Client Churn
Also known as: attrition, client loss rate
How many paying clients leave in a period, which quietly decides whether your monthly income grows at all.
Add two clients a month and lose two a month and you worked all year to stand still. That is churn, and it is the number most small shops never write down.
Write it down. Even a rough count of who left this year, and why, will tell you more about your business than your project pipeline does.
Churn usually has one of two causes, and they need different fixes. Clients who leave because the work was not good need better delivery. Clients who leave because they could not tell what they were paying for need better reporting.
The second kind is more common and easier to solve, which is good news.