“You are the fourth supplier we have seen this week.” I have heard that more than once. And honestly, I understand.
A leader who has seen three experts is no longer listening: they are scanning
Leaders run through experts, methods, presentations. By the fourth meeting of the week they are not listening in any strict sense. They are scanning. And within thirty seconds they have answered a single question: is this one here to sell, or to see?
That sorting is neither unfair nor lazy. It is a skill acquired through being pitched at. The trouble is that it also eliminates the ones who would have been useful, because they introduce themselves like all the others.
I stopped presenting
I stopped opening with what I do. I open with a question. Two, usually, and always the same ones.
“What was missing in the first three meetings?” - the answer says almost everything: what was being looked for, what was not found, and therefore what actually matters.
“If you were not afraid, which decision would you make this week?” - that one is blunter. It produces either silence, or a sentence the person had said to no one.
What a leader is actually buying
I am not there to be right. I am there to surface what is unsaid, what is blurred, what has been deferred for too long.
The leaders I work with did not choose me for my answers. They chose me for questions they had not heard elsewhere - and that none of the three people seen before me had dared to ask, because each had an engagement to sell afterwards.
That is the only reason the question is possible: I have no stake in the outcome of your decision. No ready-made solution to make you adopt, no option to make you prefer.
Read also - What you no longer see · AI does not decide for you
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