With tight budgets and scrutiny on every function, justifying the investment in value enablement is not just a priority but a necessity. Key to maintaining and growing your value enablement initiatives is the ability to prove the worth of your efforts to executives.
The prosperity of your practice hinges on your capacity to demonstrate tangible value outcomes. Fail in this, and you may find your growth stagnating, or worse, subject to budget cuts.
So, how exactly do you measure and prove the value of your value enablement efforts?
Let’s divide the potential measures into five essential components across the value lifecycle:
- Value in Marketing
Leveraging value messaging, outreach, content, and tools are essential for improving engagement with prospects and customers. Success in this area manifests in:
- Increased Engagement: Higher open rates indicate successful targeting.
- More Leads: Value-driven content attracts more potential customers.
- Better Opportunities: Quality leads convert into promising opportunities.
- Additional Revenue: Marketing that highlights value adds to the bottom line.
- Acceleration and Scale
Engaging with value in more deals assures success and helps in determining how well the value program is being adopted—a critical metric for defending early investments and justifying continued investments. The measurement of acceleration and scale includes:
- Increased Usage: More opportunities utilizing value content, tools, and consulting.
- Boosted Participation: An increase in reps leveraging value resources.
- Elevated Engagements: Engaging higher within the organization and with more stakeholders.
- Value in New Opportunities
Performance metrics within opportunities are key to driving better and faster deals. By comparing deals that leverage value with those that do not, you can analyze:
- Win Rates: Higher success in closing deals.
- Deal Size / Discount Rate: More substantial deals with better pricing.
- Time to Close: Faster closing times.
- Value in Customer Success and Account Management
Post-sale value enablement is crucial to retention and expansion selling. Key measurements here include:
- Acceleration and Scale: Growth in customer success, account managers leveraging value, and regular customer value reviews.
- Performance: Improved retention and growth rates in up/cross-sell.
- Success Indicators: High NPS ratings and increased customer lifetime value.
- Value in Product
Ensuring that the product team focuses on high-value customer needs and outcomes includes:
- Time to Market: Faster development times for vital features.
- Revenue Growth: Higher growth rates due to customer focus.
- Share of Market: An edge in competitive advantage.
The Bottom-Line
Vital in staving off budget and staff cuts and justifying continued investment and expansion in value enablement is to “prove the value of value”. Measure it, prove it, and you’ll find executives more than willing to invest in a practice that demonstrates real, tangible returns.
The numbers speak for themselves. Are you measuring and giving your own outcome metrics a voice?
