I did this analysis last year and it became a popular post, so I figured I’d do the same retrospective today. Following are the ten most-read Kellblog posts in 2025, regardless of the year in which they were written — and it includes some golden oldies.
- What it really means to be a manager, director, VP (2015). Now at ten years old, this post is a perennial favorite. I wrote it because I got tired of answering the question and something about my answer clearly struck a note with a lot of people. (Hint: the answer’s not in your job leveling system.)
- How to navigate the pipeline crisis (2025). In this post I wrote about what I saw as a general pipeline crisis in the industry, shared some interesting posts on it, and then tried to put myself back in the CMO chair and answer: what would I do about it?
- The one key to dealing with senior executives: answer the question! (2012). If the manager vs. director post (above) gets the most traffic, this post gets the most in-person mentions. Think: “Dave, I forwarded your ATFQ post about a dozen times this year.” This issue bothered me 13 years ago when I wrote the post and evidently non-answered questions are still bothering people today. If someone, particularly a customer or an executive, asks you a question: answer it.
- Kellblog predictions for 2025 (2025). I scored these an 8 out of 10. Go here to read my predictions for 2026, the 12th annual post in this series. These posts are more industry commentary and analysis than simply a list of things I think are going to happen. And they require Herculean effort. This year’s post was 7,644 words with 166 links and took 65 hours to write.
- Your ICP starts as an aspiration and ends as a regression (2025). I love the pithy title of this one. This post discusses the evolution of your ideal customer profile (ICP) which starts out as a wink in the founder’s eye and should, over time, end up the result of a regression analysis. That is, you start out by deciding who you want to focus on and then, over time and as a function of your definition of “success,” the data should tell you.
- De-mystifying the growth-adjusted enterprise value to revenue multiple: introducing the ERG ratio (2024). I first heard of the PEG ratio in Peter Lynch’s classic, One Up on Wall Street. This post takes the same idea — growth adjusting — and applies it to price/sales as opposed to price/earnings. Much as I love the metric, I was frankly surprised to see this one up here.
- The SaaS Rule of 40 (2017). Another classic, from eight years back. See this year’s predictions to understand why I believe the Rule of 40 might well become the Rule of 60 in 2026.
- A CEO’s high-level guide to GTM troubleshooting (2025). An integration and repackaging of a lot of my advice specifically written for the CEO and to help them troubleshoot their go-to-market (GTM) issues. I was happy to see this one up here.
- The pipeline progression chart: why I like it better than tracking rolling-four-quarter pipeline (2022). Give the CRO rolling-four-quarter sales targets and I’ll be in favor of tracking rolling-four-quarter pipeline. Meantime, we need to track it by quarter and this chart shows you how. Don’t even get me started on people who want to track annual pipeline.
- Six tips on presenting to the board of directors (2025). A post I wrote to help executive staff make a good impression on the board by losing any prior board PTSD, making a deck from scratch (not recycling slides), cutting to the chase, taking certain things offline, and of course ATFQ.
Technically, my Best of Kellogg post also made the list, so if you’ve not checked that out lately, perhaps you should. I’ve recently revised it as I do about once a year.
I was happy to see that five of the ten top posts were from 2025, which I think hits the right balance of healthy re-use of the classics along with some endorsement of my new material. Thanks for reading.
