The Key to the C-Suite

CHAPTER 4DETERMINING YOUR VALUE TO THE C-SUITE

In the past, return on investment (ROI) was one of the determining factors that C-level executives used to make what- and when-to-buy decisions. In the business-to-business (B2B) world, it often came down to, “What is the ROI, and when will we see it?” Times are different now; ROI is less important. Why? Because, as one of my customers said, “Very few organizations actually go back and measure the value (or nonvalue) that sellers did or didn’t deliver. ROI is just an overused and abused term.” Each year we ask hundreds of companies if they are measuring success after they implement a new purchase, and the response reveals (as it did five years ago) that less than 10 percent of the firms go back to ...