The Founders’ Desk | Amrapalli Twinkle Satpathy
Co-Founder & Vice President, Strategy & Corporate Solutions, ATS Sales Partners
There is a common belief, and an understandable one, that strategy lives in the slide deck, among the bold headings and confident arrows pointing towards growth. After more than a decade spent drafting, negotiating and managing commercial contracts, I have come to believe that it lives somewhere far less glamorous and far more honest: in the agreement two parties sign once the presentations are over and the real work is about to begin.
Anyone can write a stirring vision. The harder and more revealing question is what becomes of that vision when it meets the ordinary weather of business. Scope quietly widens, priorities shift with a new quarter or a new manager, and two perfectly sensible people read the same sentence and arrive, in good faith, at two entirely different conclusions. A well-made contract does not prevent such moments, for nothing can; what it does is decide, in advance and in calmer hours, how they will be met.
I should be careful not to claim too much for paperwork. A contract cannot manufacture trust, nor can it rescue a strategy that was flawed from its conception. What it can do, with uncomfortable precision, is test that strategy. The moment one tries to write a plan down in terms a stranger could enforce, every vagueness, every unspoken assumption and every convenient silence comes to light.
It is for this reason that I think of strategy as a series of decisions made calmly, before they must be made under pressure, and of these, three seem to me to matter most.
Decide what you are not doing
Clarity about what is included, and equally about what is not, protects both sides of the table. It is far kinder to say at the outset, “this lies outside our scope,” than to find oneself renegotiating trust halfway through an engagement. It is kinder still to agree, at the same time, on how a request falling outside that scope will be priced, approved and taken on, so that “no” becomes the beginning of a conversation rather than the end of one.
Define success in words you can both measure
“A better pipeline” means one thing to a founder and quite another to a head of sales, and neither of them is wrong. Agree on the signals at the start, such as qualified conversations, meetings held and opportunities that move forward. Then take the extra, slightly tedious step of agreeing what each of those words actually means. What is named, and named precisely, can be managed.
A measure that has not been defined is merely a hope wearing a number.
Plan for the awkward day
Review points, a clear process for change, and dignified ways of parting company are not confessions of distrust. They are the very things that allow people to be generous with one another, because nobody is left guessing about what happens next. The true test of an agreement is not how elegantly it describes the beginning of a relationship, but how intelligently it accommodates the changes that every relationship, sooner or later, must face.
If not, the vagueness will surface later, usually at the least convenient moment.
Where the conversation meets the paperwork
This is the spirit in which we approach our engagements at ATS Sales Partners, where our work runs from building the pipeline to managing the contracts that follow it. In my experience, a deal is won in the conversation and kept in the paperwork, and when either of the two is neglected, it is the other that ends up paying the price.
The finest agreements do more than protect interests. They preserve intent long after the people who first shook hands have moved on, and long after the circumstances they planned for have changed beyond recognition. Perhaps that is all good strategy has ever really been: the quiet discipline of making tomorrow’s difficult decisions a little less difficult today.
Pipeline, contracts, and everything in between.
This article is for general informational purposes and does not constitute legal advice. Specific issues should be assessed in light of the relevant facts, contract and applicable law.
About the author
Amrapalli Twinkle Satpathy is Co-Founder & Vice President, Strategy & Corporate Solutions at ATS Sales Partners, where she leads both the Strategy & Corporate Solutions function and the company’s contract-management practice. Her work centres on commercial contracts, strategic sourcing and the agreements that turn a commercial conversation into a lasting relationship.
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