Executives often expect analyst relations (AR) managers to define, track, and report AR’s progress through key performance indicators (KPIs). But sometimes meaningful KPIs aren’t available, and AR managers should use an alternative — milestones. Although executives love KPIs, the search for them is sometimes misguided because they’re the wrong progress reporting tool. For short-term one-off phases of AR, milestones are better progress reporting gauges than KPIs. In this report, we show when the milestone approach works better and how AR managers can use that approach.