My biggest fear is that my attempts to give you ideas and inspire you, comes across as me preaching to you. If that happens, you wouldn’t feel comfortable letting me know would you?
Going into a meeting, if you had a concern, would you feel comfortable sharing that with the prospect/client/stranger/manager across the table from you?
What’s going on here?
From time to time there are elephants sat in the corner of our meetings, minding their own business. Everyone can see them, sat there reading a copy today’s newspaper but no one is addressing them. Not talking about an elephant completing the crossword and moving onto a Su Doku is very distracting. It would be much less distracting if someone called it out, asked if anyone minded your pet elephant being in the room today, made a joke about it and moved on.
The energy and effort consumed by the questions running through everyone’s heads can’t help but be distracting:
- Where did the elephant come from?
- Whose elephant is it?
- How is that elephant holding a pen?
- How did it fit through the door?
This isn’t some form of Jedi mind trick. This is about helping people to feel comfortable enough to have an open conversation.
When you use the phrase “My biggest fear is…” there is a lot going on:
- You’re humbling yourself. You might not feel comfortable displaying weakness but when you do so, you show you’re human. War criminals and dictators aside, most people enjoy helping others.
- You’re calling “it” so that you get the topic on the table, address it, disarm “it” and can move on.
- You make it socially awkward for “it” to be thrown back at you in the future. This is especially true if you ask if “it” is going to be a redline for them, and worthy of ending the conversation straight away.
Get Comfortable Being Uncomfortable
You may feel uncomfortable about opening yourself up in this way. Over your career, you may have created a veneer of confidence and professionalism that is important to the way you are perceived. Or at least the way that you perceive you are perceived. It’s not easy to admit to a room of strangers that you’re concerned, worried, or uncomfortable about something. Remember though, if you can see the elephant… the only reason that you might think that other people in the room can’t see it, is because you think they’re stupid. Have you ever come away from a meeting and thought “huh, they didn’t mention the service outage at all… Great!”… Who’s kidding who here? If they didn’t raise it then that’s either because they didn’t have any respect for you and were lying to your face, or they thought you didn’t respect them enough to think it was an issue at all. In both scenarios there is a breakdown in relationship and communication and that’s not good for business. Wouldn’t it be better to call it early, get it on the table, discuss it and ask if the issue is too big to find a way through?
A good time to talk about elephants?
What do elephants and frogs have in common? They should both be dealt with quickly and early. A good place to insert your biggest fear is in your upfront contract for the meeting. You could do it when you discuss time, or you could do it at the end before you move into the content of the meeting. It depends on the context and size of the elephant.
“We’ve set aside 60 minutes this morning but can I share a concern? My biggest fear is that we organised today’s meeting two weeks ago and since then we’ve all experienced a big outage of your service. I appreciate that we had planned to discuss doing more business together today but that might not be appropriate for you now. Has that experience put a redline on us looking at the future for the time being?”
Sometimes the elephant might be stood outside the room, and your concern is that it walks in during the meeting. That could really disturb the conversation and flow of the meeting.
“My biggest fear is that you might feel like I’m interrogating you with all my questions. Forgive me, I am naturally inquisitive and sometimes the questions I ask might be on topics that you don’t immediately know the answer to, or could be difficult to answer to a perfect stranger. If that happens, you wouldn’t mind telling me, would you? I would hate for my desire to fully understand the situation to make you feel uncomfortable and kill the conversation.”
Or
“My biggest fear is that at some point in this conversation we’re going to need to talk about budget, money and investment. Sometimes I can feel awkward talking about these topics but i’ve found they give a complete picture to the situation. If we get to that point today, that isn’t something you would mind picking up is it?”
Other elephants
When you planned for the meeting you will have asked yourself about the topics the client might ask you, that you don’t want them to. These are the family of elephants that the client has invited into the room next door that you might not have seen on the way in. Rather than them being on your mind and distracting you for the duration of the meeting, what about calling them early?
“Before we get started, it might be that there are some questions you have about the relative youth and financial stability of the company that I work for. It wouldn’t make sense for us to discuss that upfront so that we can all decide whether that is going to be a blocker for us working together is it? I’d hate for us to invest hours talking about things over the coming weeks for that to become an issue later down the line.”
Remember, the elephants are there whether you talk about them or not. What we’re talking about here is getting control of them, preventing them from distracting people’s attention and qualifying quickly whether they are going to be a problem or not.
Old Elephants
It might not have happened to you, but sometimes there isn’t an elephant in the room but there is a memory of one. I can’t see it because it isn’t there now but for the person I’m talking to, it is just as real as when it was there.
One example might be the way a previous sales person has treated them. They might have experienced someone lying to them, or selling them something they didn’t get the anticipated value from. You won’t know this but they might see that elephant in the corner and put barriers up that prevent open and honest dialogue.
How might you mitigate this?
Call it.
“My biggest fear is that you’ve had experiences in the past where you’ve been sold something by a sales person more interested in themselves than you. If at any point you feel that might be happening in our conversations, you wouldn’t feel comfortable telling me would you? It might be the case that we discuss a problem that I can’t help you with, or can’t solve in full. If that happens, would it be OK for me to tell you?”
Goodbye Elephant of Christmas Past.
Be negative
If there’s one sure fire way of resurrecting the Elephant of Christmas Past it’s if you behave in a way that appears to be driven by making the sale and getting the commission rather than in the interest of the client. If your breath stinks of commission then you might as well save yourself the time, feed the elephant a current bun and walk out of the room.
The best way of ensuring you don’t stink of commission breath is by remaining politely negative about opportunities. Ban words of enthusiastic celebration from your vocabulary: “Great!” “Awesome!”… “you don’t like your current provider because they’re incompetent? “Brilliant!”.
Change your mindset to why the client won’t work with you. When they say phrases like “we’ve heard great things about your company and we want to use you” it sounds eminently sensible. Of course they think your company is great. So do you. I’d like you to train your mindset to be suspicious of flattering statements like this and challenge them.
“I appreciate the kind words, but often it can be a lot of work to move providers. Why wouldn’t you stick with what you’re currently doing and focus on other problems that need your attention?”
What happens now? The client has to justify why they want to move to you and why they can’t just “do nothing”. You will learn much more than saying “makes sense”, even if it does. You will also prevent the elephant from reappearing.
Agree for failure
You’ve probably learned to book the next meeting before you leave the current one. Don’t lose momentum. This is planning for success and is a good habit.
Do you also plan for failure? Do you ask “what will we do if that doesn’t happen?”.
“It might not be the case for you but sometimes the best laid plans get interrupted by other high priorities. What should we do if you’re not able to send me those details by the end of the week?”
Agree that the client would like you to contact them on the Monday to remind them to do their homework and you’ll never need to chase again.
