Selling a company
The numbers are in the information memorandum.
The management interaction answers another question:
Do we believe these people, trust their judgement and have confidence in this management team to take the business forward?
Live simulations for high-stakes commercial interactions where you don’t get a second chance.
Before the real interaction, I sit on the other side of the table — as the potential client, investor, buyer or other decision-maker — so you can discover what is strengthening or weakening belief in you and your proposition while there is still time to change it.
You know what you intend. They interpret what they experience.
You know your numbers, your proposition and the case you want to make.
But the other side is taking in the whole interaction: what you say, how you listen, how you respond to challenge, what you avoid, how you use silence and what happens when the conversation moves somewhere unexpected.
While you’re talking, they’re asking themselves:
- Do I believe them?
- Do I trust their judgement?
- Do I want to commit?
Confidence can be read as arrogance. Composure as distance. Passion as pressure.
That interpretation can shape whether your proposition is accepted or rejected.
Typical situations
Winning a major mandate
Several firms may be credible.
The client still has to decide which team, product or service they trust. Where people are central to the decision, they are also deciding who understands them and who they want to work with.
Major client opportunities and renewals
A large opportunity, strategic account or renewal where the buyer is judging not only the proposition, but the people they may have to rely on.
Investor and shareholder interactions
Where confidence in the investment case or strategic argument is inseparable from confidence in the people making it.
Major negotiations
Where one reaction, concession, misunderstanding or moment of defensiveness can materially alter what happens next.
Not every engagement is about one strategic opportunity
Human Counterpart also works with experienced people who face valuable client interactions week after week.
Partners, advisers, relationship managers and senior commercial teams usually know their business very well. But experience also creates habits. People can start talking too much, listening less carefully, anticipating the answer or relying on approaches that once worked.
Often, you simply don’t get the direct, honest feedback that matters — the kind that helps you improve, refresh and sharpen.
You meet clients all the time. When did somebody last show you what the client was actually experiencing?
What happens
The work starts before the simulation.
I first understand what is at stake, who is involved, what the other side is likely to care about, the history and commercial context, where resistance may come from, and what success would look like.
I then build a credible version of the counterpart from their role, interests, motivations, concerns and decision criteria.
Most engagements involve an individual or a small senior team. The live work is usually concentrated into a half-day or full-day session, in person or virtually where appropriate.
Then we run the interaction.
I stay on the opposite side of the table.
That includes the questions they may be thinking but never ask out loud:
Who actually runs this business without you?
What happens to your numbers if we say no today?
I challenge an assumption. Go quiet. Remain unconvinced.
We stop.
I tell you plainly what happened from my side: what I believed, what I doubted, where confidence increased, where it fell away, and what I was beginning to think about you and the proposition.
Then we replay the moments that matter.
By the end, you know what to retain, what to change and what to sharpen — and you have already experienced what happens when the interaction does not follow the expected script.
The aim is to help you perform at your best in the real interaction — noticing what the other side is believing, doubting or missing, adapting as the conversation unfolds, and checking that what matters has actually landed.
Why Roger?
Human Counterpart depends on the judgement of the person sitting opposite you.
Roger E Jones has spent more than 25 years advising CEOs, senior teams and experienced professionals internationally. He has conducted business in more than 40 countries and lived in four.
Much of his career has involved advising the senior decision-makers other people are trying to influence.
That experience matters because the work is not simply about reproducing a set of questions. Roger can challenge the commercial substance, read what is happening between people, and say directly what others may see but find difficult to say.
He holds an Executive Master’s in clinical organisational psychology from INSEAD, and an MBA from Cranfield School of Management.
His thinking has been published in Harvard Business Review and INSEAD Knowledge, and featured in the Financial Times, Sunday Times and Wall Street Journal.
Relevant experience
- Worked with a management team during a company-sale process, simulating interactions with private-equity and strategic buyers.
- Worked with professional-services partners across Europe and the US using live client simulations.
- Worked with executive-search partners on live client situations.
- Worked with a senior executive at a global investment bank on an important internal proposal requiring commitment and resources.
Why simulation helps
Important commercial interactions often give you very poor feedback.
You may learn whether you won, lost or progressed weeks later. What you rarely discover is which moment created confidence, which answer created doubt, or what the other person inferred from the way you behaved.
Simulation makes that visible immediately — and lets you do something with it before the real interaction.
There is a strong evidence base behind the mechanisms Human Counterpart uses.
Experience without feedback creates blind spots.
Expert judgement develops when people receive clear, timely feedback. High-stakes commercial interactions rarely provide it: you may learn the final outcome, but not what created confidence or doubt along the way.
Structured debriefing improves performance.
Research across individuals and teams shows that focused debriefing improves subsequent performance — particularly when people can understand what happened and try again.
People interpret behaviour, not just words.
The person opposite is continually deciding what your behaviour means. What you intend as confidence, composure or conviction may be interpreted very differently.
Replay turns feedback into action.
Human Counterpart does not stop at telling you what happened. The important moments are run again, so you can adjust your response and experience the difference immediately.
Human Counterpart does not predict exactly how your client, investor or buyer will behave. It gives you something more useful: the opportunity to discover how a credible counterpart may interpret and respond to you before the real interaction.
Questions people ask
You should.
But colleagues already know the organisation, the history, the hierarchy, the personalities and the answer you hope to give. They are also invested in the outcome.
I sit outside that.
My job is to tell you plainly what mattered from the other side — what I believed, what I doubted and what people inside the organisation may see but find difficult to say.
I do not pretend to become the exact individual. Nobody can.
I build a credible counterpart from their role, interests, incentives, concerns, history and commercial context — and then respond from their perspective rather than yours.
Use it. AI can generate questions, challenge arguments, analyse information and create scenarios.
But another human changes the interaction as it happens. Tone, silence, interruption, irritation, status and misunderstanding alter your response; your response then alters theirs.
That reciprocal human dynamic is the territory Human Counterpart works on.
The boundaries are agreed upfront.
Human Counterpart is designed to improve performance, not to operate as covert assessment or performance management. Feedback is direct, specific and confidential.
All engagements are covered by NDA. Confidentiality is fundamental to the work.
Your high-stakes interaction should not be the first time you discover what works.
