Celebrating and Honoring our First Graduates of the VBB Program

Written by: John Porter, Chief Technology Officer & Co-Founder, DecisionLink

Today, I had the honor and privilege of recognizing and honoring ten of our valued customers on becoming “Value Heroes”, our first customers to graduate from the Value Black Belt (VBB) Program and to obtain a Value Black Belt certificate. These individuals completed the program to transfer the knowledge they’ve learned by implementing ValueCloud® into their systems enterprise-wide, and showcase that knowledge in regards to embracing and effectively and successfully managing customer value. These Value Heroes are the first class to graduate from the VBB Program, and it is truly an achievement to have customers who want to continue to dig deeper and truly develop their knowledge and understanding of their customers’ profiles.  The value and intention of the program is to ensure that our customers understand the real meaning of “value” and how they can have success by becoming experts in customer value management (CVM) to spread that value to their customers and their respective companies enterprise-wide. It is significant that we have Value Heroes who wholly represent what it means to obtain the leverage they need to continue to develop and maintain customer relationships for the long term.  Please join me in recognizing DecisionLink’s First Class of VBB Program Customer Graduates:

• Ben Allard, Vice President and General Manager, APAC, Apptio
• Megan Bozio, Senior Director of Global Sales Programs & Enablement, CrowdStrike
• Greg Cunningham, Principal Business Value Consultant, Confluent
• Daisha Chung, Director of Global Business Value & Strategy, CrowdStrike
• Matt Denton, Senior Director of Business Value Consulting, Confluent
• Chad Dull, Lead Solution Consultant, Value Engineering, Verint
• Trent Issacs, Regional Vice President, Solution Sales Innovation & Enablement, Verint
• Hadley Paul, Business Value Consultant, PagerDuty
• Linda Roach, Vice President of Product Marketing, Planview
• Gaurav Sharma, Senior Value Consultant, ServiceNow

The Value Black Belt Program is one of DecisionLink’s newest and game-changing initiatives in the world of CVM. The VBB Program is a tool used to ensure professionals are properly equipped and motivated to leverage the ValueCloud® platform. It provides stakeholders with the understanding and skills to unleash customer value across the engagement cycle. The VBB Program also serves as a tracking method that ensures management visibility and company success. There are four different belts that include ten professional roles. Each level is specifically designed to cater to different professional roles and tools that are specifically designed for each profession enterprise-wide. In this program, each belt has a different certificate that professionals can obtain.

The structure of the program is designed to make sure professionals are getting the analytics they need to successfully provide and manage value for their customers from ValueCloud®. All of the belts have subcategories that allow customers to fully understand value in their respective role in their organization, and how to translate that value to their customers, as well as learning how it can be tailored to customers to encourage them to appreciate the true value of the product provided. 

During the duration of the program, there are checkpoint criteria that consist of being able to clarify competencies, courses to be completed, and to be able to achieve a VBB certification, successfully taking and passing the activity readiness test. Those checkpoints are in place to make sure that our customers are understanding the program. The VBB Program teaches our customers to bring forward this transformative knowledge to their organization to shift from just product selling to intentional and strategic outcome-based business value selling.  

These Value Heroes now have an advantage by completing the program and successfully implementing what they learned and transferring it to their day-to-day activities.  Being a part of the first class of VBB graduates is such an amazing and important accomplishment for our customers. Thanks to the VBB Program, our first ten customer graduates have earned certificates at the level of CVM achievement that makes sense for them and their role. DecisionLink was founded on the mission of leveraging technology to bring business value to every customer conversation.  ValueCloud® first standardized how value is communicated everywhere in the customer lifecycle, and the VBB Program ensures that all Value Professionals are properly motivated and prepared to fully and quickly leverage the ValueCloud® platform and its powerful collection of applications.  Congratulations again to our first class of VBB graduates!

To learn more about how you can be a Customer Value Management Professional expert through the Value Black Belt Program, visit our website at decisionlink.com/value-black-belt-program.