There is a special energy that fills the room when members of the Customer Value Community come together. It is not a conference crowd or a vendor showcase. It is a collective of peers who genuinely want to learn from one another and move the industry forward.
That spirit was alive at our Denver Customer Value Community GTM Leadership Forum, where more than fifty GTM executives from leading B2B companies gathered at Autodesk’s offices for a day of shared learning and collaboration. The goal was simple but profound: to explore how value can become a part of a company-wide operating system, like DNA, that connects teams, customers, partners, and outcomes.
“Everyone in this community has a vested interest in each other’s success. We’re not just talking about value; we’re living it, learning it, and scaling it together.” — Chad Quinn, CEO and Co-Founder of Ecosystems
Throughout the day, that generosity took shape through open dialogue, hands-on workshops, and candid stories from Autodesk’s own journey in operationalizing value at scale.
1. A Path to Value Built with Sales, Not for Sales
The day began with Autodesk’s leadership team, Paul Fleming, Senior Sales Director, EMEA, Beth Robins Kaiser, Global Value Practice Leader, and Josh Best, Principal Value Consultant, sharing how the company’s Path to Value initiative is embedding value across every GTM function.
Dan Sixsmith, Head of Customer Success at Ecosystems, framed the discussion by noting that Autodesk’s program ranks “among the top handful of elite value management programs hitting the cover off the ball.”
From there, the panel revealed how they achieved it.
“We organized around value as something that is not a tool or an initiative but a discipline that sits across everything we do. That means it is part of our people strategy, our sales process, and our customer engagement frameworks.” — Paul Fleming, Senior Sales Director for EMEA at Autodesk
Rather than impose new systems, Autodesk’s value team integrated directly into existing motions, showing how value could amplify, not disrupt, the sales process.
“Our goal was to elevate what was already working. We focused on augmentation and amplification, not disruption.” — Beth Robins Kaiser, Global Value Practice Leader at Autodesk
The results spoke volumes:
- 63% increase in field adoption year over year
- Mid–8 figures in closed-won deals influenced by value motions
- 25% reduction in sales cycle time
2. Scaling with Simplicity and Alignment
Scaling globally required a focus on consistency and clarity. Autodesk’s teams standardized deliverables through the Collaborative Value Assessment (CVA) within the Ecosystems platform, ensuring a common structure across pre- and post-sale motions.
In EMEA alone, the initiative supported 468 customers, connected €563M in planned customer value to win business, and influenced more than €22M in closed-won revenue.
To sustain momentum, Autodesk established a Value Steering Committee spanning Sales, Success, Marketing, and Enablement, creating a unified language and rhythm across the company.
“That alignment creates credibility. When everyone tells the same story in the same language of value, it lands differently with customers.” — Paul Fleming, Senior Sales Director for EMEA at Autodesk
3. The Golden Thread of Value
Next, attendees heard from Elisabeth Zornes, Chief Customer Officer at Autodesk, who joined for a fireside chat on Transforming Customer Success at Autodesk with Chad Quinn, CEO & Co-Founder of Ecosystems.
Zornes’ conversation tied the morning’s discussions together with a clear leadership mantra:
“Unlock value and drive growth. We want to unlock value for customers and make accessible to them all the goodness Autodesk can provide. When we do that right, we drive growth for both sides.” — Elisabeth Zornes, Chief Customer Officer
That clarity of purpose has guided Autodesk’s transformation of customer success from a post-sale function to a company-wide driver of measurable impact. Under Zornes’ leadership, the focus has shifted toward creating “irresistible customer moments” across the entire lifecycle, to moments that connect engagement to real business outcomes.
She reflected on how her time serving as interim Chief Revenue Officer deepened that perspective, giving her visibility into the full revenue engine and the importance of continuity between sales, customer success, and product.
“Customers are buying outcomes and experiences, not products. When we lead with those outcomes and orchestrate the engagement through one thread, we see three to four times growth.” — Elisabeth Zornes, Chief Customer Officer
That “golden thread of value” became a unifying metaphor for the day, capturing how value must flow seamlessly from the initial promise through realization and renewal.
And in true community spirit, Zornes left the group with a deceptively simple question that quickly became a shared mantra:
“In every account review, I ask: what would that lead to? It opens the aperture to think about the outcome, not just the activity.” — Elisabeth Zornes, Chief Customer Officer
4. From Moments that Matter to Irresistible Experiences
Building on that idea, Zornes turned to how Autodesk is translating this value mindset into day-to-day customer engagement. She described “irresistible customer moments” as the tangible expression of the golden thread. Those inflection points are when customers face a challenge or transition to something new.
“If they get stuck, that is the time to create an irresistible experience that leaves them in a better place than where they started.” — Elisabeth Zornes, Chief Customer Officer at Autodesk
This philosophy reflects Autodesk’s broader shift from tracking internal activity to measuring Customer-Verified Value, where outcomes are defined and quantified in the customer’s own language and metrics.
One striking example: a global customer reduced rework by 35%, saving over $600 million through Autodesk’s collaboration, demonstrating proof that value-led engagement translates to real-world impact.
5. Hackathon: Co-Creating the Future of Value
In the afternoon, the forum shifted from inspiration to co-creation. Attendees rolled up their sleeves for hands-on hackathons designed to turn the day’s ideas into action. Two challenges set the stage:
- AI-Powered Value Storytelling
- Innovation in Value Realization
Guided by leaders from Autodesk, Appian, and Adobe, participants broke into small working groups to explore how technology and teamwork can come together to scale value without losing authenticity.
At the center of these discussions was ViViEN™ 2.0, Ecosystems’ Virtual Value Engineer, which had been introduced earlier in the day. ViViEN™ represents the next frontier in AI for GTM teams: an intelligent partner that helps users research accounts, craft tailored value stories, and connect pre-sale business cases to post-sale value realization, all within the same collaborative workspace.
Teams debated how AI can support, rather than replace, the human side of value conversations. They envisioned ViViEN™ serving as a digital teammate, surfacing insights, identifying outcomes, and prompting more thoughtful engagement with customers. The consensus was clear: when AI is embedded in existing workflows, it can amplify human empathy and precision at scale.
As one participant summarized during the group share-out,
“AI will only accelerate customer impact if it lives where value already lives.”
The energy in the room captured what the Customer Value Community does best: transforming shared challenges into collective breakthroughs. By the end of the session, attendees had not only designed actionable frameworks for their own organizations but also reimagined what the future of AI-powered, value-first GTM could look like when people and intelligent systems work together in harmony.
6. A Community of Builders
The day closed where it began: with community. Attendees reflected on the lessons from Autodesk’s journey and the momentum building across industries.
From London to Boston to Denver, and next to New York for ELEVATE 2025, the Customer Value Community continues to grow, now with over 4,300 members representing more than 1,600 companies worldwide.
What unites them is not just an interest in value selling, but a shared belief that customer value is the most powerful force for growth when teams work together to realize it.
“We are not just exchanging ideas. We are co-creating a movement.” — Chad Quinn, CEO and Co-Founder of Ecosystems
To learn more about the Ecosystems platform and the Customer Value Community, contact our team.
