Talkdesk started value selling the way most companies do, with big spreadsheets. A small value assessment team built each business case by hand, which took four to six weeks and covered only a couple of deals at a time. "They actually became a bottleneck for us when we tried to bring in deals and accelerate forecasting," Al Caravelli, Chief Revenue Officer at Talkdesk, told the room at ELEVATE 2026, the customer value event Ecosystems co-hosts with TSIA.
Talkdesk has about 1,300 employees, including about 150 sellers, and four people on its strategy and value team. In his session, Every Seller is a Value Engineer, Al explained how four people can support 150 sellers: by making value part of every seller's job.
Put the Assessment Inside the Sales Stages
Talkdesk scaled value selling by building the business value assessment into its sales stages, so AEs are part of it from discovery onward. The assessment is the estimate of the value a customer can expect, built during the sale. To get there, Talkdesk brought in Ecosystems. Solution engineers now join discovery calls early instead of waiting for a handoff.
Al compared his approach to what Chris Mills did at ID.me, with one difference. Instead of getting rid of the customer success organization, Talkdesk merged it with its technical account managers. Talkdesk calls the combined role CXMs, for customer experience managers, because customer experience is what it sells. CXMs join the account team at close. AEs, SEs, and CXMs take each assessment 80 to 90% of the way, then the strategy and value consultants approve it and present it to the customer. "Those four people can't be everywhere," Al said.
Treat Value Selling as a Skill
Talkdesk treats value selling as a skill to train and measure, and Al assessed every rep on whether they had the will and the skill to learn it. As Talkdesk moved from small business into enterprise, many reps had been promoted up from SMB without new training. They sold features the way they had in SMB, and when that didn't work, they discounted by 50%. Reps who didn't pass the assessment moved back to commercial accounts or left. Seller attrition reached 60% last year. "The question to ask is: what was regrettable?" Al said. "Five percent." Among first-line leaders, which he called the hardest sales job in the company, attrition was 90%.
After the change, rep productivity rose 63% and the average selling price went from about $66,000 to more than $240,000. Talkdesk hit its number with fewer reps than before. Al said it was the first time in three or four years that Talkdesk had made its number.
Most teams won't turn over a sales force the way Talkdesk did. The part they can copy is the bar Al sets for every AE: when the value team isn't on the call, the seller can still "start asking those critical questions" in discovery, and the value case starts there.
Lead With the Easiest Win That Still Pays Off
Al coaches reps to start with the AI use case that's easiest to deploy and still delivers real economic value. He calls one slide "almost my golden ticket." It plots each AI use case by its economic value against how hard it is to deploy. In healthcare, AI-driven prior authorization checks carry huge value but touch many back-end systems, while appointment reminders and provider search are simple to launch.
He shared the case of a hospital system in Texas that wanted its virtual agent to recognize Spanish-speaking callers and answer in Spanish, without making them press one for Spanish. Then the administrator pointed out that 70% of patients had a Mexican accent, and the agent's Spanish sounded like Spain's. Talkdesk adapted it and later added Caribbean and South American accents. Al called the result "pretty phenomenal," but it was hard to deploy, and sellers have to steer the customer to ask, "It's cool, but what value are we getting back?"
Al said Talkdesk uses the chart "all the time for our sellers": implement the easiest system with the highest economic value, earn the customer's trust, "and then you could go to the next one."
Go Back and Measure
Talkdesk has started going back six to nine months after a business value assessment for what it calls a business value realization, a review of the results with the customer's executives. Al said they've only done this with a handful of customers so far. At Zscaler, by the time he left, his team did it with all of its large enterprise customers. At Talkdesk, the first reviews found the original assessments had underestimated the value by 75%, so customers' executives saw more value than the business case had promised. "We're headed in the right direction," Al said.
Al calls this a flywheel. The realization review happens in the executive business review, so "that flywheel continues to go and we're able to expand further into the accounts." That matters even more because Talkdesk sells on consumption, so customers pay only for what they use.
"We can sell AI all day long, but if the customer doesn't consume it, we don't get paid."
— Al Caravelli, Chief Revenue Officer at Talkdesk
Talkdesk brought in Ecosystems when spreadsheets made its value team a bottleneck. The loop Al described, an assessment built during the sale and a realization review with the customer's executives six to nine months later, is what Ecosystems is built to hold in one system of record.
Watch the Session
Watch Al's full ELEVATE 2026 session to see the value and deployment slide he uses with his sellers. For the themes that ran through the whole day, read our ELEVATE 2026 recap, Closing the Promise Gap.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is a business value assessment?
A business value assessment is the estimate of the value a customer can expect, built during the sale. At Talkdesk, AEs, SEs, and CXMs take each assessment 80 to 90% of the way, and the four-person strategy and value team approves it and presents it to the customer. Talkdesk has started going back six to nine months later to compare the results.
How do you scale value selling with a small value team?
Build the work into the sales stages and let sellers do most of it. Talkdesk has about 150 sellers and four people on its strategy and value team, so the business value assessment is part of the sales stages on every deal. Sellers get each assessment 80 to 90% of the way, and the value consultants finish it and present it to the customer.
Which AI use case should you sell first?
Start with the use case that's easiest to deploy and still delivers economic value. Talkdesk plots each AI use case by its economic value against how hard it is to deploy. In healthcare, prior authorization checks carry huge value but touch many back-end systems, while appointment reminders and provider search are simple to launch. An early win builds the trust that leads to the next use case.
What is a CXM at Talkdesk?
CXM stands for customer experience manager. Talkdesk merged its customer success and technical account management organizations and named the combined role CXM, because customer experience is what Talkdesk sells. CXMs join the account team at close, so there's no handoff, and they help build business value assessments and find upsell opportunities.
Keep the Conversation Going
The conversations that started at ELEVATE continue all year with peers who are solving the same problems. Join the Customer Value Community to be part of them. And if you'd like to see how teams use Ecosystems to put value into every seller's hands, book a demo.
