How to Win Enterprise Clients by Proving ROI
For founders, directors and commercial leaders selling into enterprise, across subscription, membership, specialist information and B2B events businesses
Bartek Ogonowski, Co-Founder and CEO of LEVRA, spoke to Renewd members in December 2025 about why human skills matter. On 15 September 2026 he came back to explain how LEVRA proved that they pay. The company went from founding at the end of 2022 to an enterprise partnership with Google in 2025.
Every buyer he spoke to agreed that human skills matter. None of them would sign without evidence that training those skills improved business performance. LEVRA's answer was to define 31 human skills, map each one to productivity, engagement or efficiency, and measure the movement, so that buyers could see a commercial return.
The same problem shows up in any business where the buyer cannot easily measure what they are buying. Membership, community access, audience, sponsorship and specialist data all fall into that category. Bartek's view is that the strength of the product is not what closes these deals, and LEVRA spent most of years two and three building its own measurement model because nothing available off the shelf did the job.
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Why do enterprise deals stall even when the buyer agrees?
Because a buyer can agree with you and still not spend anything. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 puts creative thinking, resilience and flexibility, curiosity and lifelong learning, and leadership and social influence among the top 10 skills on the rise, and Forbes, Harvard Business Review and Fortune have all covered the theme. Every buyer Bartek met accepted that.
What none of them would do is sign without proof that LEVRA's training moved a number they already reported on. Buyers who tell you the product is exactly what they need and then go quiet for two quarters are doing the same thing.
Is a better product enough to win enterprise deals?
Not on its own. LEVRA was founded on 28 September 2022, two months before ChatGPT was released. With the barriers to building technology now low, Bartek puts the difference down to distribution, network and relationships.
LEVRA's first three clients were Deloitte, Grant Thornton and the University of Oxford. He or his co-founder already knew all three from the inside, so they understood the problem before they sold against it. One of their early investors called this leveraging your unfair advantage. Hundreds of cold outreach attempts ran alongside and did not produce the same result. Early pitches led with virtual reality headsets and how impressive the technology was, and Bartek described leaving one call realising “we don't even know if we're actually solving a problem for this organisation.”
Google started with a chance meeting. He was visiting a friend at the Google offices, got talking to a group of Googlers about the future of learning, and was introduced to a head of learning who walked into the room. They played a game of pool. He asked to come and present, went back a week later and presented to the wider team.
How long is an enterprise sales cycle, and who makes the decision?
LEVRA's client data puts the average at nine months for tier one clients and four months for tier two, with tier set by global presence and headcount. Forrester's State of Business Buying 2026 puts 13 internal stakeholders on a typical enterprise decision, alongside nine external influencers.
Bartek's point was that you are selling to a room rather than to a person. LEVRA runs BANT as the early filter and MEDDIC once a deal gets serious, and uses AI notetakers to check each call against both. If the team cannot name the budget holder, the economic buyer and the decision process, the deal is not qualified. He was also clear that LEVRA ends conversations where there is no real need, rather than keeping them in the pipeline.
How do you prove ROI when your product is hard to measure?
LEVRA broke human skills down into components small enough to measure. During his MBA year, Bartek researched with 300 to 400 potential enterprise clients. He did not ask whether they saw a human skills problem, because they all did. He asked which skills specifically. Those answers were consolidated into 31 human skills, from active listening and accountability to managing upwards and influencing others, each broken down further into five or six research-backed objectives.
Each of the 31 skills then maps to productivity, engagement or efficiency in LEVRA's PEE model, so an improvement in a skill can be reported as a business outcome. The Kirkpatrick model sits over the top and asks whether the training influenced performance.
There is a lesson here for anyone selling something a buyer cannot easily measure. Define what you sell in components, then map those components onto outcomes your buyer already measures. LEVRA did not ask clients to adopt new metrics. It used three they were already reporting on.
What does ROI evidence look like to an enterprise buyer?
Bartek gave two examples. For Google, LEVRA worked to the client's own internal skills frameworks and reported 8% improvement in succinct communication for productivity, 6% in negotiation for engagement and 8% in influencing others for efficiency. Alongside those, 81% of Googlers said their efforts led to better outcomes, 76% completed tasks faster with fewer mistakes and 75% felt more confident applying human skills day to day.
For Milbank, where junior lawyers were struggling to ask questions, ask for feedback and manage upwards, 91% of trainees said LEVRA had a positive impact on their professional development, 82% received positive feedback from their supervisor and 99% preferred learning through simulations.
He was clear about the limits. Human skills cannot be measured as cleanly as sales, where a team goes from eight deals to 12 and the improvement speaks for itself. LEVRA's approach is largely qualitative, built from skills movement, manager feedback and participant response together. Before any rollout it agrees three or four success metrics with the client, so the end-of-programme conversation starts from a measure both sides accepted in advance.
The full session, including the audience questions on how to draw the problem out of a buyer, is in the Renewd Forum recording library.
The takeaway for Renewd members
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Agree three or four success metrics with the buyer before you deliver anything, and write them down.
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Break what you sell into components you can measure. Membership value, sponsorship value, data products and event value can all be broken down further than most organisations have taken them.
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Map each component onto an outcome your buyer already reports on, rather than asking them to adopt a new measure.
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Qualify every enterprise conversation against a framework, and end the ones with no real need behind them.
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Build your pipeline for the cycle you actually have. Nine months needs more activity at the top than most forecasts assume.
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Use the relationships you already have before you work a cold list, and get into rooms where you have no immediate commercial reason to be. Our free and Member-Exclusive events are a great place to start.
Frequently asked questions
Why do enterprise deals stall even when the buyer agrees?
Because agreement costs the buyer nothing. A deal moves when you can show the purchase will improve a number the organisation already reports on.
How do you prove ROI when your product is hard to measure?
Break it into components you can measure, map each component to an outcome the buyer already reports on, and agree the success metrics before delivery rather than after.
How long is an enterprise sales cycle?
LEVRA's client data shows nine months on average for tier one clients and four months for tier two, with around 13 internal stakeholders involved in the decision.
How do you sell to a buying committee?
Work out who the influencers and the buyers are and what each one cares about, and make sure the purchase is worth it for everyone in the room. LEVRA uses BANT as an early filter and MEDDIC once a deal gets serious.
What results has LEVRA delivered?
For Google, improvements of 8% in succinct communication, 6% in negotiation and 8% in influencing others. For Milbank, 91% of trainees reported a positive impact on their professional development and 82% received positive supervisor feedback.
This blog is based on the Renewd case study session with Bartek Ogonowski, Co-Founder and CEO of LEVRA, held on 15 September 2026.
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