If you don't ask you will not hear

I recently facilitated a workshop between an account team and their client, the silence from the account team was deafening! They seemed in awe of the CIO, who was remarkably open about his issues, but not one question came from the account team. In fact the only contribution from the team was to try and invite the CIO to an open day and even though he politely declined they had 2 more attempts.

So why is this? I can only assume that the account team are so used to customers buying technology that they could not deal with "business issues" that the CIO wanted to talk about.

Does this sound familiar. So what can we do about it.

1. Let's ensure that we coach our people in asking questions beyond the technology
2. Give them a structure to follow, it does not have to be complicated but they should find out about: Current projects; financial challenges; strategic imperatives; risks that may concern them; buying process, etc.
3. Attend meetings and watch them do it
4. Ensure that they not only ask the questions, but also listen to the answers

By the way, I am sure you want to know what happened with the meeting, well we uncovered 2 major opportunities that are driven by the need to create a more flexible business model, move from a fixed cost to a variable cost model, provide high service levels, and a desire to move to utility pricing. Now it is over to the account team