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Business Value Assessment template
A Business Value Assessment in sales uses stakeholder interviews to establish what a proposed software purchase needs to achieve. Plan the interviews here, record each one, then check what the business case still needs.
If the customer already understands the problem, has credible figures and knows who can decide, a shorter working session may be enough to establish the case.
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Plan the interviews
Choose the people who can answer the open questions. Include the economic buyer, who needs to agree which business outcomes the investment is meant to deliver, and people whose work will change. They help establish whether those outcomes are realistic and how to measure them.
Before each interview, fill in the person's role and the question they can answer.
In each interview
For example, if the customer is considering a customer service platform, ask people to take you through the work:
- Where does a case wait?
- What gets entered twice?
- Who picks it up when the first person cannot resolve it?
- Which part would actually change if the company bought the product?
For every number, note which task it refers to, how often it happens and what the estimate is based on. When a manager and someone doing the work describe it differently, record both.
Record each interview
One block per interview. For more interviews, print the page or copy your text before you start a fresh one.
After the interviews
The case should make it possible to challenge the assumptions and still understand why the investment is being proposed. Tick each item once you have checked it.
Your assessment
Sources
The fields and questions come from the article on what stakeholder interviews add to a Business Value Assessment.
In Value and proof for senior Sales Engineers, participants learn to plan and run a Business Value Assessment.