Once you've finished editing your pose, you close the pose window. It's now stored in the model (be sure to save your project at this point!) Later, when you create a new action for the model and bring up the pose sliders (by hitting alt-3), each slider has _exactly_ the same functionality of the frame (ie 'percent') scrubber when you were editing the pose. +100 = pose fully on, 0= pose off, -100 = alternate pose fully on. Before diving into an action though, you should finish the other poses you'll need.

Here's the 'ooo' and 'eee' poses, which I placed in a new pose:

smile - frown

pout - fff