Sales value pyramid: how to build one from an annual report
A sales value pyramid links a customer's objective and strategy to the capabilities it needs. Draft one from its annual report and test it in the meeting.
A sales value pyramid connects a customer's corporate objective to its business strategy, the initiative underneath it, the challenges and the capabilities needed to address them. Before a first meeting with a listed company's CIO, use the annual report to prepare a first version in the company's own words. Record the page for each passage and leave gaps where the report gives you no answer. The meeting is where you test whether those connections describe the customer's situation.
A value pyramid example from The Home Depot's annual report
A single letter to shareholders can give you material for all five levels. Say you sell order management software and your next meeting is with The Home Depot. The letter to shareholders in its 2025 Annual Report sets out a growth strategy in three parts: "drive our core and culture, deliver a frictionless interconnected experience, and win with the Pro." The letter names order management under the third, so follow that one.
The connection between the broader Pro investments and a particular order-management project still needs to be established with the customer:
Corporate objective (PDF page 2): "Our objectives to grow market share and deliver shareholder value also remain unchanged."
Business strategy (PDF page 2): "win with the Pro"
Business initiative (PDF page 3): "developing incremental capabilities to better serve them, like investing in a unified Pro team that helps drive engagement"
Challenge (PDF pages 3 and 4): "six capabilities these larger Pros expect that we have not typically offered in the past", where the larger Pro is "the medium to large Pro that shops across categories and works on complex projects"
Minimum required capabilities (PDF page 4): "a professional sales force, enhanced delivery capabilities, trade credit, preferred pricing programs, order management, and a best-in-class digital experience"
The letter says many of these capabilities already exist in some top Pro markets and are at different stages of maturity. (PDF page 4.) It gives you a reason to ask what work remains. It does not establish that The Home Depot needs a new order-management supplier.
Turn what the letter leaves out into questions
The useful questions concern priorities, the work still to be done and who is responsible for it. Start with the letter's account of the capabilities and ask how it applies now:
Which capabilities matter most to the next stage of growth with larger Pros, and why?
How does order management work for larger Pros today, and where does it still limit what they can do?
Who owns that work, and how does it relate to the broader Pro investments?
What are you improving yourselves, and where might you need a supplier?
Where there is a gap, what does it mean for the business and the Pros you want to serve?
Ask the senior person which priorities matter and who can help you understand the work. Follow that introduction into the operational detail. Where a gap exists, explore its effect on revenue, cost or risk before deciding whether your product is relevant.
The pyramid is a hypothesis to discuss, not evidence that an opportunity is qualified. A blank level needs a question. If the conversation gives you no worthwhile problem your product can help with, qualify the opportunity out. Do not treat silence in an annual report as proof that there is no relevant work.
From a capability to your product
At the capability level, describe what a credible solution must enable before naming your product. Once the customer agrees that the capability matters, establish how they will judge the available solutions. Then show where yours is relevant and what evidence supports the difference. My Value Framework covers the move from required capabilities to your own solution.
At Leapwork, where I built and led Sales Engineering, the product was test automation. Consider a company trying to release software faster as part of a digital transformation. If manual testing takes longer than the release cycle allows, the team may delay releases or reduce the testing. The business conversation concerns what those choices mean for time to market and risk. That gives the customer a basis for judging what a testing capability needs to achieve.
A value pyramid template for your own customer
Prepare the pyramid from the report, then revise it with what the customer confirms. The five levels are corporate objective, business strategies, business initiatives, challenges, and minimum required capabilities.
1. Open the customer's latest annual report at the letter to shareholders. For The Home Depot, that is PDF pages 2 to 4.
2. Choose a strategy with a possible connection to the problem your offering addresses. Keep that connection open to correction.
3. Copy each passage word for word with its page, so you can give the customer their words back.
4. Leave a level empty where the report gives no answer and take it into the meeting as a question. Record what the customer can confirm and what remains unknown. For the challenges, also read the risk factors, Item 1A in a US company's Form 10-K. For a subsidiary, start with the parent's report.
5. Use the page to ask whether the priorities still hold, who owns the work and what has changed. Follow the customer’s answers into the questions you could not prepare.
6. Afterwards, write down in their words what the customer called their problem: the identified pain, the I in MEDDICC.
At Nexthink I trained the global Solution Consulting team in value pyramids. In my opportunity qualification training, each participant brings a current opportunity and leaves with the next customer meeting prepared.
Sources
- The Home Depot Annual Report 2025. The Home Depot, 2026.
- What is the Value Pyramid. MEDDICC, undated.
- MEDDIC, the way to reverse engineer a purchase decision (episode 105). The SaaSiest Podcast, 3 October 2023.
Facts last checked on 27 October 2026.
Updated 26 October 2026.
Updated 27 October 2026.