Reading the Room with Purple Quarter

Purple Quarter (PQ) places senior technology leaders (VPs and CTOs) in organisations. The firm is known for delivering what it promises, and they set a high bar. The founder and CEO, Roopa Kumar saw a gap in how the team made its pitches. Pitches were polished but didn’t work all the time. They weren't reading the room: who they were speaking to, who made the decision, what was blocking the deal, and which of the value propositions the decision maker cared about.

The problem

Leadership searches are niche. No two CTO roles are alike. The right candidate is a blend of experience, culture, values and beliefs, not just skills. Competent profiles don't close a deal if the team hasn't uncovered what the decision maker is looking for. The dynamics also shift with who is in the room: an HR leader relaying a decision made elsewhere, or a founder/CEO deciding directly.

The approach

The session took the view from the buyer's chair, drawing on my years of being pitched to:

What happens in the room after the salesperson leaves
Who holds power, and whether your contact influences the decision or only relays it
Who else needs to be aligned outside the room, and how to bring them together
How to find the one value proposition that matters to this buyer and double down on it

The learning method of choice was role play. This scenario for the role play was custom crafted specifically for that team in PQ.

Two team members played co-founders of a company hiring a CTO. The rest of the team played Purple Quarter's sales and research team. The founders carried a conflict which the PQ sales team were not aware about: one wanted an experienced CTO from outside, while the other was waiting for a founding engineer to grow into the title. The primary objective of the PQ sales team in this role play was to uncover that conflict.

A standard pitch would never surface this. Only the quality of the questions would. The debrief showed what changed once the team asked higher quality questions: they found the real decision, and could shape the pitch around it. We closed with an open Q&A on live situations, including what to say at a roadblock and how to respond when a potential client turns your pitch against you, and, when one of those decision influencers secretly doesn't want to work with you.

The takeaway

Ask questions that lead the client to see the cost of waiting for themselves. Don't push the opportunity cost on them. Set guardrails around their realistic options and nudge gently, so the urgency is their conclusion, not your pitch.

The outcome

The team internalised the process. They now ask better questions and anchor conversations on the client's problem, not on their own offering. As the company diversified into Orange Quarter, a non tech executive search firm, this helps the team take on more responsibility and grow further.

Here is what Roopa, the Founder and CEO of Purple Quarter had to say:

“What struck me was how directly the approach ties to what we're trying to offer. You didn't just teach a technique. You connected it to the outcomes we actually care about, and by the end the session had built toward one clear takeaway instead of feeling like a list of tips. That kind of coherence is hard to pull off in 45 minutes.

The role play was a big part of that. It kept the conversation anchored on the client's actual problem instead of drifting into how we pitch our offering, which is exactly the shift I want the team internalizing.

This is exactly the kind of investment that compounds. The team doesn't just remember a framework, they remember why it matters. Thank you for the time and thought you put into this."