I was a guest on Craig Andrews’ Leaders & Legacies podcast this fall. About halfway through, I offered to run a role play. Craig told a story instead, and it beat anything I could have staged. That is the sign of a great host.

Years ago, Craig tagged along to a meeting with a group inside a big phone maker outside Chicago. The group was known as the Think Tank because they really were smart and also because they thought very highly of themselves.

It wasn’t Craig’s meeting. One of his company’s co-founders sat right beside him. A colleague who owned the meeting got up and presented. Then one of the Think Tank people said it:

“Wow, I can see you’ve wasted our time.” So classic. We have all been there before.

The presenter’s jaw hit the table. The co-founder said nothing. Craig was still a junior, so he had been sitting on his hands waiting for his moment. So he spoke up, told them they had the right people in the room for whatever agenda they wanted, and made an offer:

“Let’s rework this agenda right now to make it exactly what you’re looking for.”

What a moment of trust! And they went with the same agenda and got the real meeting going.

Kicking the tires

I told Craig we could skip my role play. His audience no longer needed it. He’d just told the story that my role play was going to try and demonstrate. And he still held the emotion of that moment.

A line like that is often a test. The client is kicking the tires to see how you react. Sometimes it’s a bit of dominance, and sometimes provoking people is just their style. Underneath, they want to know one thing: will this team slow down and work on my side? That is the real question. And that is a business-winning question if you get it right.

The instinct in the presenter’s chair is to defend the deck. Explain why the agenda is right. Push on to the next slide. I’ve done that so many times in my past. Every version of that response makes the meeting about you, and it answers the client’s question with a no, we are not really listening. We are not really on your side.

Craig didn’t argue for the agenda. He asked for theirs. That’s Ask, Don’t Answer and Moments of Trust in one move. Craig slowed down when the room got hard and handed the client the question instead of going with an answer.

The agenda they wanted turned out to be the one Craig’s team already had prepared. What they didn’t have yet was proof that this team would listen first. Once they had it, they were happy to keep going.

The guy along for the ride asked the question

What stuck with me is that it wasn’t Craig’s meeting. The senior people froze, and the person with the least to protect asked the right question.

I asked Craig if the co-founder gave him any credit for it. He didn’t really know. He didn’t think the guy liked him much.

That’s a big learning for agency leaders. Plenty of your best people have answers. School taught them to have the right answer and early wins taught them to prove it, so asking a question in a tense room feels like admitting they don’t know. Nobody has told them that not only are they allowed, but not knowing can be a competitive advantage. So when a client pushes, they sit on their hands and wait for the most senior person in the room to handle it.

And the client learns who to call next time. Not your team. At best they call you. At worst they call someone else.

I told Craig he was the smartest guy in that meeting. He was the one who asked.

Try this in your next client conversation

When a client pushes back hard on the work, the plan or the meeting itself:

1. Don’t defend the deck or the thinking. Not yet.

2. Hand them the agenda. Ask what would make this worth their time. Craig’s line works word for word.

3. Then stop talking. Count to five, or seven, in your head. It’s an awkward silence, and the client will often fill it with their next, deeper thought.

If you’re new to a client’s world, borrow Craig’s other habit. He’d tell people up front that he didn’t know their industry that well, that he was going to ask some questions, and that some might sound dumb. Was that okay? His reason: “the gold is hidden under assumptions.”

If you lead the team, sit in on your people’s next tough client call and count the questions they ask before they answer. Under two, and they probably don’t understand the client’s question yet. Then tell them, out loud, that they’re allowed to ask the dumb one.

Listen to the episode

Craig’s full episode is on Leaders & Legacies. The Think Tank story starts about halfway through.

Take the trust skills quiz before you forward this one to your team.