What is Return on Experience (ROE) in B2B?
Return on Experience is the return a revenue team earns by engineering the buyer’s experience of <em>buying</em> — helping them see the value, build internal consensus, and move forward confidently — rather than just selling at them. The buyer is doing the hardest job in the deal (aligning a dozen colleagues, clearing procurement, InfoSec, and finance, defending a decision they’ll live with), mostly without you. The biggest return in B2B isn’t what you sell; it’s how well you help them buy.
Return on Experience is the return most sellers leave on the table: the buyer is doing the hardest job in the whole deal, and they are doing it mostly without us.
Building consensus across a dozen colleagues. Clearing procurement, InfoSec, and finance. Defending a decision they will live with long after we have moved on to the next quarter.
That work, the actual experience of buying, is where most of the value gets won or lost. And right now most of us are not helping with it at all.
There is a real, measurable return waiting for the revenue team willing to help with that hard work instead of just selling at the people doing it. I call it Return on Experience. ROE for short.Return on Experience (ROE) is the measurable payoff — for both buyer and seller — of deliberately engineering the B2B buying experience: helping buyers see the value, carry it through their organization, and act with confidence, rather than just selling to them.
The deal is mostly decided before you show up
Look at how a modern purchase actually unfolds, and this stops being a matter of opinion.
By the time a buyer talks to a salesperson, the race is nearly run. 6sense studied close to four thousand buyers and found that 94% of buying groups rank a shortlist before they ever contact sales. The vendor in the top spot wins about 80% of the time, and 95% of eventual winners were on that shortlist from day one. Most buyers do not even reach out until they are two-thirds of the way through their journey.
So when you lead with a product pitch, you are often walking into a fight that was settled weeks ago.
What earns you the top spot is not the slickest feature set. It is helping early, and helping for real. Forrester found that 74% of executive buyers go with the seller who first added value and helped shape how they thought about the problem. First, not best.
And when the buying experience is poor, the cost is steep and current. Forrester’s 2024 research found that 86% of B2B purchases stall somewhere in the process, and 81% of buyers end up dissatisfied with the provider they chose. You can win the deal and still let the buyer down.
This is the real competition. Not the other logo on the shortlist, but selling that shows up late and adds nothing to the hard part.
ROE is engineered. It is not customer experience.
Let me be sharp about what ROE is not, because the word “experience” invites confusion.
It is not your reps being friendly. It is not fast email replies. It is not a slick portal, brand polish, a nice dinner, or swag. Those things are pleasant, and none of them move a stalled deal.
ROE is engineered buyer progress: the deliberate moments you design so a buyer can see value, carry it through their own organization, and move with confidence.
Part of the return is genuinely emotional, the confidence and relief a buyer feels when the path finally looks clear. But the experiences that move deals are built on purpose, not wished into being. In Inspire Your Buyers I describe value in three layers, emotional, operational, and business, and the best buying experiences deliver all three deliberately.
Two examples from my own work make it concrete.
Years back, my team and I built a campaign for Alcatel-Lucent around a virtual hotel. Buyers could walk through it and see the guest experience, the operational changes behind the scenes, and the business value of both, all in one place. That was not a feeling. It was a constructed experience that showed buyers value no slide could. It won CEB’s B2B Marketing Campaign of the Year, and more to the point, it worked.
With NetApp, my team and I scaled a Cloud Value Management workshop built to do one thing: get the buyer’s own stakeholders aligned before anything could move. It drove new business and expansion by engineering a moment of shared clarity for the whole buying group. Deliberate. A built experience with a built-in return.
The three jobs of Return on Experience: see it, carry it, land it
If you want the return, you have to design for it. I come back to the same three jobs every time.
1. See it.
Before anyone can buy, they have to see the value clearly. Most buyers cannot, because they are buried under conflicting information from every vendor and every internal voice.
Your job is to cut through it. Trade the noise for one clear picture of the problem, the outcome, and the path between them. That is what the virtual hotel did. In practice it looks like an art-of-the-possible workshop, a value session built around the buyer’s world instead of your feature list, or a demo framed by their outcome rather than your specs.
A buyer who sees clearly can act. A buyer who cannot, stalls.
2. Carry it.
Your champion has to win arguments in rooms you will never sit in. If the value cannot travel without you, it dies in the hallway between your meeting and theirs.
So arm them. For high-consideration purchases, the business case and ROI analysis are a big part of the buying experience, so build the ROI with your champion, not for them, and they will own it in the room. It matters more by the month, too: 57% of buyers now expect to see ROI within three months. Then give them what they need to align their own stakeholders, the way that NetApp workshop did.
The test is simple. Could your champion make the case, well, with you out of the building?
3. Land it.
In my book I describe the most common blunder in selling: a rep carries the ball the length of the field, then fumbles at the goal line, ending the meeting with “So, where should we go from here?” and handing control straight back to the buyer.
Do the opposite. Hard-code your next steps. It is the one part of selling I tell clients to package and standardize, because a clear, confident set of next steps is itself a powerful experience. “Based on my experience, I’d suggest we take these three steps next. Does that work for you?”
Give each step a purpose, the right people, the decisions to be made, and something the buyer walks away holding. That is how you keep everyone moving instead of waiting.
Why the return runs both ways
This is why the work is worth it. When you engineer the buying experience, the return lands on both sides of the table.
Your buyer gets clarity instead of fog, a decision they can defend, and value they begin feeling sooner. Their risk drops and their conviction rises.
Your revenue team gets the numbers that are hard to argue with. Win rates climb, by roughly 38% when buyer and seller truly agree on the problem, according to Corporate Visions. Deals grow and discounting shrinks, because a confident buyer does not need a price cut to feel safe.
And the whole thing accelerates. Faster time to value for the customer, faster time to contract for you, and faster cash into the business. That acceleration is the most overlooked part of the return, and often the most valuable.
One experience, two returns. The buyer reaches their outcome sooner, and you reach the deal, the expansion, and the reference sooner.
So, where is your Return on Experience hiding?
If you are staring at a pipeline of deals that will not move, the highest-returning move in front of you is probably not a sharper pitch or a deeper discount. It is choosing to help with the part of the deal your buyer is currently grinding through alone.
Pull up your last three stalled deals and ask one honest question: did we help them buy, or did we just sell at them and wait?
Whatever sits in the gap between those two is your Return on Experience. Right now, it is sitting there unclaimed.
Author
Bruce Scheer is CEO of ValuePros.io and the author of Amazon Best Seller Inspire Your Buyers. He helps B2B revenue teams engineer the buying experience so buyers can see the value, build the case, and get to yes. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
“Your buyer is doing the hardest job in the deal. Your return comes from how much easier you make it for them to buy.”
–– Bruce Scheer
Research cited
- 6sense, 2025 B2B Buyer Experience Report (survey of nearly 4,000 buyers): 94% of buying groups rank a shortlist before contacting sales; the first-ranked vendor wins about 80% of the time; 95% of winners were on the buyer’s Day One shortlist; buyers engage sellers about two-thirds through the journey.
- Forrester, The State of Business Buying, 2024: 86% of B2B purchases stall during the buying process; 81% of buyers are dissatisfied with the provider they chose.
- Forrester, via ValuePros B2B Stats 2026: 74% of executive buyers choose the seller who first adds value and helps shape their buying vision.
- Corporate Visions / Emblaze, 2024: win rates rise roughly 38% when buyer and seller align on the problem.
- G2, 2025: 57% of B2B buyers expect to see ROI within three months.
Frequently asked questions
Return on Experience is the return a revenue team earns by engineering the buyer’s experience of purchasing, helping them see value, build internal consensus, and move forward confidently, rather than relying on product pitches alone.
ROE isn’t about friendly reps, fast replies, or polished portals. It’s engineered buyer progress: deliberate moments designed to help a buyer see value, carry it through their organization, and land a confident decision.
See it, help the buyer see the value clearly; carry it, arm the champion to make the case internally without you in the room; and land it, hard-code clear next steps so momentum doesn’t stall.
See it, carry it, and land it: help the buyer clearly see the value of change, help them carry that value through their own internal building and consensus, and help them land the decision by defending it through procurement, InfoSec, and finance.
About ValuePros
ValuePros is a value enablement firm for organizations selling big-ticket B2B solutions. We help revenue teams work with their buyers to see, quantify, and capture real value, so their CFO can say “yes.”
We do that through a program we call the Value Edge: value narratives, CFO-ready value calculators, and value enablement training.
Let’s talk about how to lead your buyers with value.
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