enfr

talk
to us

New York
250 Park Avenue,
14th Floor New York City, NY 10177

Connecticut
22 Thorndal Circle,
3rd Floor Darien, CT 06820

Paris
23 rue du Mail
75002 Paris – France

info@beperpetual.com
Attributes of the t3 framework:
the right stuff

The "right stuff" is about ensuring the right people are in place and ready to deliver. They feel strongly that they are working with a group of people they respect and can get the job done. The foundation of any team are the people who comprise it. The needs of any team go far beyond ensuring they "can do" the job itself (competence) and extend to areas that allow the team, and its individual members, to work effectively together in delivering the desired outcomes.

These include, for example, possessing a growth mindset, allowing people to adapt more effectively to adversity and solve problems that lead to a breakthrough (‘can do’ attitude). Openness to other’s ideas (a true team player), grit and positivity are other examples of traits of people that are important on any team.

Simply put, members of the team "can do, can do".

clarity & alignment

People and teams are clear on what they need to do and why it is important. High-performing team feel strongly that the direction is clear, and line-of-sight exists between their work and that of the teams or organization on the whole.

There is clarity in the vision, mission and objectives of the team and clarity in how such objectives cascade down to each and every member within it.

Clarity is nothing without alignment, at least over the longer-term. People who know what to do can certainly deliver some good results, within their own sphere of influence; however, alignment is vital for sustained execution excellence. Alignment suggests that people are committed to their role and what they need to do to produce good results.

Simply put, members of the team "know what to do."

empowerment

Empowerment is all about ensuring people have the freedom, support, and tools to deliver on what is expected along with the systems and process to work effectively together.

The nature of the way organizations are designed and the likelihood that most are populated by human beings leads to a natural dysfunction that often is referred to as silo thinking or behavior. Left alone, silo behavior and potentially relational-based conflict WILL arise. This calls for organizations to install a ritual that ensure these are outlined, clarified, and negotiated so that people can work effectively together in driving value for their customers, and the business.

Additionally, we find many teams that have too many priorities that are crippling the team’s effectiveness and/or leading to burnout. Typically, ad hoc demands from the business may be the culprit, and without a priority reconciliation process, frustration emerges.

Simply put, members of the team are "allowed and enabled to".

belonging

Belonging suggests that people fit within your organizational context—they "belong" here and are connected to the organization.

Organizations cannot afford to have disengaged employees—and yet, many in the workforce report being actively disengaged. Others are passively disengagement manifesting in some form of "quiet quitting." This results in lost productivity and an unhappy workplace in general.

While there are many factors that may be at play here, the most important one is a sense of connection people have with their company, a belief that they (the company) are doing the right thing (beyond making money) and that they are operating in a way that is consistent with making a real contribution to society. For newer generations of workers this is of particular importance. It all starts with purpose and values.

Simply put, members of the team "believe it's right to do".

agile execution

Agile Execution is all about how the team works together to adapt to dynamic conditions. It is our belief that no initial plan will survive for very long, placing a burden on the team to pivot consistently in order to deliver upon their strategic outcomes.

In today’s VUCA world, planning is taking on new forms as organizations recognize that within weeks after initiating any plan, it can be rendered, at worst case, useless, or in best case, intentions remain on track but how one gets there changes rapidly. The environment is simply too dynamic to invest months preparing, planning, and budgeting for a reality that may not exist in six months.

In our view, get the strategic intent right, plan on how to get there, and instill agile execution rituals that allow the team to adapt to the realities of executing against the plan.

Simply put, members of the team "will do what it takes with integrity".

togetherness

A sense of togetherness results when the teams do the other five attributes well, leading to sustained high-performance and lots of enjoyment working with fellow colleagues. No matter how remote a team may operate, leaders need to work to secure this sense of "togetherness" and, ideally, bring people together every so often.

In such teams, not only do you have exemplary engagement and behaviors from all constituent members but that final piece of "social glue" -- individuals motivated also by the very company of their team colleagues. This is the zone where intra-relationships are defined by shared levels of high professional respect and, indeed, deep friendships.

Team members bearing this attribute scale even greater heights (sometimes literally!) because not only are they passionate about what they do (as built on all the preceding qualities) but it is this comradeship that sits at the very nexus of this passion. There is no place they would rather be than with the companionship of their comrades and, with this fellowship, a sense of collective invincibility. For such teams, there is a mindset of "anything together".

Simply put, members of the team "build a legacy".

strategy & transformation

the deal on the table: rebuilding negotiation muscle in a global spirits sales team

back to all insights strategy & transformation

Every commercial plan eventually lands in the same place: a conversation with a customer. The strategy can be sharp, the brand plans funded, the forecast signed off. None of it survives contact with a key account unless the people in the room can draw on real sales negotiation training and negotiate their way to an outcome that works for both sides.

That is where we found ourselves recently with the Americas sales organization of a global spirits company. What follows is the story of that engagement and what any commercial leader in consumer goods can take from it.

when the plan meets the customer

The backdrop will feel familiar to most commercial leaders right now. Category volumes under pressure. A tougher trade environment. Retail partners consolidating and negotiating harder than ever, with more data and more leverage. Margins squeezed from both ends.

In that environment, the key account conversation stops being a routine planning exercise and becomes the moment where the annual plan is either protected or given away. The client saw this clearly. Their sales leaders were deeply knowledgeable about their brands and their customers, but the most complex customer negotiations were stalling. Obstacles that should have been openings were becoming standoffs. And the default resolution, too often, was a concession.

start with the diagnosis, not the sales negotiation training

This program was delivered as part of CETx, the Perpetual commercial excellence offering. The premise of CETx is simple: before you fix a commercial team, you have to understand its overall health and readiness to deliver.

That matters here because it was not a random sales negotiation training request. It surfaced as a targeted gap. The broader work we do with commercial organizations diagnoses where teams stand across the full commercial ecosystem, from go-to-market strategy to sales execution to the culture that holds it all together. From that picture, we build interventions aimed at the specific capabilities standing between a team and its ambitions.

Generic training treats symptoms. Targeted capability building, grounded in a diagnosis, moves outcomes. This client needed its key account professionals equipped to navigate their hardest customer conversations, so that is exactly what we built.

sales negotiation training - two professionals collaborating on key account strategy


inside the sales negotiation training room

The workshop focused on one thing: helping sales leaders turn complex, challenging obstacles with key customers into breakthroughs through a win/win negotiation approach.

Three principles anchored the work.

  • Preparation is the negotiation. The outcome of most negotiations is decided before anyone sits down. The team worked on rigorous pre-work: understanding the full value at stake, mapping what matters most to the customer, and defining walk-away points and trade options in advance rather than inventing them under pressure.
  • Trade, do not concede. Price is the most visible variable, which is why weak negotiations collapse into discounting. High-performing negotiators widen the field. Terms, timing, activation support, range, data sharing and joint planning are all currency. Every give gets a get.
  • The obstacle is the opening. The moments that feel most adversarial, when a customer pushes hardest, are often the moments of greatest opportunity. A demand tells you what the other side values. Teams that learn to read obstacles that way stop defending and start solution building, and that is where the win/win outcome lives.

The sessions ran on live account situations, not hypotheticals. Leaders left with plans for real conversations already on their calendars, which is the difference between a training event and a capability shift.

what leaders should take from this

If you lead a commercial organization, three questions are worth asking this week. Do your key account teams prepare for negotiations with the same rigor your customers do? When a negotiation stalls, does your team widen the deal or narrow it to price? And do you actually know, with evidence, which commercial capabilities are limiting your results?

That last question is where sustainable performance starts. Strong commercial teams are built deliberately: diagnose the gaps, target the intervention, embed the capability. That is the work we do every day at Perpetual, and it is how a pressured sales organization turns its hardest customer conversations into its biggest breakthroughs.

If your teams are heading into their toughest negotiations of the year, we should talk before they do.

See more insights
strategy & transformation

execution: where strategy becomes reality

There is no shortage of compelling strategies in business. Leadership teams invest significant time and resource in crafting them, defining where to compete, how to win, and what the organization must become. And then, far too often, those strategies stall....

strategy & transformation

when strategy meets reality

what two days in a room with a leadership team actually reveals Every leadership team believes it has a strategy. Fewer have one that the organization can feel. Fewer still have the team operating system to deliver it. Earlier this...

strategy & transformation

illycaffè – building repeatable commercial excellence

a proven model for developing scalable sales capability Introduction Organizations seeking sustained growth increasingly recognize that commercial success cannot rely solely on individual talent. High-performing organizations build repeatable systems that align strategy, people, processes, and tools to deliver consistent commercial...

strategy & transformation

re-energizing a company in transformation

When a company enters a moment of profound transformation, leadership alignment and organizational clarity become decisive levers for success. This was precisely the context in which Catherine d’Aragon, CEO of First Aid Beauty, invited Perpetual to facilitate a two-stage intervention...