Case study: the largest client wants 15% off

Advanced

10 min

Case study

The account is 22% of revenue. The sales director wants your recommendation before the renewal call.

An advanced-level session of about 10 minutes. You present a decision and take 3 rounds of questions on it.

Tomorrow someone else makes this call, using your words, to a client who has already named the number they want. What you hand over today has to be a position, not an analysis. An account at 22% of revenue means a 15% discount cannot be judged on this year's margin alone — it sets the floor for the next renewal, and for whatever other clients eventually hear. You will be asked for the cost of the path you did not choose as well: what holding firm risks, what conceding buys. Come with the sentence you would actually say on the call, including the condition attached to the number, and be ready for it to be repeated back to you in a harder form.

Angles worth taking

Give the sales director a sentence they can say on the call, not a principle they have to translate first.
Attach a condition to any discount — volume, term, scope — so the price moves for a reason the client can hear.
Say what you would do if the client rejects your position, before you are asked, because it is the next question.
Treat the 22% as a reason for care in both directions rather than as an argument for agreeing.
Name what other accounts learn from this outcome, since renewal terms rarely stay inside one conversation.

Who is in the room

You play

A candidate presenting a recommendation

You speak with

A sales director who has to make the call tomorrow and will test whether the recommendation survives the client saying no

Ready to speak?

Free to start. You need a TalkDrill account to speak — reading this page does not.

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The format

The situation

One client is 22% of revenue and is demanding a 15% price cut at renewal, citing a cheaper competitor. Gross margin on the account is 34%. Losing the account means a loss-making year. Six other clients renew within four months and talk to each other.

What you must decide

What you offer at renewal, and what you do if they still walk.

Rounds of questioning

Modes

Learn (guided) · Mock (exam-real)

How a roleplay session works

Read your brief

Your role, the situation, and what a good outcome looks like. The counterpart has their own brief, and you do not get to read it.

Open the conversation

You speak first in most scenarios. How you open sets what you can ask for later, which is most of the exercise.

Handle the turn

Somewhere in the middle it stops going your way — a refusal, a counter-offer, a rebuttal you did not prepare for. That moment is the scenario.

Read the report

Outcome, the phrases you used and the ones you missed, fluency and clarity, and the specific line worth rewriting.

What you're scored on

Across every roleplay, the report looks at the same four things — because they are what makes a real conversation work or fail.

Your objective

Recommend a position for the renewal call and defend what it costs either way.

Task outcome

Whether you got what the brief asked for: the refund, the extension, the concession, the point conceded.

Appropriacy

Whether the register fits. A complaint that is too soft gets nothing; the same complaint too hard gets a manager and no refund.

Recovery

What you do with the unexpected turn — repair, rephrase, push back, or stall. This is where most of the marks move.

Delivery

Fluency, pronunciation and pace, judged in conversation rather than in a prepared monologue.

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