The Power Of Saying Less

All it took was two sentences in 60 minutes.

Last year I was in a meeting with a very upset client of mine. Walking into their brand new office, with woodgrain finish, brand new coffee machine and views of the Grand Prix track was daunting.

The size of his work desk was the size of his ego. His business partner walked into the room with his slicked back hair, Armani Suit and two buttons undone to give that relaxed look. The topic of the meeting was sales leads (don’t let that bore you, though).

I was there to talk to these two gentlemen about sales leads with a colleague and the lack of them. The client was expecting 2000 leads per month, had launched their website a few weeks prior, had no social media presence and their 4–5 major competitors all had billion dollar businesses.

It was a tale of David and Goliath and they were not playing the part of either.

Before the scheduled time I agreed that my colleague would run the meeting to build up some experience in dealing with heated escalations. I was in the meeting only to observe, add some credibility and give him feedback at the end which would help him.

The client started off by telling us to talk about how we had got to where we were on that day while we looked at each other over a huge desk…