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Every successful sales process needs to start with what might be called the “tough questions.” You know them—questions that are so direct they make you sweat and shake in your shoes, that can make you so uncomfortable you’re wary about asking them.

“To be, or not to be” is the famous opening phrase of the soliloquy given by Prince Hamlet in the “nunnery scene” of William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet (Act 3, Scene 1). In the speech, Hamlet contemplates death and suicide, bemoaning the pain and unfairness of life, but acknowledging that the alternative might be worse.

CROs, CSOs, Solution Consultants and Sales Ops leaders face myriad priorities in the best of times: hiring and retaining top talent, managing pipeline effectively, selecting the best sales tech stack and methodology, and engaging productively cross-functionally. In today’s landscape, marketing budgets and priorities are shifting dramatically, and remote hiring, on-ramping, and managing are new norms in a virtual environment, changing the stakes overnight. It’s more important than ever to enable critical sales skills for disruption and recovery.

In most organizations which procure services and solutions from external vendors, there exist “levels of approval” within the organization. For example, for many companies, Directors are often allowed to approve budget items that cost $50,000 or less, while Vice Presidents or CFOs are often required to approve all items that cost $100,000 or more. Of course, the amounts different titles can approve will vary by industry.

Marketing and sales teams operate under separate but related sets of objectives—marketing to drive awareness and bring as many high-quality leads to the top of the funnel as possible; sales to determine which of those leads are potential buyers and quickly and efficiently drive them through the funnel and close as many high-quality deals as they can.

Closing sales always takes longer than we would like, and sales often close for amounts lower than we would wish for. What if there were a predictable way to double deal sizes and close them in half the time?

It is vital to communicate value to your prospects in a concise way. Why is this so important? According to Gartner’s March 13, 2020 paper, the second most valuable content to B2B buyers is Value Assessment tools. These tools offer a very effective way to showcase your value.