Value driver tree example: from reported result to task
A value driver tree in a sale runs from the customer's reported result down to one task, with how often it happens and what each estimate rests on. The upper levels use figures from the customer's filing; the lowest level is an estimate for the customer to check.
Start the tree at a number the customer already reports, such as Old Dominion Freight Line's operating ratio of 75.2% for 2025. Split it into the revenue and cost lines in the same filing, then into the volumes behind them, until you reach work that someone does on a given day. Beside every number at that lowest level, write which task it refers to, how often it happens, what the estimate is based on and who still has to confirm it.
What a value driver tree is
A value driver tree links a result that matters to management to the drivers underneath it that management can influence. As a 2024 paper in the Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance puts it, the upper branches can usually be split exactly, by arithmetic, while the lower levels are more often joined by logical association, and the relationships you can calculate are generally the less uncertain ones.
In a sale, that split decides how you treat each number. The reported figures can be checked against the customer's own report. The levels below them are estimates about the customer's work. Record whether the customer has confirmed each input, and keep the estimate visible in the case.
A value driver tree example from Old Dominion's 10-K
Suppose your prospect were a US less-than-truckload carrier such as Old Dominion Freight Line. Its 10-K for 2025 gives you the numbers for the top three levels.
Check the reported figures before you build anything on them. Operating expenses of $4,135.3 million divided by revenue of $5,496.4 million give an operating ratio of about 75.2%. Salaries, wages and benefits are one part of those expenses. For the revenue branch, 43,762 shipments a day over 253 work days is 11,071,786 shipments, and the filing reports 11,072 thousand. At $492.01 a shipment that is $5,447.4 million, against $5,446.2 million of LTL services revenue in the filing, a difference of 0.02%. The filing notes that its revenue per hundredweight metric includes revenue for undelivered freight that the accounts defer. That illustrates a timing difference between an operating metric and the accounts, but the filing does not identify how much of this particular gap it explains. Revenue from operations also holds $50.2 million from other services, which the shipment level does not explain.
The filing also names the measures the company itself uses for labour productivity, among them pickup and delivery stops per hour and platform shipments per hour. Attach your task level to one of those. A measure the customer already tracks is one its own people can check against their own data.
| Level | Node | Number | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Node Operating ratio (operating expenses divided by revenue) | Number 75.2% | Where it comes from Reported in the 10-K |
| 2 | Node Revenue from operations | Number $5,496.4 million | Where it comes from Reported in the 10-K |
| 2 | Node Total operating expenses | Number $4,135.3 million | Where it comes from Reported in the 10-K |
| 3 | Node Salaries, wages and benefits | Number $2,635.3 million, 47.9% of revenue | Where it comes from Reported in the 10-K |
| 3 | Node LTL shipments per day, work days, LTL revenue per shipment | Number 43,762, 253 and $492.01 | Where it comes from Reported in the 10-K |
| 3 | Node Pickup and delivery drivers | Number 5,015 | Where it comes from Reported in the 10-K |
| 4 | Node Second delivery stop after a failed first attempt | Number 2 in 100 shipments, 15 minutes each | Where it comes from An assumption for the customer to confirm |
The task level, with invented figures
Say your offer could reduce the number of deliveries that fail at the first attempt and need a second stop. The task is that second stop.
How often it happens: assume 2 in every 100 shipments. On 43,762 shipments a day, that is about 875 second stops a day. What the estimate is based on: so far, nothing but an assumption. A pickup and delivery supervisor can replace it with a count from the dispatch records.
How long each one takes: assume 15 minutes of driver time. That gives about 219 driver hours a day, or about 55,000 hours a year over 253 work days. Spread over 5,015 full-time pickup and delivery drivers, it is about 11 hours each a year. Those are estimated hours spent on repeat stops, not the hours the offer would necessarily remove.
If the real share is 1 in 100, the hours halve to about 27,700. The filing fixes the upper levels, so the size of the case moves with this assumption. That is why its basis has to stand beside it.
When a manager and someone doing the work describe it differently, record both. A supervisor may give you the share from the dispatch records, while a driver may give you the minutes from experience. Each is a different basis, and each confirms a different number.
Keep each estimate visible up to the business case
For every number, note which task it refers to, how often it happens and what the estimate is based on. Then carry those notes upward. An estimate should remain recognisable as an estimate when it reaches the business case.
The same rule decides what goes into a forecast. Before a deal goes into the commit forecast, its metrics should be ones the buyer has confirmed, not ones the vendor proposed. In the example, the 55,000 hours stay assumed until operations confirms both the share and the minutes.
Hours are not yet money. Until the customer says what will happen to them, for example less overtime or more stops per hour on the same routes, they are not a saving on the salaries line. That consequence is the business number of a MEDDICC Metrics line, and until the economic buyer agrees to it, it stays open.
Check the tree before it reaches the economic buyer
1. Recompute the reported relationships you can from the filing. Write down any gap and whether its cause is known.
2. Give every number at the task level a task, a frequency, a basis and the name of the person who will confirm it.
3. Mark each of those numbers as confirmed or assumed, and keep the mark in the business case.
4. Attach the task level to a measure the customer already reports or tracks.
5. Keep the tree short enough to read: the 2024 paper cites earlier work stressing that trees lose their clarity after the fourth level.
The task level gets its basis in stakeholder interviews, and the Business Value Assessment template has a field for the task, frequency and basis of each number. If you drew a sales value pyramid from the same annual report, the tree takes that report down to the numbers. How value is described across your whole offer is a different job, the one my enterprise sales consulting does.
Sources
- Old Dominion Freight Line, Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025. Old Dominion Freight Line, Inc. (SEC EDGAR), 24 February 2026.
- Toward a notation for modeling value driver trees: Classification development and research agenda. Journal of Corporate Accounting & Finance (open access, FH Münster), 5 April 2024.
- Toward a notation for modeling value driver trees (publication record). FH Münster University of Applied Sciences, repository, 5 April 2024.
Facts last checked on 4 November 2026.