At the end of Q2, the sales team missed its target by 6%. Not catastrophic, but enough to sting. And when you rewind, it wasn’t about effort. People were working hard… just not on what mattered most.

OKRs—Objectives and Key Results—exist to fix that. They align work to strategy, connect goals across teams, and bring urgency to progress. But when they’re vague, disconnected, or tracked in five different tools? They become just another task to check off.

In this blog post, we’ll explore everything you need to know about OKRs and how ClickUp helps you track them. 🎯

SaaS OKRs: Examples & Frameworks for Product-Led Growth

What Are OKRs and Why They Matter in SaaS

A simple goal-setting framework built for high-velocity teams.

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) help you define what you want to achieve—and how you’ll know you’re getting there. In fast-moving SaaS orgs, they help you stay laser-focused even when priorities shift weekly.

✅ Objective: Clear, inspiring outcome
✅ Key Results: Measurable proof you’re making progress

Things move fast in SaaS companies: shifting markets, growing teams. Without a clear roadmap, it’s easy to get busy but not necessarily effective.

Here’s how OKRs help:

Clarify focus: Keep teams centered on what truly matters instead of spreading efforts too thin
Align departments: Get product, sales, marketing, and customer success working toward shared goals
Encourage innovation: Push teams to take smart risks, test ideas, and improve continuously
Simplify accountability: Assign clear owners to each objective so responsibilities are transparent
Track progress: Monitor what’s working, what’s not, and pivot quickly when needed
Prioritize customer value: Tie goals to user satisfaction and retention to drive meaningful outcomes
Drive growth: Keep teams focused on scaling, whether through new customers, revenue, or markets
Foster ownership: Let teams set their own OKRs to increase commitment and accountability
Balance strategy and metrics: Connect big-picture goals with key metrics like MRR, CAC, and churn

📕 Glossary: Monthly Recurring Revenue (MRR) refers to the predictable income your business earns each month from subscriptions or recurring billing, enabling you to measure steady growth. Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) refers to the amount spent to acquire each new customer, encompassing marketing, sales, and onboarding expenses.

Looking for an OKR software that actually helps you set, track, and hit goals? This video breaks down the top goal-setting tools, including what they do best, what trade-offs to consider, and which ones fit your team’s size and stage.

How to Set Effective SaaS OKRs

In SaaS organizations, goals can quickly become moving targets. A well-structured OKR framework brings consistency to that change, allowing teams to prioritize the right initiatives, course-correct early, and reflect on impact.

Let’s walk through how to set and implement OKRs. 💁

Step #1: Tie OKRs to the bigger picture

💡 Anchor every objective to your company’s mission to keep teams aligned.

Before you dive into setting goals, take a step back. Every objective should reflect your company’s vision and strategic priorities. If an OKR doesn’t directly support the ‘why’ behind your business, it’s noise.

📌 Example: Your mission is to ‘simplify SaaS tools for freelancers.’ A strong objective might be ‘Launch an intuitive dashboard experience tailored for solo users.’

Step #2: Define clear, inspiring objectives

💡 Make your objectives short, motivating, and free of metrics.

Your objective is the destination, not the map. It should be short, motivating, and free of metrics. Avoid packing in how-to steps or KPIs; that’s what key results are for.

If your objective doesn’t energize the team, rewrite it. You’ll revisit this line every week, so you must make it count.

⚠️ Watch out: ‘Improve conversion rates by 2% by optimizing landing pages’ is not an objective. That’s a key result wrapped in a to-do list. A better objective is ‘Deliver a smooth first-time experience for users.’

Step #3: Craft specific key results

💡 Turn intentions into measurable outcomes.

Key results are where the accountability lives. They tell you whether you’re making progress. Each one should be a quantifiable outcome, not a vague intention or activity.

📌 Example: Objective: ‘Improve user retention in the first 30 days.’

Key results:

Increase 30-day retention from 45% to 60%
Reduce time-to-value from seven days to three days
Boost onboarding completion rate to 80%

Step #4: Focus your efforts

💡 Fewer, sharper goals beat scattered priorities.

More isn’t better; better is better. SaaS teams are already balancing feature releases, roadmap changes, customer feedback, and fire drills. Stick to 2-4 measurable objectives per team, each with 3-5 key results max.

Additionally, ensure that each team’s objectives support both the broader company goals and those of other teams.

📌 Example:

Company objective: ‘Increase expansion revenue’

Product KR: ‘Launch usage-based pricing in beta’

Marketing KR: ‘Drive 500 signups to pricing pilot’

CS KR: ‘Upsell 50 users from beta to paid tier’

Step #5: Review, learn, and adapt

💡 OKRs evolve with you—check in, score, and refine.

OKRs aren’t ‘set and forget.’ Check in weekly or biweekly, not to assign blame, but to course-correct. Use a simple 0.0-1.0 scoring system at the end of the cycle to accurately reflect progress.

A scoring system can look like:

1.0: Fully achieved
0.7: Good progress, but not quite
0.3: Off track

Once you understand the OKR framework, the next step is applying it to your teams.
Below, we’ll explore real-world SaaS OKR examples by department, from Product and Engineering to Marketing and Customer Success, to help you set measurable goals that truly drive growth.

SaaS OKR Examples by Team

The most effective SaaS teams tie their daily work to broader SMART goals. Here, let’s break down practical OKR examples by team so that everyone can move in sync. 👇

1. Product team OKRs

You’re shipping quickly, but the customer churn rate remains high. That’s often a sign the product team is focusing on delivery over impact. Clear product OKRs centered around adoption, retention, or time-to-value can redirect efforts toward meaningful results.

Here are some examples of effective OKRs:

Improve the user experience within the next quarter.

Get an average customer satisfaction rating of nine or higher from user surveys
Cut average support response time by 10%
Improve customer retention by 20% through product updates

Launch the new Q3 product successfully

Talk to 30 customers to learn about their needs and feedback
Watch ten user videos and share the key takeaways with the team
Run two training sessions to get the marketing and sales teams up to speed
Go through 15 customer requirement docs from product marketing to make sure we’re building the right things

🔍 Did You Know? Andy Grove, a former CEO of Intel, first introduced OKRs as a concept in the 1970s. It was a growth and innovation management strategy that fit the company’s business model. His inspiration was the management theorist Peter Drucker and the management by objectives (MBO) concept.

2. Engineering team OKRs

It’s easy for engineering goals to get buried under tickets and technical debt. Here are some examples of OKRs that can help save you if you’re one of them.

Improve the quality of product releases

Bring down the average number of new bug reports from 72 to 60 per month
Boost your crash-free rate from 96% to 99% in the latest release
Increase test coverage from 35% to 50% so we catch more issues before launch

Speed up the development team

Raise sprint velocity from 42 to 60 points to deliver more each cycle
Cut down average code review time by 30% to keep work moving
Ensure that missing designs block less than 2% of planned features

3. Marketing team OKRs

Your campaigns get clicks, but sales are still struggling with lead quality. This is where you need an effective OKR. Here are some examples of marketing OKRs for inspiration:

Improve marketing-sales alignment on lead quality criteria

Reduce the percentage of unqualified leads passed to sales from 40% to 25%
Increase the conversion rate of MQLs to SQLs from 12% to 20%
Launch a targeted content campaign that supports bottom-of-funnel decision-making

Strengthen brand visibility and inbound growth

Increase organic website traffic by 30% quarter-over-quarter
Publish three high-intent case studies highlighting customer success stories
Boost email campaign open rates from 25% to 35%

4. Sales team OKRs

Sales teams thrive on targets, but sales OKRs help balance immediate revenue goals with long-term growth levers. Here are some examples:

Improve sales efficiency and close more high-quality deals

Increase win rate from 18% to 25%
Reduce the average deal cycle from 42 to 30 days
Conduct a win-loss analysis on 100% of closed opportunities

Build a repeatable and scalable outbound sales engine

Launch outbound sequence targeting three key buyer personas
Generate 50 net-new marketing qualified leads from outbound channels
Achieve a 10% reply rate across all outbound campaigns

📖 Also Read: SaaS Examples You Need To Know About

5. Customer success team OKRs

Customers onboard successfully, but drop off after three months. This points to weak value realization. OKRs around adoption milestones, health scores, or NPS can help CS teams step in before it’s too late. Here are some examples:

Increase customer satisfaction and loyalty

Improve customer satisfaction score (CSAT) and reach 90% or better
Bring down customer complaints by 15% compared to last quarter
Raise our Net Promoter Score (NPS) to 65 or higher
Respond to customer questions faster, cutting average response time by 25%

Keep more customers and lower churn

Increase our high-value customer retention rate by 10%
Reduce churn by 15% so fewer customers leave us
Hold quarterly business reviews with at least 80% of our top customers
Launch a referral program that brings in 30% of new business through happy customers

SaaS OKRs vs. KPIs: What’s the Difference?

OKRs and KPIs are often confused, but they serve distinct purposes. While KPIs track the health of your business, OKRs push it forward. Understanding when to use each and how they can work together is key to building a high-performing SaaS team.

Let’s understand the differences between OKRs vs. KPIs.

Criteria	OKRs	KPIs
Definition	A goal-setting method with clear business objectives and measurable results	Metrics that track how well the business is doing in certain areas
Purpose	Help teams stay focused and aligned on big-picture goals	Monitor performance and check if targets are being met
Scope	Broad and aspirational	Specific and focused on day-to-day operations
Time frame	Usually set for a quarter or a year	Tracked regularly: daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly
Structure	One objective with 2-5 measurable key results	Single metrics or groups of related metrics
Change frequency	Reviewed and updated every quarter (or as needed)	Stay mostly the same to track trends over time
Example in SaaS	Objective: Improve retention. KR: Reduce churn from 5% to 3% this quarter	MRR, churn rate, CAC, customer LTV
Focus	What you want to achieve and how you’ll know if you’re getting there	How you’re doing in key business areas

🧠 Fun Fact: While serving different purposes, both OKRs and KPIs stem from Drucker’s original work! However, the concept of KPIs dates back to the early 20th century, when Frederick Taylor, a pioneer in scientific management, introduced the use of data and measurement to enhance productivity. The term ‘Key Performance Indicator’ was coined later, after the MBO theory.

How to Track OKRs in a SaaS Company

OKRs are the compass for your company. Done right, they align teams, sharpen focus, and keep your growth trajectory on track.

But tracking OKRs? That’s tricky. Here’s how to do it step-by-step with ClickUp, the everything app for work, so you don’t miss anything.

Step #1: Set strategic OKRs from the top-down

Start with the big picture. What are the 2-3 goals your company wants to achieve this quarter? These should reflect your strategic bets. This can include doubling down on a product launch, expanding into a new market, or fixing a churn spike.

Once you’ve figured that out, here’s what you need to do:

Break them down into department and team-level OKRs
Make objectives inspiring and qualitative, like ‘Become the go-to platform for remote team collaboration’
Make key results measurable, like ‘Reduce customer onboarding process time from seven days to three days for new users’

Once your top-level objectives are clear, you must translate them into trackable OKRs.

This is something ClickUp Goals makes remarkably easy. You can create both company-wide and team-specific OKRs in one central workspace. For each key result, link directly to the supporting ClickUp Tasks, ClickUp Docs, Dashboards, and even sprint cycles.

ClickUp Goals: Track SaaS OKRs to increase monthly recurring revenue and boost customer lifetime value — Give your teams Task Targets within ClickUp Goals

Say your leadership team sets a quarterly objective like ‘Increase product-led growth across self-serve channels.’ In ClickUp, you’d break this down into measurable KRs and tie it to live workflows, such as a user research document and a product analytics dashboard. You can assign owners, update statuses, and track how teams are spending their time on each task.

Here’s how one ClickUp customer, Spekit uses OKRs for transparency and alignment using ClickUp:

Organizational transparency is one of the most impactful benefits realized since rolling out ClickUp to the team.
Now, in ClickUp, anyone in the organization can see each of our team’s OKRs, who owns them, and their progress. Looking back now, before ClickUp, we didn’t have that level of transparency, so all of our departments were disconnected.

Andrea Park, Business Operations Coordinator

Step #2: Set a cadence and stick to it

Now, it’s time to turn them from static goals to dynamic progress indicators. This only happens when you embed them into your team’s operating system.

Establish a weekly or bi-weekly rhythm where teams:

Update progress
Share wins and blockers
Review scores

Use confidence scoring to identify issues early. For each key result, have owners rate their confidence (e.g., red, yellow, or green—or 1–5). This adds a predictive layer that goes beyond simply tracking percentage completion.

However, if you’re struggling to maintain this cadence consistency, turn to ClickUp Automations.

ClickUp Automations: Automate tasks to drive targeted content marketing campaigns for product growth — *Set ‘if this, then that’ rules with ClickUp Automations*

Let’s say your marketing team reviews OKRs every Monday at 10 am. You can set a custom automation that triggers every Monday morning to:

Set a reminder for all OKR owners to update progress
Change the status of OKR-related tasks to ‘Reviewing’
Post a message on task threads asking for confidence scores

ClickUp Brain: Set up workflows using natural prompts to support a strong inbound marketing strategy — *Set custom ClickUp Automations by prompting ClickUp Brain*

Try ClickUp Brain today

ClickUp Brain, the platform’s integrated AI-assistant, lets you set automations using natural language prompts. All you need to do is say, ‘Every Friday at 4 pm, remind all OKR owners to update their progress and confidence scores.’ It’ll build an automation for you without manual setup.

Step #3: Ensure transparency

To create company-wide alignment, you must allow everyone to see everything. Create OKR dashboards that are visible to all teams, use them in all-hands meetings, and assign clear owners for each objective and key result.

ClickUp Dashboards are real-time, interactive control centers that enable anyone to track the business’s progress toward its goals.

ClickUp Dashboards: Visualize OKRs and optimize SaaS metrics across customer and product teams — *Create custom ClickUp Dashboards to visualize OKRs and your team’s progress*

Each dashboard is composed of cards that retrieve live data from your workspace, such as at-risk key results, overdue tasks, or average completion rates by team. You can filter them by team, time, or priority to make it more actionable.

For instance, your sales team’s OKR is to increase quarterly revenue growth by 20%. Your ClickUp Dashboard can include:

Bar chart for revenue closed per rep
Progress cards tracking key results like the number of demos booked or deals moved to ‘Proposal’
Task list card filtered by ‘KR-linked’ tasks to surface blockers in real time
Comment card to log weekly updates or confidence scores

With ClickUp Brain, you can generate automated, human-like progress updates directly from live data on your dashboard.

ClickUp Brain: Get AI insights from dashboards to align with inbound marketing efforts and OKR reviews — *Ask ClickUp Brain to summarize key updates on your objectives*

Get contextual updates with ClickUp Brain

You don’t need to interpret charts or metrics manually. The AI Project Manager instantly summarizes your dashboard, highlighting key trends, wins, and bottlenecks.

This means:

Executives get a quick AI-written snapshot of which objectives are on or off track
Team leads can surface blockers without deep-diving into each card
Anyone in the org can ask ClickUp Brain questions like ‘Why is our NPS score dropping?’ or ‘Which Key Result is lagging the most this week?’

📮 ClickUp Insight: 78% of our survey respondents make detailed plans as part of their goal-setting processes. However, a surprising 50% don’t track those plans with dedicated tools. 👀

With ClickUp, you seamlessly convert goals into actionable tasks, allowing you to conquer them step by step. Additionally, our no-code dashboards offer clear visual representations of your progress, highlighting your accomplishments and providing you with more control and visibility over your work. Because “hoping for the best” isn’t a reliable strategy.

💫 Real Results: ClickUp users say they can take on ~10% more work without burning out.

Visualize OKRs with ClickUp

How ClickUp Brain Helps You Track and Improve OKRs Automatically

Manual goal updates eat into strategy time. ClickUp Brain, the AI engine behind the Converged AI Workspace, automates OKR upkeep, allowing teams to focus on outcomes rather than check-ins.

AI progress summaries: Summarize every Key Result in real time and surface blockers directly inside Goals or Dashboards
Contextual queries: Ask, “Which OKR is off track this week?” and get an instant, source-linked answer
AI-written recaps: Turn weekly OKR reviews into auto-generated updates for leadership or all-hands meetings.
Predictive insights: ClickUp Brain flags patterns in underperforming KRs and suggests owners or timelines to adjust

Additionally, use ClickUp Brain MAX with voice input to log OKR updates or reflections instantly—just talk, and it turns your words into structured text. During quarterly reviews, you can dictate progress notes or key insights, then let ClickUp Brain MAX summarize and cross-reference them across projects, Dashboards, and Docs.

Step #4: Measure what matters

Tie every key result to a metric that tells a story:

User activation rate
Feature adoption
Net revenue retention
Support ticket resolution time

Then, watch for patterns: What’s moving the needle? What’s lagging? Use this insight to refine your OKRs for the next cycle.

Let’s say your company’s OKR is to improve user retention by 25%. Key results include reducing the churn rate by 15%, increasing the number of weekly active users by 20%, and launching three customer-requested features.

ClickUp Hierarchy: Map goals to teams and Lists for a pricing model aimed at product-led growth — *Use ClickUp’s Project Hierarchy to organize your workspace*

Here’s how the ClickUp Project Hierarchy helps:

Workspace: Your organization’s entire operational space includes product, marketing, sales, and customer success
Spaces: A top-level space dedicated to all strategic initiatives and quarterly objectives across departments, named ‘Q3 Strategic OKRs’
Folder: Focuses on Q3’s objective. Everything under this folder rolls up to the ‘Improve user retention’ OKR
Lists: One for each key result, like: Reduce churn by 15%. And tasks will be:
- Implement exit survey
- Launch cancellation flow improvements
- Follow-up with churned users for feedback

Each task includes assignees, due dates, dependencies, and subtasks if needed. You can link them directly to the key results using Custom Fields, Goals, or even relationships. Create OKR templates of different workflows to ensure consistency every quarter.

ClickUp Brain Tasks: Use AI updates to monitor customer lifetime value and reduce churn risk — *Ask ClickUp Brain to give task updates*

Use ClickUp Brain to summarize progress across all lists in seconds. Ask ‘What’s the current status of our Q3 user retention OKR?’

Step #5: Close the loop at the end of the cycle

Before you roll into the next quarter:

Score each key result honestly: Use a clear rubric and focus on progress. Did you reach 80% of a stretch goal? That’s likely a win
Review what helped: Go beyond the score. Dig into initiatives that worked and what made them successful. Was it timing, strategy, or better cross-functional alignment?
Capture learning and root causes: Don’t just celebrate or blame. Run a lightweight retro to identify systemic blockers or surprise accelerators. Document these insights so next quarter’s goals are sharper
Celebrate progress: Acknowledge what was achieved, even if you didn’t check every box. Publicly celebrate teams that hit stretch goals or overcame major blockers

ClickUp OKRs Template: Set SaaS goals that grow paying customers and enable customer expansions — Set a framework for OKRs to maintain consistency with the ClickUp OKRs Template

The ClickUp OKRs Template offers teams a structured approach to align goals with quarterly initiatives throughout the organization. Within each quarter, objectives are broken down into specific, measurable key results, with real-time status indicators like On Track, At Risk, Off Track, or Complete.

Each item is also linked to a Primary Team, initiative, and progress bar, so every objective is assigned and contextually anchored in the goal-setting template.

Get free template

⚡ Template Archive: Track high-level objectives, break them down into measurable KRs, and assign owners for strategic partnerships with ClickUp’s Company OKRs and Goals Template.

Use ClickUp for Impeccable Results

Setting great OKRs is one thing, but keeping track of them and making progress is another. That’s where ClickUp comes in.

ClickUp makes it easy for you to plan, track, and manage OKRs, helping you stay competitive in the SaaS industry. Use Goals to structure your objectives, Dashboards to monitor progress in real time, and AI summaries to instantly understand what’s moving the needle. You can create OKRs, assign owners, track key results with live data, and check in regularly.