The buyer answers back.
And reacts to what you just said.
10 spoken role-plays on the conversation engine. The candidate speaks out loud, the counterpart replies to what they actually said, and the call hardens or softens accordingly — a first call with a prospect who agrees with everything, a price objection standing in for something the buyer will not say, and a renewal that was lost months ago by a customer who is being very pleasant about it.
All 10 are on the business catalogue
All 10 are listed for business buyers at 20credits per candidate and can be assigned to candidates from your organisation's catalogue. They are not sold on the public store and there is no consumer price — talk to us to get an account set up, or see how credits work.
Why these sit in the premium tier
Four things the engine does, each of which is a mechanism rather than an adjective. No criterion or normative study has been run on these exercises, and they are not described as though one had.
The counterpart answers what was actually said
Not a branching script and not a recording. The counterpart's next line is generated from the candidate's own words, so the same exercise goes differently for two candidates and neither can prepare a route through it. It stays in scenario, moves at most one rung along an authored escalation ladder per turn, and cannot be talked out of the exercise.
The delivery tracks the escalation
Tone is chosen per line and bounded by the rung. A cooperative counterpart cannot suddenly shout, one who has decided to leave cannot sound delighted, and a buyer at the hard end of the ladder can still ask one quiet, disappointed question. A candidate hears where they are in the call before they read anything.
Honesty carries the heaviest weight
In all three rubrics the integrity dimension is weighted 3, above every skill dimension. Inventing a discount the seller cannot grant, claiming a capability they cannot be sure of, promising an implementation date or buying a renewal back with something that is not theirs to give scores near zero, however fluent the call was and however well it landed.
The evidence is the transcript, not the number
The report is built around what was said and the moment the counterpart's temperature moved, with the score alongside it rather than in front of it. Nothing else in the catalogue produces that kind of evidence.
What these do not include: retakes with fresh questions
The rest of AssessAll Premium includes retakes with a fresh draw of questions on every attempt. These three do not. Each product ships with a single scenario and is configured for one sitting, so a second attempt would be the same call with the same counterpart and the same trap in the same place.
What follows from that is a limit on where they belong. One scenario leaks: the first candidate can tell the next what the call is about and where the honesty question sits. That is acceptable for a shortlist, a promotion panel or a development cohort, and it is not acceptable for a high-volume screen. Until two or three more scenarios of the same kind sit behind each product, use them at the narrow end.
They are three products rather than one pooled product on purpose. Discovery, price and renewal are different constructs, not interchangeable draws — a candidate being assessed on discovery who was served a renewal call has not had a fairer test, they have had a different one. Pooling will happen within a kind, never across kinds.
The role-plays
Each runs about eleven minutes end to end, up to twelve turns, spoken, with a microphone check before it starts. The candidate is told what they are allowed to promise, and every one of them punishes promising past it.
Discovery call
A first call with an operations director who is warm, rushed and agreeable to the point of being useless. She agrees with whatever framing she is offered and gives generalities that sound like answers. She becomes specific only for a seller who asks a second question about her first answer.
Who the candidate is talking to
Fiona Merrick
Operations director at a facilities contractor with around nine hundred field staff.
She came up through the scheduling desk, so she knows the detail and has stopped discussing it with outsiders. She is genuinely warm and genuinely rushed, and she agrees with the seller's framing rather than correcting it.
Who the candidate is
An account executive making a first call to a prospect who agreed to twenty minutes. You may ask for a further meeting. You may not quote a price, offer a discount or a pilot, commit to a date, or claim the product does something unless you are certain it does.
What it takes to score well
- ·Ask a second question about one of her own vague answers, until a specific dated event appears — a withheld client invoice after an attendance audit, a new contract that starts in January and requires digital timesheets, overtime nobody can attribute, the one scheduler who retires in March.
- ·Say one of her own numbers back to her and ask what follows from it.
- ·Find out what "looking at a few options" actually means, and that the finance director holds approval above her limit.
- ·Hold the pitch until a specific problem has been named out loud.
- ·Close on a dated next step she agrees to, and ask for it plainly rather than offering to send information over.
The failure it exists to catch
Accepting an agreeable generality and moving on. She rewards a pitch with warm noises that mean nothing, so a call that produced only atmosphere scores low however well it felt.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Question quality and problem definition are next heaviest at 2.5 each; the premature pitch is marked against at 2. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
Price pushback
A buyer who rates the product and says it costs too much. Price is the shortest sentence that ends a conversation he does not want to have; the real constraint is his approval limit and a finance director who has already turned him down twice. He drops the price framing for a seller who asks how the decision actually gets made.
Who the candidate is talking to
Ashwin Kamath
Vice president of service delivery at a road-freight operator running three hundred and twenty vehicles from six depots.
Unhurried and courteous, speaks in complete sentences and expects the same back. He does not enjoy haggling. He is embarrassed about the real constraint and will keep the discussion on price rather than admit it.
Who the candidate is
An enterprise account executive on a follow-up call after the quote has been read. Your discount authority is limited and stated, and you may not invent a number you cannot grant.
What it takes to score well
- ·Work out what "too expensive" actually stands for before responding to it at all — a committed budget year, an approval ceiling, or a comparison against a quote that covers less.
- ·Ask him directly what he can approve himself and what goes above him. He would sign today at a number inside his own limit, and he will not volunteer that.
- ·Establish when money actually exists, rather than assuming the objection is about the figure.
- ·Test the competing quote before conceding anything against it — it covers vehicle tracking only, with no proof-of-delivery capture, and he knows it.
- ·Trade anything that is given. A discount offered late, inside authority, against term or scope scores well; a reflex discount in the first two turns does not.
The failure it exists to catch
An unprompted concession in the opening exchanges. Treating "too expensive" as a fact about the price rather than a sentence about something else fails the exercise.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Objection diagnosis and concession discipline are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
Renewal at risk
A three-year customer six weeks from renewal who has already chosen a replacement and has not said so. He is courteous throughout, and the warmth is the disguise — a candidate who reads his tone as a reading of the account leaves the call feeling it went well. He answers a direct question honestly, and is quietly relieved to be asked one.
Who the candidate is talking to
Gareth Ellwood
Head of field service at a utilities contractor carrying out statutory inspections.
Mild, unfailingly courteous, the sort of customer everyone at the vendor describes as lovely. He dislikes telling people bad news over the phone, so he says pleasant things and lets silence do the rest. He will not lie if asked something direct.
Who the candidate is
A customer success manager making a routine pre-renewal call to a three-year customer whose contract is up in six weeks. You cannot offer credits, discounts, service-level guarantees or product commitments that are not yours to give.
What it takes to score well
- ·Treat "everything's fine" as a claim to be checked rather than a status report. The signals are all there: the silence since November, two of nine inspectors logging in this month, an ignored usage report, vagueness about next year.
- ·Ask in plain words where the renewal stands and whether other suppliers have been spoken to. This is the hinge of the exercise and it separates candidates almost completely.
- ·Get to the specifics of what lost it — a six-day outage inside a regulatory inspection window, a support ticket that sat eleven days, a procurement exercise nobody was invited to.
- ·Acknowledge the failure plainly, without excuses and without buying the account back with things that are not yours to give.
- ·Ask for something specific and small. He would still sit down for a proper conversation about the outage, and he will not ask for it himself.
The failure it exists to catch
Ending the call believing it went well. A hedged question that invites a reassuring answer scores low, and the transcript will show exactly where the reassurance was accepted.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Reading the decision behind the courtesy and willingness to ask the uncomfortable question are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
Cold call, straight through
An unscheduled call that, unexpectedly, reaches the head of operations at a Pune auto-parts manufacturer. She is quick, dry, amused that it got through, and has a customer call in a few minutes. She gives a seller about eight exchanges — and specifics only to one who earns them with relevance rather than familiarity.
Who the candidate is talking to
Neerja Raghunathan
Head of operations at a two-plant automotive tier-two supplier with around nine hundred people.
Short sentences, finishes other people's long ones, and asks 'do you work with anyone in our sector?' expecting an honest no. She has a real problem this month and will name it for a seller who asks about the plant instead of describing the product.
Who the candidate is
A business development executive who has cold-called and been put straight through. You know only what is public. You may ask for a twenty-minute call. You may not claim clients you do not have, quote a price, or guarantee any outcome.
What it takes to score well
- ·Say in the first two sentences why this call is relevant to a plant like hers — and stop. No name-dropping, no 'we work with all the big tier-ones'.
- ·Ask about the plant before describing anything: a failed traceability audit, an eighteen-lakh penalty and overtime thirty-one percent over plan are all there for the seller who asks.
- ·Find out that spend above fifteen lakh needs the managing director, and that a twenty-lakh quality allocation lapses in March.
- ·Ask what she has already tried — a six-week Traxon trial her operators disliked — and why.
- ·Answer 'can you guarantee it?' honestly, and close on a dated twenty-minute call rather than an offer to send a deck.
The failure it exists to catch
Buying time with a claim: a client name, a guarantee, a 'we did this for a company just like yours'. She checks, and the exercise scores it near zero however smoothly it was said.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Relevance of the opening, discovery under time pressure and the quality of the next step are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
Arming the champion
An internal champion who ran the pilot, loves the product and has told people it is happening — and must now present it to a chief financial officer who killed his last proposal over a vendor's inflated number. He wants 'a big percentage for slide two'. The exercise measures whether the seller gives him one.
Who the candidate is talking to
Prabhat Menon
Head of learning and development at a Chennai lender with two hundred branches.
Enthusiastic, talks fast when excited and faster when worried. His credibility is on the line, so he asks for the number that would make Thursday easy — and would accept an invented one gratefully, which is exactly the trap.
Who the candidate is
A mid-market account executive on a call with the head of L&D at a non-bank lender, four days before the CFO meeting. You may help build the business case from the pilot's own numbers and offer to join the meeting. You may not supply a figure you cannot source.
What it takes to score well
- ·Refuse the unsourced 'forty percent' plainly and kindly, and explain why it would sink him with this CFO.
- ·Build the case on his numbers: fourteen weeks to eleven in the pilot, forty branch-manager leavers a year at six and a half lakh each.
- ·Surface what the CFO actually objects to — an eighteen-month traceable payback and a three-year term ahead of branch rationalisation — through him.
- ·Map the decision: CFO and COO sign together above fifty lakh; the budget locks on the twentieth; Thursday is the only slot.
- ·Leave with a plan: a one-page business case by Tuesday and an offer to be in the room on Thursday.
The failure it exists to catch
Giving the champion the number he asked for. It feels like helping; it is the fastest way to lose the deal and the champion together.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Equipping the champion and discovering the CFO's real objections are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
Terms after the price
Contract stage with a hospital group's procurement manager. The price is agreed; now it is ninety-day terms, uncapped service penalties, termination for convenience and free onboarding — every item opened at the strongest position on her checklist. Only one of them is a real mandate, and she will not say which.
Who the candidate is talking to
Aashi Deshpande
Procurement manager at an eleven-hospital group.
Precise, pleasant, quotes clauses by number and is entirely unbothered by silence. She says a competitor agreed to uncapped penalties. It is true — and that competitor failed the security review two weeks ago.
Who the candidate is
An enterprise account executive closing out terms on a forty-eight-lakh-a-year contract. Your authority on payment terms, penalties, notice periods and onboarding is stated and limited; the service level is fixed and you may not describe it as more than it is.
What it takes to score well
- ·Separate the mandate from the opening position: ninety-day terms is the only thing the finance director actually requires.
- ·Trade every concession — payment terms against annual prepayment, onboarding against a longer term or a reference — and give nothing for free.
- ·Hold the penalty cap at ten percent of monthly fees when told a competitor offered uncapped, without pretending you could go further.
- ·Describe the service level exactly as it is: ninety-nine point five percent monthly, four-hour critical response — and nothing more.
- ·Summarise what was agreed and what goes back for confirmation, in one clear close.
The failure it exists to catch
Matching the competitor. Agreeing to a penalty or a service level outside authority to keep the room warm scores near zero, and so does misdescribing the SLA.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Trading discipline and diagnosing the real mandate are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
Inbound lead qualification
A head of CX quality who filled in the demo form forty minutes ago and wants a demo this week, pricing today, and everything on a slide for her VP. Her enthusiasm is completely sincere and completely unqualified: no signing authority, no budget line, an incumbent contract she has forgotten about, and two capability questions where the honest answer costs the sale.
Who the candidate is talking to
Tanvi Kulkarni
Head of CX quality at an e-commerce support operation of a hundred and forty seats.
She proposes next steps faster than she can authorise them, and repeats capability claims back — 'so Marathi works, great, I'll put that on the slide' — making the cost of a false claim visible. She is quietly relieved by a seller who supplies the discipline she lacks.
Who the candidate is
An inside sales representative returning an inbound demo request. Your product scores English and Hindi calls today — Marathi is roadmap with no date — and integration with her homegrown ticketing system is API work, not plug-and-play. You may not misstate either, and you may not quote below the real price floor.
What it takes to score well
- ·Find out who owns the money, what the CFO threshold is, and that the real budget window is April — before agreeing anything.
- ·Ask what the floor uses today, and surface the incumbent contract with seven months to run and a ninety-day notice window.
- ·Answer the Marathi and integration questions exactly as they are, without burying the limits in qualifiers.
- ·Reach the defensible pain — a four percent hand-sampled QA rate and two disputed agent scores — instead of pitching at enthusiasm.
- ·Close on a next step shaped by what was learned: a case-building demo, the VP slide, the notice window flagged.
The failure it exists to catch
Treating enthusiasm as qualification. Booking the demo she asked for while learning nothing scores low even though the buyer said yes to it — she will be delighted today and dark in three weeks.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Qualification depth and next-step fit are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
Channel partner conflict
A reseller of twelve years has just seen your inside sales team's quote inside a deal he registered — eighteen percent under his. He has cancelled a site visit to make this call, he has two more deals he could take elsewhere, and he already knows the fact you will only find if you check the record: his registration lapsed nineteen days ago.
Who the candidate is talking to
Harish Raval
Director and co-founder of an Ahmedabad systems integrator.
He gets quieter and more precise as he gets angrier, and asks questions he already knows the answers to. He withholds the lapse deliberately: capitulate without checking the record and he lets you hang your offer on a file you never read.
Who the candidate is
A channel account manager. The record shows the registration lapsed, the inbound routing followed published rules, and the rep did nothing wrong. You can propose a one-time reinstatement that needs your director's sign-off — commit to asking, never to the outcome — and you cannot withdraw the quote, match prices, or compensate.
What it takes to score well
- ·Check the record before negotiating: the registration dates, the lapse, the inbound request, the routing rule.
- ·Defend the rep and the policy where they were right, without offering either as a sacrifice.
- ·Own the real failure — a twelve-year partner learned of the quote from his own prospect — without conceding invented wrongs.
- ·Propose the reinstatement honestly framed: your director's sign-off, a named date for the answer, no promised outcome.
- ·Engage the pipeline threat by asking what restores confidence, not by buying peace with concessions.
The failure it exists to catch
Appeasement by fiction — blaming the rep, hiding the lapse once found, or promising the exception outright. He forgives a real mistake faster than a smooth explanation.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Working from the record and the deliverable path forward are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
The silent buyer
Five weeks after the best demo her team had seen, the buyer went dark: four unanswered emails, one declined call. Now she has picked up, braced for a guilt trip, with fifteen minutes and a reason for the silence she will only give to a seller who makes the truth easy. A rumour says she chose a competitor. The rumour is wrong.
Who the candidate is talking to
Eleanor Whitcombe
IT and systems director at a UK homeware retailer of a hundred and forty stores.
She corrects misquotes verbatim and coolly, and answers manufactured urgency with 'is that real, or is that a close?'. Her sponsor resigned, spend froze until March — and she will say so, candidly, to a seller who opens without reproach.
Who the candidate is
An account executive re-engaging a stalled deal. There is no expiring discount, no price rise, no capacity limit — any urgency you invent is a fabrication and she will test it with one flat question. Nobody ever promised you a signature; the strongest thing said was 'ideally this quarter', explicitly caveated.
What it takes to score well
- ·Accept her apology in one sentence and spend nothing on the silence.
- ·Ask openly what changed and reach the real story: the sponsor's resignation and the spend freeze.
- ·Retire the competitor rumour with one neutral question — or drop it entirely.
- ·Keep every stated fact about your own side true: no fake deadlines, no rewritten history.
- ·Close on a dated step that fits a frozen budget: a check-in when the new director lands, the internal case kept warm.
The failure it exists to catch
Pressure against a wall. Fake urgency, misquoted commitments, or a re-pitch into a spend freeze each turn her mild guilt into a decision that the vendor is not one she wants to work with.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Diagnosing the silence and next-step realism are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
Upsell on renewal
Renewal in six weeks, a board mandate to cut software spend ten percent, a competitor mailer in her drawer — and the module you sold her last year running in four centres out of sixty, a fact she keeps printed on her desk to see whether you name it before she does. She also has a real unsolved problem your new add-on genuinely fits.
Who the candidate is talking to
Debashree Sen
Head of service operations for a consumer-durables franchise network of sixty centres.
She rewards candour with candour: name the shelfware first and she opens up about the mandate and her real pain. Pitch over it and she reads the four-out-of-sixty figure aloud from the printout.
Who the candidate is
An account manager on the renewal call you asked for. Your own dashboard shows the Parts Inventory module at four active centres of sixty. You may propose converting its value toward the Notify add-on at net-zero; deeper reductions or bundled discounts need your regional director. Notify's honest state: English and Hindi today, largest live deployment twenty-two locations.
What it takes to score well
- ·Raise the four-out-of-sixty adoption number yourself, before she does and before any pitch.
- ·Diagnose the real pain — missed call-ahead windows on a third of jobs, her biggest complaint category — by asking, not announcing.
- ·State Notify's limits exactly: English and Hindi today, twenty-two locations at the largest, roadmap without dates.
- ·Engineer the proposal inside her constraints: dead spend converted at net-zero, the CFO threshold respected.
- ·Ring-fence the core renewal and close on a written, dated step.
The failure it exists to catch
Selective blindness at renewal time. Pitching expansion over acknowledged shelfware — or defending the unused module — converts a customer who intended to renew into one reading competitor mailers seriously.
How it is weighted
Honesty is the heaviest dimension in the rubric, at 3. Diagnosis and commercial construction are next heaviest at 2.5 each. Call control and spoken clarity are marked on structure and intelligibility, not on accent.
What the report shows
The same template for all three, built around the transcript rather than around the number, and print-safe because it gets forwarded as a PDF.
The escalation arc — the counterpart's temperature turn by turn, on a five-point scale, sitting directly above the dialogue so the moment it moved lines up with what the candidate had just said.
The full transcript with per-turn audio, each counterpart line labelled with the tone it was actually spoken in, because a spoken assessment is disputed on how something sounded as often as on what was said.
The assessor-facing note the counterpart recorded live at each turn, never shown to the candidate, and the point at which each objective was earned.
Scores on the six rubric dimensions, and a band written as a hiring decision rather than an adjective.
Where the live read and the transcript read disagree, shown rather than buried — that disagreement is the signal to go and listen to the recording.
Response latency and dead air, clearly labelled as unscored, so they can be weighed as context rather than mistaken for marks.
What it costs
20 credits
Per candidate, per role-play. A conversation costs meaningfully more to run than a static screen — roughly six transcriptions, seven model turns, seven synthesised replies and a grading pass — which is what the price reflects.
A business purchase, not a consumer one
These are B2B credit products. They are not listed on the public store, they carry no rupee or dollar price for an individual, and there is no checkout on this page. A business buyer assigns them from their organisation's catalogue and the credits come out of the organisation's balance.
Where credits come from
Credits are bought in packs and never expire. The starter pack is 250 credits at ₹7,500 / US$125.00 — both figures are published price points, and you pay in one currency or the other rather than a conversion of either. How credits work.
The 29 written sales assessments are a separate line, and they are not premium
The Sales Excellence suite proper is 29 situational-judgement assessments across four bands, from 10 credits / ₹299 / US$2.99 to 17 credits / ₹499 / US$4.99, bought singly. They are good instruments — options score on a gradient with a written reason attached to each one, a mis-sell scores zero however it lands commercially, and option-length cueing was measured across all 29 files together — and they are not part of this tier. Each is a fixed form of 18 to 24 items with no item pool behind it, so it cannot deliver a retake with fresh questions, and calling it premium would be borrowing a promise it does not keep.
The Sales Excellence suiteAssessing sellers on what they say when nobody has scripted it
Business accounts assign these on credits alongside the written suite, so a shortlist can be read on one page: the judgement items for coverage and the role-play for what actually happens when a buyer pushes back. Sales capability, band by band, is set out on the sales hiring and capability page.