Professionals I work with often complain about colleagues who hijack sales meetings by ignoring agreed upon plans and dominating the conversation, barely allowing the client a chance to talk. This problem is especially hard to deal with if the talker outranks everyone else on the firm’s team.

This posting will describe three kinds of hijackers. My next posting will describe some ways to deal with them.
There are many reasons that a person will highjack a meeting. In planning how to deal with them, it often helps to see if they fit any of the following three types: beagles, babblers and big shots.

Beagles

It’s hard not to like beagles. Small, cheerful and friendly, they win a place in your heart. Smart, they quickly learn to behave, or so it seems . . . until they see a rabbit.

Upon seeing a rabbit, centuries of breeding short circuit every other thought in a beagle’s head. RABBIT! Off goes the beagle in pursuit sounding his wonderful bay. “Heel!” you may command, but something in a beagle’s head screams “RABBIT.” “Sit!” you yell. RABBIT is what the beagle hears.

You can shout, stamp your foot, threaten, cry, cajole or do whatever else you may think of, but RABBIT overwhelms everything. RABBIT! RABBIT! So overpowering is this genetically based focus on RABBIT that there is little you can do except watch the hunt.

Fortunately, rabbits usually run in circles. If you can find the center of the circle, chances are the dog won’t be far away.

Some professionals behave in much the same way when a client raises a specific issue. Everything short circuits and they begin to pitch whatever it is they specialize in. FORECAST! (or INTELECTUAL PROPERTY PROTECTION or ASBESTOS REMMEDIATION or whatever).

You may have agreed to sit back and hear what the client has to say before talking yourselves. No matter. That agreement is overwhelmed by the word, FORECAST!

Thought leaders often exhibit this behavior. They seem to feel that all clients hunger to hear their knowledge of a subject. Firms reinforce that belief by trotting them out to talk about their specialty at marketing events.

Like beagles, these people aren’t malicious. Rather, it is as if they have been bred for one purpose, to talk about their specialty.

Babblers

My wife is a second grade teacher. Every fall she must get her young scholars, who have run wild and free all summer, adjusted to the limits of the classroom.

On the first day of school last September, she told a talkative seven year old, “Now, Rachel, remember that in school you can’t just talk whenever you want to. You have to wait for the teacher to call on you.” To which Rachel replied, “You know, . . . I had the same problem last year.” One imagines Rachel having the same problem for a long time to come.

Rachel isn’t the only one who talks too much in spite of reminders. Some professionals suffer from the same malady. The babbler may be an extreme extrovert who gets such a high off of human contact that he talks away, missing the chance to learn about the person he is addressing.

In other cases, the babblers confuse the deference we show to those in power with interest in what they have to say. I can think of at least one hierarchical firm where promotion to partner increases a person’s prolixity even more than it does his paycheck.

This isn’t the talk of a young person who seeks to prove herself or who just doesn’t know techniques for getting the other person to talk. (See He Talks Too Much.) This is the talk of a person who believes, often mistakenly, that other people want to hear what he has to say, of a person who sees a conversation as an opportunity to sound forth rather than to take in.

These people seldom realize they have a problem. Last summer I was asked to coach a former CEO turned executive recruiter. When I cautioned him about talking too much, he looked at me as if I were crazed and then proceeded to talk in almost a monologue for two hours, starting with a denial of his talkativeness, before rambling from subject to subject.

Big Shots

Big shots are firm partners who sell aggressively and believe that there is no other way. They dominate in sales meetings, because they always dominate. If another partner says, “Green,” they are likely to say, “Red.” They have personally landed most of the firm’s major clients and developed it’s most profitable services . . . just ask them. Actually, you don’t even have to ask.

They also knew all along that a hurricane would wreck New Orleans, advised Bush not to go into Iraq (by way of a close personal friend who knows a cabinet member who passed the advice on to the president), taught Robin Williams how to be funny and could bring peace between the Palestinians and the Israelis, if someone would just let them.

After dominating a sales meeting, they will tell you that you should have spoken up more. They cannot see their domineering behavior as having anything to do with your silence.

These are the three common kinds of hijackers. In a future posting I will suggest some ways to deal with them.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 7th, 2008 at 9:34 am and is filed under Sales Meeting. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.