The Shift to Value-Led Growth: Why It’s More Important Than Ever
Early and growth stage B2B forms have been primarily driven by product-led growth (PLG), leading with product demos, downloads, proof of concepts and a feature function approach. This works well initially, getting tech and user buyers to commit, but surprises many GTM teams when it hits a wall.
With today’s risk-averse buyer, where over 8 in 10 decision makers indicate vendor dissatisfaction according to the latest research from Forrester, you have to proactively add a new approach on top of your PLG strategy.
This same research from Forrester underscores a fundamental shift: customer value is the missing ingredient in revenue processes. From their findings, companies that add a Value-Led Growth (VLG) strategy to their PLG approach see significant benefits, including:
- 28% faster revenue growth
- 33% higher profit growth
- 43% better customer retention.
Forrester concurs with the shift we have seen, fueled by a new buyer dynamic. Today’s B2B buyers have more power than ever, with vast access to information and the ability to remain anonymous in their decision-making process.
Traditional sales tactics—cold calls, mass emails, and gated content—are losing effectiveness. Instead, businesses must align every function around delivering clear, measurable business outcomes and customer value throughout the entire buyer’s journey.
What is Value-Led Growth?
Value-Led Growth (VLG) is a customer-centric approach that prioritizes delivering tangible, measurable value at every stage of the buying journey and beyond. Unlike product-led or sales-led models, which focus on acquisition and deal closure, VLG ensures that customers experience real, sustained benefits—leading to not only faster wins and larger deal sizes up-front, but significantly better retention, expansion, and advocacy.
Four Key Principles of VLG include:
- Customer-Centric Mindset: Revenue success is a byproduct, not of relentlessly managing GTM KPIs, but focusing on customer value realization.
- Cross-Functional GTM Alignment: Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success must collaborate seamlessly.
- Data-Driven Engagement: Understanding buying signals, customer needs, and pain points is crucial.
- Continuous Value Delivery: Proving value after purchase ensures retention, expansion and advocacy.
The Key Elements for Success in Value-Led Growth
To execute a Value-Led Growth strategy effectively, companies must embrace a holistic, end-to-end transformation in their revenue approach.
1. Align Marketing, Sales, and Customer Success Around Business Value – Traditional revenue processes operate in silos—marketing focuses on lead generation, sales on closing deals, and customer success on retention. This fragmented approach creates disjointed customer experiences. A true VLG model requires a unified revenue process where all teams work from common business value storytelling and framework, share insights and collaborate to deliver continuous value.
- Marketing: Elevates beyond MQLs and focuses on educating and engaging buyers with meaningful value-focused content.
- Sales: Pivots from transactional selling to value-based selling, ensuring every interaction communicates and quantifies potential business outcomes and ROI for the customer.
- Customer Success: Plays a proactive role in value realization, renewal, and expansion.
2. Embed Customer Value Throughout the Customer Lifecycle – Buyers expect value before, during, and after the purchase. Forrester’s Opportunity Lifecycle model suggests three key stages:
- Discovery & Evaluation: Engage buyers with value-focused insights that help them understand “why change” and “why now”, to motivate decisions.
- Decision & Purchase: Focus on helping, not just selling—proving how your solution will drive business-outcomes and success.
- Post-Sale & Expansion: Ensure customers achieve the business value outcomes and ROI promised, driving renewals, advocacy and expansion.
3. Measure & Optimize Customer Value Creation – Customer value must be measurable. Companies that successfully implement VLG track key metrics such as:
- Cost of Do Nothing – Tallying the current cost inefficiencies, risks and lost revenue opportunities that customers were experiencing before the solution was implemented.
- Realized Value – Quantifying the impact on key performance indicators (KPIs), savings, risk reduction and gains from the solutions.
- Customer Experiences – Collecting anecdotal win and measuring net promoter scores (NPR) to gauge not just the quantifiable value, but the anecdotal stories and increases in customer satisfaction and engagement.
The Potential Benefits of Getting Value-Led Growth Right
Companies that master Value-Led Growth experience transformational business outcomes:
- Higher Win Rates & Deal Sizes: When buyers clearly understand the value, deals close faster and at higher values.
- Increased Revenue & Profitability: Customer-obsessed companies grow faster and generate higher profits (28% faster revenue growth and 33% higher profit growth according to Forrester)
- Stronger Retention & Expansion: When customers consistently experience value, they renew and expand relationships, realizing 43% better customer retention. (Forrester)
- Better Buyer & Customer Experiences: Reducing friction and increasing transparency enhances satisfaction and builds customer advocacy, so important to sustained growth.
The Bottom-Line: The Time for Value-Led Growth is Now
In a world where buyer trust and expectations have evolved, companies can no longer afford to rely on product-led growth alone.
Instead, they must become customer-obsessed, ensuring that every stage of the revenue process is aligned with delivering tangible, provable value.
The shift to Value-Led Growth isn’t just a strategy—it’s a competitive necessity. B2B revenue groups that embrace this transformation, adding VLG to Product-Led Growth will outperform competitors, drive sustainable growth, and create lifelong customers.
Is your organization ready to make the shift to Value-Led Growth?
Sources: Forrester
