The primary interface that can make or break your organization’s relationships with your customers is your front-line sales executives, sometimes called Account Managers or Account Executives. It is their knowledge, skills and behaviors that translates into your organization’s differentiation and your customer results.

With a rapidly changing external environment, it is important that these sales professionals stay at the top of their game. This means that they possess a learning mindset that allows them to learn every day. It is also about gaining critical skills that help them to differentiate themselves in the marketplace.

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At Tripura, we have an acronym that describes all the key capabilities a seller requires – we call this SASTRA – Sales Art, Science, Technology, Rigor and Analytics. Any seller who can effectively connect the dots across all these areas are the ones who are most likely to survive and thrive.

Our engagements to empower sales professionals cut across 4 core capabilities

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Better Account Planning

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Failing to Plan is Planning to Fail

The least common denominator for planning is the Account. For a sales professional, their ability to meet quota is indexed on a strong pipeline, and the best source of a solid pipeline is through Account Planning. In many organizations, account planning is a customary Q1 ritual with some meetings, some pipeline generation, and some PowerPoint slides. This ritual has led to sellers questioning the value of the entire exercise that finally results in missed quotas and challenged customer relationships. There must be a better way.

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Our Approach

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How do we engage?

Account planning engagements involve the identification of specific accounts and account teams for the planning exercise.

The first planning session is led by our master facilitator using a coaching approach to drive the planning process for one identified account team. The managers observe the conduct and take notes so that one chosen manager can replicate the process for a different account later in the day.

This cycle of observation and application is driven for multiple industries so that the managers understand the nuances of facilitation and coaching across different industries and teams.

Impact driven for customers

Managers who have experienced our account planning engagements talk about their ‘A-Ha’ moments when they realized that what they know is very different from what they should know. Principles of facilitation, structuring meetings and conversations, utilization of frameworks to facilitate stretch thinking are all elements that they find valuable.

Sales professionals who experience these workshops talk about discovering a new normal for the quality of their account plans. They also realize the impact of facilitated account planning that helps them focus on the customer rather than on the process. They are sometimes surprised about the quantum of opportunity that lies untapped with their customers. The joys of teaming and building accountability to customer outcomes are also exercises that transform how they think about teaming.

Organizations who invest in these Account Planning workshops are pleasantly surprised to see multiple millions of $s of additional net new pipeline. At Tripura, we have had the pleasure of running hundreds of these sessions across the globe and have generated close to $4 Billion in net new revenue for our customers

Customer Results - Case Study

The discipline to track planning to revenue

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Better Deal Execution

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Of the many challenges facing sales organizations, the one of ‘hope-casting’ is perhaps the most frustrating. Sellers are not the only one to be blamed. Over estimation is an inherent human characteristic. When sales leaders understand this nuance of psychology, they can then look out for ways to remove the dysfunction of hope-casting.

It is our belief that deal qualification is the core of selling. Just as the strength of the core defines the strength of the human being, the strength of deal qualification defines the strength of a sales organization.

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Our Approach

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Most of our customer engagements stem after they miss their forecast either for the quarter or the half. We then subject the top 10 deals for the next quarter to flow through our deal coaching sessions, so that the opportunity pursuit teams can assess the quality of their qualification, identify risks associated with the deal and develop actions to mitigate the risks discovered.

In addition to these powerful outcomes, sales teams also realize the extent of their integration and the split of responsibilities required to secure the top deals.

Customer Results - Case Study

Traversing the journey from “hopecasting” to forecasting for one the largest software

Customer acknowledgement testimonial

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Business Acumen, Financial Acumen and Differentiated Client Conversations

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In physics, resonance is defined by the matching of frequencies that increases amplitude. In sales, the ability to resonate with customers is important for meaning and motivation to be established in the conversation. The lack of resonance is very easy to decipher – the lack of progress on deals is a surefire indicator of mismatch of frequencies in client conversations.

For sellers to make sense to customers they need to possess a foundation of three core capabilities:

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  1. The ability to talk the language of business and industry, broadly called business acumen
  2. The ability to talk the language of money, specifically called financial acumen
  3. The ability to talk the language of senior executives, loosely called executive conversations

How do we engage?

When customers discover a fall in pipeline volume, a decrease in velocity and a deterioration of quality that is when they reach out to us. Rather than spending time on internal reports, we spend time observing the quality of customer conversations. The extent of customer acknowledgement of the value and learning within the call is a leading indicator of the need to invest in capability building in business acumen, financial acumen, and executive conversations.

Our engagements are designed both as workshops for knowledge assimilation and as “real plays” for field application.

Clients who have experienced these engagements talk about increased access to decision makers, increased deal sizes and faster deal closures. They also talk about the levels of peripheral intelligence displayed by their field and the quantum of insights they bring back from their client conversations.

Customer Results - Case Study

Accelerating Client Value through Business and Financial Acumen

Customer acknowledgement testimonial

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Negotiating for Value, Access and Price

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Good negotiation skills are not a substitute for poor selling skills. Negotiation is often associated with price negotiation, while missing out on the more important components of negotiating for value and negotiating for access. If these two negotiations do not happen, it does not matter how good the price negotiations go, since your relationship will be commoditized. You will always be looked upon as a vendor as opposed to being a partner or an advisor.
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How do we engage?

Typical client engagements start with their articulation of poor price realization in strategic deals. Clients see an increased usage of discounting, most often towards the end of the quarter, as a leading indicator of field incapacity to create and claim business value.

Our workshops keep active opportunities and negotiations at the center and then develop an approach to create business value in customer terms. This value is then leveraged to gain access to multiple stakeholders, so that a consensus on value is developed and the opportunity is morphed into an organizational business priority. The duopoly of value and access negate the need to negotiate for price. The ideal sales teams are those that make procurement a tick box exercise.

Knowledge without field application is sales hallucination. The ability to negotiate well, and throughout the sales cycle, is a fundamental skill that requires reiteration and reinforcement. We work through sales managers so that they can coach their teams on and off the field in their ability to apply the principles, practices, and disciplines of good negotiation.

Our Approach

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Customer engagement scenario

Customer Results - Case Study

Building negotiation acumen for better value, access, and price

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