobody sees the whole cycle – and therefore the gaps in between.

The Revenue Cycle System is maku's framework for systematically closing both revenue leaks. It connects four pillars – diagnosis, conversion, retention and CRM adoption – into one decidable path instead of isolated tactics.

The Human Growth Cycle™ is maku's eight-phase relationship model. It describes how strangers become loyal customers – across the pre-purchase loop (understand, engage, trust, experience) and the post-purchase loop (arrive, bond, stay connected, grow).

Customer lifetime value is the total contribution margin a customer generates over the relationship. It is the key metric for retention: knowing CLV tells you how much acquisition is worth – and how expensive churn really is.

Retention is the ability to keep customers after the first purchase and move them to repeat purchase. It is the second revenue source alongside conversion – and usually the more profitable one, because existing customers are cheaper to activate than new ones.

Conversion is the share of prospects who become paying customers. In B2C, conversion rarely fails at the marketing – it fails at the process in between: missing qualification, slow follow-up, friction-prone enquiry flows.

Lead-to-revenue describes the entire path from first enquiry to revenue – including response, qualification, consultation and close. A Lead-to-Revenue Audit finds the most expensive leak along that path.

CRM adoption is the degree to which a team actually uses a CRM day to day. Most CRM projects fail not on the technology but on adoption: roles, routines and ownership are missing, so the system gets bypassed.

Revenue operations is the discipline of steering marketing, sales and service along a shared data foundation and shared processes. The goal is to run revenue as one connected system – not three separate silos.

The post-purchase journey is the designed relationship after the sale: aftercare, repeat-purchase triggers, reactivation and loyalty. It turns the one-off purchase into a recurring revenue source – instead of going quiet after the invoice.

The Revenue Scan is maku's free entry point: a 20-minute, structured conversation that shows where the most likely main leak sits. It is not a sales pitch but a first orientation.

Churn is customer attrition – the share that does not repurchase or cancels in a period. Churn is the flip side of retention: every percentage point less churn flows directly into customer lifetime value.