A new client of mine, Joanne, called me recently on the way back from a meeting with a prospect.  Joanne and her colleague said “it was awesome! During the one hour meeting, we hardly spoke at all.  In fact, we probably spoke for less than 5 minutes during the entire meeting.” Let me explain why they were so excited about giving the client the silent treatment (so to speak).

Joanne’s company has been in business for quite some time. Historically, they would have meetings with prospects and would spend most of the meeting talking about the myriad of services and capabilities they offer their clients. And, with such a long history, they would typically share stories of very complex scenarios where they had helped other clients in the past. No doubt, Joanne’s company has an impressive background. And, compared to the competition, they offer a broader range of capabilities. There was one problem, nobody seemed to care, and they could not figure out why.

In the past, the consumer needed knowledge from people like Joanne in order to understand their options. Today, with a few well-formed Google searches, Joanne’s clients can, in seconds, find information that took Joanne 30 years to learn. Though Joanne’s clients do have access to a tremendous volume of information at their fingertips, they do not generally have the wisdom to apply that cornucopia of information to their own specific situation. Realizing that clients have easy access to information, we need to focus on what does matter to them – namely, diagnosing their situation and seeing if we can help.

Unlike previous meetings, in this meeting, Joanne started by identifying how they help their clients. And, Joanne admitted that in less than half of the situations does she find that she can have a dramatic impact for her clients. She wanted to ask questions to learn about their situation and see if she might be able to help. For the next 55 minutes, the CEO and COO spoke freely about their situation. Periodically, Joanne would ask a question to learn more about something they had said. At no point did Joanne or her associate start talking about a solution, pitch products, or even hint that her company had a PowerPoint presentation. They simply were taking notes and asking brief questions.  But a funny thing happened at the conclusion of the meeting.

The CEO said “so you can tell that things are a mess here.  Can you help us?”  Joanne had not discussed her services, had not shared a brochure, and did not provide a list of references. So, what happened? It’s simple.  As customers, we are most comfortable with those organizations that have the best personalized understanding of our specific situation. Having spent an hour sharing their problems, do you think they want to go through that again? Of course not.  At that point, being comfortable that Joanne understood their situation, and knowing something about her firm’s background (remember clients have access to our websites), they simply were asking for help.

One of the greatest pitfalls for people in sales and business development is the desire to deliver all of the information in our brains to our clients in a meeting. Fight that urge. Instead, take the time to ask great questions, be an active listener, and see if the client has an Issue, with sufficient Impact, and enough Importance to warrant your help. You’ll be surprised how often they will ask you  for the order.

I look forward to reading your thoughts.