Selling Structured Trade Finance Solutions

Session 1: Thinking Like a Corporate Treasurer

Purpose: Understand the objectives, measures and decision criteria that shape a corporate client's financing choices.

The Corporate Treasurer's World

• Liquidity management and working-capital optimisation

• Funding diversification, cost reduction and balance-sheet efficiency

• FX exposure and counterparty-risk management

• Supply-chain resilience and support for corporate growth

Understanding Treasury KPIs

• Cash conversion cycle, inventory days, receivable days and payable days

• Net debt, interest cover and liquidity ratios

• Return on capital employed and the relationship between profit and cash

How CFOs and Treasurers Evaluate Funding Solutions

• Cost, flexibility and scalability

• Accounting and regulatory implications

• Operational complexity, implementation risk and resilience

From Product Selling to Consultative Solutioning

• Why product-led selling fails

• Business objective -> financial challenge -> solution -> measurable outcome

• Common buying triggers: growth, M&A, margin pressure, supply-chain disruption, geopolitical events and funding-cost changes

Practical exercise: Treasury Priorities and Buying Triggers Workshop. Teams compare the priorities of the CFO, Treasurer, Procurement Director and Supply Chain Director, then identify the commercial objectives behind a series of apparent product requests.

Session 2: Treasury Forensics: Diagnosing Opportunities Before the Meeting

Purpose: Use available information to form an evidence-based view of a client's financial pressures and potential structured trade finance needs.

Sources of Intelligence

• Annual reports and financial statements

• Investor presentations and earnings calls

• Rating and credit reports

• Industry publications, market intelligence and news flow

The Treasury Forensics Framework

• Funding stress and liquidity pressure

• Working-capital deterioration and growth constraints

• Supply-chain, customer and supplier concentration risk

• Cross-border liquidity and restricted-cash issues

Warning Signals and Diagnostic Indicators

• Rising inventory or receivable days

• Higher funding costs and weakening interest cover

• Restricted cash balances and covenant pressure

• EBITDA pressure, supplier concentration and supply-chain fragility

Practical exercise: Annual Report Investigation. Teams analyse extracts from a fictional multinational's financial and non-financial disclosures, identify the strongest warning signals and develop an initial view of its treasury concerns.

Session 3: The Art of Discovery

Purpose: Convert preliminary analysis into a purposeful client conversation that uncovers priorities, root causes and decision criteria.

The Three-Layer Questioning Framework

• Operational questions: how the business, supply chain and payment cycle work

• Financial questions: where cash, liquidity, funding and risk pressures arise

• Strategic questions: what the client is trying to achieve and what could prevent success

Deepening the Conversation

• Moving from surface issues and stated requests to root causes

• Testing assumptions developed during pre-meeting analysis

• Active listening, summarising and follow-up questions

• Handling resistance without reverting to a premature product pitch

Practical exercise : Discovery Role Play . In pairs, participants conduct a short client meeting based on a treasury scenario. Observers assess the quality and sequencing of questions, listening skills and ability to uncover the underlying objective.

Session 4: Integrated Case Study: Manufacturing Company

Purpose: Bring together the analytical and consultative frameworks in a realistic client-origination exercise.

Case Materials

• Selected financial statements and working-capital data

• Industry and supply-chain information

• Corporate strategy and treasury profile

• Recent developments affecting liquidity, funding and growth

Team Challenge

• Identify the client's principal commercial and financial objectives

• Diagnose the most important working-capital, liquidity and supply-chain issues

• Separate evidence from assumptions and identify information gaps

• Prepare a sequenced set of discovery questions

• Formulate and justify initial structured trade finance opportunities

Team presentation: Each team presents its diagnosis, discovery plan and opportunity hypothesis. Facilitated feedback tests whether the recommendations address the client's underlying objectives rather than merely matching products to symptoms.

Individual action planning: Participants are encouraged to identify three insights, one current client opportunity and one action to implement immediately after the course.

Training Objectives

By the end of the course, participants will be able to:

• Explain the principal treasury objectives and the criteria used to evaluate financing solutions.

• Interpret core working-capital and liquidity indicators, including the cash conversion cycle.

• Recognise buying triggers and distinguish a client's commercial objective from a product request.

• Apply a structured treasury-forensics framework to public and client-supplied information.

• Identify warning signals relating to inventory, receivables, funding costs, liquidity and supply chains.

• Use a layered questioning framework to progress from symptoms to underlying causes.

• Prepare discovery questions and formulate relevant structured trade finance opportunities.

Training Course Summary

Clients do not buy trade-finance products simply for their features. They buy solutions to commercial problems: trapped cash, funding pressure, supply-chain vulnerability, growth constraints and cross-border risk. This practical course develops the analytical and consultative skills required to identify those problems and turn them into credible structured trade finance opportunities.

Participants learn to think from the perspective of a CFO or Treasurer, interpret financial and non-financial information, recognise working-capital warning signals, conduct deeper discovery conversations and formulate an initial solution hypothesis. Exercises, role plays and an integrated case study ensure that the frameworks can be applied immediately to real client situations. The programme combines concise technical input with active application. Participants work individually, in pairs and in teams using:

• Facilitated discussion and practical examples

• Financial-statement and treasury-diagnostics exercises

• Client scenarios and buying-trigger analysis

• Discovery role plays with peer feedback

• An integrated manufacturing-company case study

• Team presentations, reflection and action planning