Many businesses make a critical mistake when defining customer value: they treat it as a fluid, ever-changing metric rather than a fixed, measurable figure. For example, I once spoke to a business leader who described their “average” deal size as between $30,000 and $3,000,000. But in B2B sales and marketing, value isn’t a spectrum. It’s a concrete number dictated by what customers are willing to pay.
If leadership teams don’t have a clear grasp of this number, it becomes nearly impossible to measure marketing performance, forecast revenue, or develop an effective go-to-market (GTM) strategy. In short, businesses that fail to define value risk being left out of the critical conversations that drive growth.
THE ROLE OF VALUE IN SALES AND MARKETING
At its core, value equates to revenue—how customers contribute to a business financially. Determining this requires sales and marketing teams to be on the same page about identifying the ideal customer profile (ICP), confirming product-market fit, and developing pricing strategies that align with business goals.
But identifying value—or simply agreeing on its definition—can present a challenge. Depending on the industry and business model, value could refer to the average size of a single sale or to revenue generated year-over-year throughout the client’s lifetime. If one team member defines success based on a $30,000 annual recurring revenue deal, while another assumes deals will be in the millions, the entire GTM strategy is built on an unstable foundation. While deal values will naturally vary between small to mid-sized businesses and enterprise clients, the principle remains unchanged: organizations must select a value number and commit to it.
For organizations struggling to define value, a few key questions can help recalibrate their approach:
- What is the true average deal size?
- Is the definition of value consistent across all teams?
- Has the company committed to a single value number for at least one full year?
THE RISK OF TREATING VALUE AS A MOVING TARGET
Rather than committing to a fixed figure for a set period, companies frequently modify their expectations—creating chaos in the process. Marketing metrics are only as reliable as the data used to calculate them.
Every GTM motion relies on three fundamental metrics: volume (leads generated), velocity (speed of lead conversion), and value. While volume and velocity will fluctuate based on market conditions and campaign performance, value should remain consistent.
When organizations continually adjust their value number, all three metrics are disrupted, leaving teams scrambling to interpret pipeline data. As a result, every downstream decision—demand generation, lead qualification, and revenue forecasting—becomes flawed.
WHY VALUE CONSISTENCY DRIVES SMARTER DECISION MAKING
Experienced sales leaders recognize that maintaining a consistent value metric is essential for strategic decision making. Oftentimes, the most successful companies limit their pricing models to no more than three product or service tiers. Increased complexity makes it significantly more difficult to measure and refine GTM strategies. Constantly altering pricing structures, expanding product offerings without alignment, or modifying the value number based on subjective judgment makes performance tracking nearly impossible.
One strategy for ensuring accuracy is conducting a win-loss analysis to identify patterns in deal sizes and pin down specific limitations around customers’ willingness to pay. There may be a price ceiling that hasn’t been identified or a heavy concentration of smaller deals that make larger ones outliers. Moving forward, sales and marketing teams can then stay on top of any fluctuations by holding quarterly pricing strategy reviews. For example, if ICP expectations don’t match actual deal outcomes or are shifting away from previous outcomes, that information signals the need for a change.
In short, companies should use the data they already have to set their value accurately from the beginning, allow for some variance, and only make changes when documented trends indicate a clear shift. Value may not be a “set it and forget it” metric, but it can lean on a piece of conventional wisdom: measure twice, cut once. Conducting win-loss analyses and quarterly monitoring can help to determine an acceptable range for deal size variance, rather than adjusting the core value figure arbitrarily.
THE BOTTOM LINE: CONSISTENCY WINS
Successful businesses thrive on clarity. Leadership teams that commit to a fixed value number make better decisions, produce more accurate forecasts, and build marketing and sales strategies that drive measurable growth. These are the teams that win.