Building the Value Map: A Structured Approach to Defining and Measuring Customer Value

Why the Value Map Is Critical for Post-Sales Success

Post-sales teams are under increasing pressure to drive retention and expansion as businesses prioritize profitability and capital efficiency. Amidst this pressure, a grim picture has been revealed: companies are spending more on CS, seeing NRR decrease, and – most importantly – 2/3 of customers still are unsatisfied with how well their CS needs are being met by their vendors (Bain & Company).

Deep cracks have been exposed in the foundations of what post-sales has been built on. Traditional approaches—like tracking product usage, NPS, or engagement metrics—fail to capture the true business impact of a solution and, as a result, have failed to make a difference.

To bridge this gap, we developed the Value Map, a structured framework designed to help organizations define, measure, and optimize customer value throughout the post-sales journey. This approach is influenced by industry best practices, including Jobs to Be Done (JTBD), Value Selling Frameworks, and Customer Journey Mapping—but it is a unique methodology purpose-built for post-sales teams.

The Evolution of the Value Map: Inspired by Industry Standards

Several well-known frameworks have attempted to solve aspects of the customer value challenge, but none fully address the post-sales execution gap:

• Jobs to Be Done (JTBD): Excellent for understanding why customers adopt a product but lacks an execution layer for tracking business outcomes in B2B SaaS.
• Value Selling Frameworks: Strong for pre-sales alignment but often don’t carry through into post-sales engagement.
• Customer Journey Mapping: Helps visualize engagement but frequently lacks measurable business impact tracking.

The Value Map was created to fill this gap, giving post-sales teams a clear structure to connect customer needs to measurable value realization.

The Three Layers of the Value Map: The Value Hierarchy

The Value Map is built on a Value Hierarchy—a three-layer structure that defines how customers experience and measure success with your solution.

1. Identify Desired Outcomes (What the Customer Wants to Achieve)

Customers don’t buy products; they buy business outcomes. Desired Outcomes are the high-level goals customers are hiring your solution to accomplish.

Example (Sales Enablement Software):

• Desired Outcome: “Increase pipeline conversion rate from 30% to 50%.”

Business decisions are made at the Desired Outcomes level. Executives focus on these strategic goals when evaluating whether a solution is delivering value. However, the ability to influence these outcomes depends on execution at the Use Case level. To connect the two, we must ensure that the Use Cases are directly mapped to the Desired Outcomes, allowing Customer Success (CS) teams to drive measurable impact through their interactions and interventions.

2. Define Business Workflows (How the Customer Achieves Their Outcome)

Workflows represent the repeatable processes customers follow to make progress toward their goals. These workflows connect the customer’s internal operations to the measurable success of your solution.

Example (Sales Enablement Software):

• Business Workflow: “Lead Routing”

Business Workflows serve as the operational layer that bridges the gap between strategic Desired Outcomes and executional Use Cases. Without well-defined workflows, organizations struggle to translate high-level objectives into practical actions. CS teams play a key role in refining these workflows to ensure that frontline users are executing the right actions efficiently and effectively.

3. Map Use Cases (The Specific Actions That Drive Execution)

This is where product adoption meets business impact. Use Cases define how customers engage with the product to execute workflows and achieve their Desired Outcome.

Example (Sales Enablement Software):

• Use Case: “Automate lead scoring to surface top opportunities for immediate action.”

While business decisions are made at the Desired Outcomes level, the actual improvement and execution of value delivery happen at the Use Case level. CS teams must focus on optimizing Use Cases—ensuring that customers are using the product correctly and deriving tangible benefits. By mapping Use Cases to Business Workflows and then to Desired Outcomes, organizations can clearly articulate how specific actions contribute to overarching business goals.

Applying the Value Map in Customer Success & Post-Sales Strategy

The Value Map in itself is a valuable asset as it creates centralized documentation of what value actually means to your customers - the outcomes they want to achieve the steps of the path to get there.

That said, without the proper operational strategy to actually use the Value Map, it falls at risk of ending up in another buried folder of a companies shared drive, brought back to live for SKO's but failing to actually make a difference in how teams engage with the market.

Below are a few areas the Value Map can come to life - in upcoming editions of the ValueLab we will talk in more depth about how the GTM machine can be built on this foundation.

Enhancing QBRs and Value Reviews:

• Shift focus from feature reporting to tracking real business progress.
• Show customers where they are in their value realization journey using the Value Map structure.

Aligning Internal Teams:

• Ensure CS, Sales, and Product teams speak the same language around customer value.
• Standardize how teams communicate value realization milestones to customers.

Driving Expansion & Retention:

• Use the Value Map to identify gaps in customer progress and uncover expansion opportunities.
• Provide data-driven insights to support proactive engagement instead of reactive firefighting.

The Value Map as the Foundation for Value-Led Growth

The Value Map is not just a concept—it’s an actionable framework for post-sales teams to prove their impact. By incorporating elements of JTBD, Value Selling, and Customer Journey Mapping, it provides a structured, scalable approach to tracking and delivering customer value.

In the next article, we will explore how to operationalize the Value Map within the Enterprise Value Framework (EVF) to create a systematic, repeatable approach for customer success teams.

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