What is “Return on Future” in a business case?
“Return on Future” (ROF) is the value a decision creates or protects that a standard business case never counts — the options it opens, the doors it keeps from closing, and the strategic optionality a big bet preserves. Alongside ROI (will it pay back?) and ROE (can we even execute it?), ROF is often the value that actually decides the deal, yet most business cases stop where the math stops. Pricing it is how you rise above the value fog and help executives see the horizon a decision creates.
“The value that decides the deal is often the value your business case never counts: the doors this decision keeps from closing.”
–– Bruce Scheer
The value you can’t count — the Return on Future — is the value that decides the deal. Return on Future is the part of the value story most business cases never count, yet it is often what tips the decision. Every big-ticket purchase is a big bet for the buyer. They know it. The person championing your solution is not just weighing what it costs. They are weighing what happens to them if the bet goes wrong, and what they might miss if they play it too safe. That is the territory of Return on Future: the part of the value story most business cases never reach.
So they build a business case. And almost every business case answers one question: will this pay back? That is ROI, and it matters. It is how a buyer quantifies value, and it is what gives the buyer’s CFO a reason to say “yes.”
But here is what I have learned watching complex deals stall for thirty years. The part of the value story that actually decides a big bet is often the part you cannot put a number on. It sits above the fog, and most business cases never climb high enough to see it.
Three returns, one climb
Value in a big-ticket deal shows up as three distinct returns, each answering a different question running through the buyer’s head.
Picture them as a climb out of the value fog. ROI is the first step, down in the fog, where the numbers live. ROF is the top step, above the fog, where you can finally see the horizon. And ROE, the buying experience, is the staircase itself, the foundation that carries the buyer from the first step to the top. Three returns, one climb.
ROI answers, will it pay back? ROE answers, can we actually buy this well and carry it to a yes? ROF answers, what future does this create, and what future does it protect?
Say them in sequence, and the logic clicks. ROI earns financial permission. ROE earns buy-side belief. ROF earns strategic commitment. Together, they are how a buyer comes to see, quantify, and capture real value.
ROI is the one we all know. Payback, IRR, NPV, total cost of ownership. It is the ticket that gets a big bet onto the agenda, and with 79% of purchases now requiring CFO sign-off and 57% of buyers expecting to see a return inside three months, you do not get far without it. But a ticket is not the whole decision. Plenty of well-quantified deals still die. In fact, 40 to 60% of qualified pipeline ends in no decision at all, not a loss to a competitor, just a stall. ROI is the first step, and it is still halfway down in the “value fog.” From here, the buyer cannot yet see the future the bet is really buying.
ROE is the one most sellers skip, and it is the lynchpin. Return on Experience is the return you earn by engineering the buying experience, helping the buyer see the value clearly and carry it through their own building. It is not a slicker portal or a friendlier rep. It is engineered buyer progress, the staircase the whole climb depends on. I made the full case for it in Return on Experience, and the reason it is the lynchpin is simple: without a good buying experience, the buyer never climbs, never sees your ROI clearly or believes your ROF. SBI found that on bold, high-conviction decisions, 59% of the influence comes from the buying experience itself, not the offering. Do it well and the return runs both ways: a clearer, faster, more defensible decision for the buyer, and a bigger, faster, less-discounted deal for your revenue team. One experience, two returns.
ROE is the foundation the other two returns stand on. Which brings us to the top of the climb.
Return on Future: the return nobody prices
Climb to the top step, and this is the view. Return on Future is the strategic value of the options an investment creates, preserves, or protects, before their full economic payoff can be credibly modeled.
Read that slowly, because the load-bearing word is options. Not benefits. Not vague upside. Options: the right, but not the obligation, to do something later that you cannot do today.
This is not a new idea in finance. It is real options thinking, and it is decades old. Investors have long paid for flexibility, for the ability to expand, wait, or walk away as the future comes into focus. What is new is bringing that logic into the buyer’s business case, where it almost never shows up. ROF comes in two forms, and a big bet usually carries both.
Option creation is the upside. A big bet opens moves you could not make before. Take a company replacing aging network infrastructure with a modern platform. The near-term ROI is real, lower cost and less downtime. But the larger value is the doors it opens: new AI-driven services the old network could never run, new markets they can now serve, new data they can now collect and compound. None of that is on today’s spreadsheet, and all of it is why the sharpest buyers say yes.
Option preservation is the other half, and it is just as real. Some bets are worth making because of the door they keep from closing. A security or compliance investment is the classic case. A breach has a cost you can model. But it can also foreclose futures: markets you can no longer sell into, partners who walk, trust you cannot rebuild. The value is not only the incident you avoid. It is the entire set of options you protect.
Here is the line to hold onto. Strategic value is what you cannot count but cannot afford to miss. It is harder to quantify. It is not less real. It is the horizon you climbed for. Real value, the kind that is built to last, usually lives right here.
How to frame Return on Future with your champion
So how do you put ROF to work in a live deal without hand-waving your way into a skeptical CFO’s bad graces? Three moves.
First, build the options list with your champion, not for them. Sit down together and name the specific future moves the investment creates or preserves. Write them out. A future your champion helped put into words is one they will defend in a room you will never enter.
Second, name the doors that close. For every option, ask the harder question: what happens to this choice if we do nothing or wait a year? Delay is rarely free. When a future option quietly disappears with inaction, you have just found real urgency, and urgency the buyer feels beats urgency you assert.
Third, tie it to strategy the executives already fund. The most credible ROF is not a new idea you introduce. It is a bridge to an initiative the leadership team has already committed to. When your solution is what makes their stated strategy possible, ROF stops sounding soft. It becomes the reason the bet is not optional.
So, where is your Return on Future hiding?
Pull up your most important open deal and ask an honest question. Have you built all three returns, or just the one you already know how to count?
Most business cases stop where the math stops. That is exactly where the biggest value in a big bet begins, in the futures the decision creates and the futures it protects. Help your champion build all three, and the fog lifts. Buyer and seller end up on the same step, above the fog, looking at the same horizon. That shared view is the state I call Valueocity: clear, convicted, and confident enough to move. And their CFO gets a reason to say “yes” that outlasts the spreadsheet.
Author
Bruce Scheer is CEO of ValuePros.io and the author of Amazon Best Seller Inspire Your Buyers. He helps B2B revenue teams build value cases their buyers can defend internally and get approved, across the three returns that decide a big bet. Connect with him on LinkedIn.
Research cited
- The JOLT Effect, Dixon & McKenna, 2022: 40 to 60% of qualified B2B pipeline ends in “no decision.”
- TrustRadius, 2024: 79% of B2B purchases require CFO approval.
- G2, 2025: 57% of B2B buyers expect to see ROI within three months.
- SBI Growth Advisory, “Drive Bold Purchase Decisions with Headway Selling,” 2024: for bold purchase decisions, the GTM (buying) experience drives 59% of the decision versus 41% for the offering.
Frequently asked questions
Return on Future is the value a decision creates or protects that a standard business case never counts — the options it opens and the doors it keeps from closing. It answers “what future does this create, and what future does it protect?” and is often the value that actually decides the deal.
ROI asks “will it pay back?” (payback, IRR, NPV, TCO); ROE, Return on Experience, asks “can we buy this well and carry it to a yes?”; and ROF, Return on Future, asks “what future does this create and protect?” Said in sequence, the logic of the full value case clicks.
Because most business cases stop where the math stops. ROF captures option creation and option preservation — strategic optionality that is real in finance but rarely priced — so it’s the value teams leave uncounted even though it can decide the deal.
Build the options list with your champion, name the doors that close if the buyer does nothing, and tie the whole thing to a strategy the executives already care about — turning uncounted future value into a case the buying group can defend internally.
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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