Dealing with Giants with Claudine HalpernTHE MEETING
Be on Time
Actually Be Early, then you have time to get the lay of the land before you start, if you’re overdressed you can take off your tie, or put the jacket on the back of the chair.
Don’t Huddle
Be friendly, smile, talk about the big game, be calm, this is a sales call, it’s as much about who you are personally as who you are as representatives of your company. Big Boys want to know that they can enjoy working with you.
You are creating a Team - Carefully Choose your Seat at the Table
Never ever, ever, ever choose seats where all of your team is on the opposite side of the table from the Big Boys, that works for divorce proceedings but not for an important prospect meeting. Don’t take the head of the table unless offered, if your team sits together opposite the Big Boys you give the impression of being insular and snobby, or afraid to mix, DON’T DO IT. If possible interleave your team with members of the Big Boys team.
If you walk into a room where people are already seated try to find space among the Big Boys without being obvious.
RUNNING THE MEETING …owning the results
Volunteer to Take Notes
This is very different than taking minutes, it’s not politics or a courtroom. You need to take control of the Next Steps and the best way to do that is to be the official “note-taker”. The things that you need to note are:
o Everyone’s name and rank (no serial number needed)
o New facts-or random thoughts that will help later on (Big Boy John just had a baby, let’s send him a gift)
o Questions that need to be answered immediately
o Questions to take away
o Who does what and when
And most importantly next steps and scheduling the next meeting
Stick to the Agenda- TAKE CONTROL
Don’t let it get out of hand, here’s where being the note taker pays off big time. If the Big Boys try to take you of on tangents, TAKE CONTROL, say “we will discuss that subject at the end of the meeting” and have your note-taker write it as a follow up. Usually people forget the off topic items because of your stellar presentation. If the Big Boys jump ahead, TAKE CONTROL, say “we will talk about that later in the presentation” and have the note-taker do the magic.
Sometimes it’s really hard to remember the names of the people at the meeting and who’s who. I usually make a cheat sheet, when everyone settles down I go around the room asking people to introduce themselves I make a cheat sheet with the shape of the table and the names of the people like a map. I note something memorable like ‘Mickey mouse tie” then when someone asks a question I refer to them by name, it makes people feel that you care about them and that they are important. It’s also helps me remember who a person is after the meeting.
A little more about controlling the meeting, let’s talk about some personalities that show up at meetings and how to handle them:
Mr. Email Reader and Texter : You know this guy, he is so important that he must be on his blackberry 24/7 or someone will forget who he is. He doesn’t look at anyone or listen to anyone as he is “Too Busy” to do his job, which right now is listening to your presentation. This is a tough call, one way to solve the problem is to use the “Movie Method” ask people to shut their phones and refrain from texting for the length of the meeting.
This doesn’t work all the time, I have had situations where people did not stop whatever I did, once I stopped the meeting waiting for Mr. Texter to finish. It was quite funny actually, for about three minutes we had absolute silence until Mr. Texter realized that we shut down until he stopped playing with his toys. When Mr. Texter woke up, I thanked him for his attention and told him how important he was to the presentation, he did not pick up his toys again during meetings. This engagement lasted a year and I never had the problem with him again, it became an inside joke between us and he became our biggest supporter during the engagement.
Mr. “Everything You Say is Poppycock”: This is the person who knows everything and will tell you that, he has a negative thing to say about everything, and constantly interrupts to hear himself speak. Mr. Poppy knows how to distract you and get you over a barrel. Don’t let him do that, this is where owning the agenda comes into play, when he interrupts and asks a question there are three possible answers:
1) Thank you for interrupting me, that question will be addressed later in the presentation
2) Thank you for interrupting me, that’s a good question we’ll take it away and get back to you
3) Thanks you very much for interrupting me, that leads me to my next point, these are the questions that you want and planned for.
Mr. Silent: this is the person who never says anything, sometimes you have a room full of these, that’s when it becomes difficult. Always engage the person during the question time. An example would be at a logical breaking point engage Mr. Silent. Mr. Silent may be very influential, or not. But he is at the meeting and you want him to participate, so when your asking if there are any questions or comments always ask Mr. Silent if he can participate by name to ask questions.
Mr. Teachers Pet: You know this guy from elementary school, he always asks questions to show off and doesn’t let anyone else speak, between him and Mr. Silent you’re in a bind, well not really. Here’s how this works, you have reached a logical break point in your conversation, you ask if there are any questions.
Now TAKE CONTROL of the questions, and by default the answers. Listen to Mr. Teachers Pet once or twice, by the third time directly ask Mr. Silent if he has questions, don’t ask a general “any Questions”, you know who’s going to pipe up and direct the meeting. At that breakpoint specifically say Mr. Silent do you have any questions? You’ll be surprised by the response, Mr. Silent is used to being ignored that you’ve just got yourself a new best friend.
By the end of the meeting you want to make sure that all of the attendees on both sides have spoken at least once. It’s really important to intuitively figure out the team dynamics, who the leader is, who are the followers and who are the influencers, each need to be engaged during the meeting.
Start on Time- Finish on Time
If you run over time don’t just assume that everyone can stay longer to finish. The Big Boys are always overbooked; their life is meetings and assuming that your meeting is most important is not respecting their time. If you have ten minutes left and are not up to “Enumerating Next Steps” jump there and set the next meeting as the first follow up.
You did your presentation brilliantly, engaged everybody, have a list of follow ups, have a list of things to get to the Big Boy, what now, you’ve got 5 minutes left………
ASSIGN FOLLOW UPS, make sure everyone knows what they have to do, when they have to do it, and who their resources are, engage everyone in the room with some follow up. The best thing to do is have follow ups that can be shared, then you have a great excuse to talk to people at the big boys casually off line, you can then find out what they thought what you missed and what you hit.
SET UP THE NEXT MEETING, Don’t Leave until you’ve done this…..
TAKE CONTROL- ask for another meeting politely, Big Boys love meetings. You can then decide later whether you want the meeting. If the Big Boys won’t commit to a meeting, get the name of their Meeting Planners (usually an admin) and permission to call and set up the meeting.
CONGRATULATIONS…. The Big Boy prospect is one GIANT step closer to becoming a profitable client
Next: LOOKING FOR TROUBLE…. How to spot pitfalls, sinkholes and trouble and fix it ………………
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2 comments:
Great post on clutter and great blog. I really enjoyed reading it.
Jack Halpern
My Elder Advocate
I almost felt like I was at the meeting you described. I've meet every one of your archetypes and have a much better idea of how to handle them. Panic never worked very well.
I'll be doing lots of speaking and some of the things you mention cross over especially starting and stopping on time.
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