Open It
The questions that change the answer, and the line that takes the edge off.
You leave able to ask for thirty minutes without flinching.
Last session you found something. This session is about the eleven seconds where you either open it or let it close. You will say the words out loud before you leave, because reading them is not the same as saying them to a client who is looking at you.
Open by asking who actually did the homework. Expect roughly half. Do not make it a problem. Pair anyone without an account with someone who has one, and run the whole session on shared accounts.
When did a client last surprise you with an answer?
If nothing comes to mind quickly, it is worth considering that your questions have been good enough to be predictable.
Ask what they need and they will tell you what they have already decided.
That is not a discovery conversation. That is a quote request with a person attached to it. The decision was made in a meeting you were not in, by people whose names you may not have.
The apple hasn't changed. The perspective has. Clients rarely ask for displays or projectors. They come with an idea, a problem, or a story they want to tell. Our job isn't to start with equipment. Our job is to understand the lens, the perspective, first. When those lenses are clear, technology becomes the enabler.
- Starts with a count. How many rooms, how many screens, how many seats.
- Ends in a specification you did not write.
- Compares you to other bidders on price and delivery date.
- Has one buyer, usually in IT or facilities.
- Starts with a person. Who walks in, and what happens to them.
- Ends in a set of outcomes somebody has to be accountable for.
- Compares you to nobody, because nobody else asked.
- Has several owners, and the money often sits outside IT.
You do not get from the left column to the right one by knowing more about technology. You get there by asking a different question and then being quiet.
Five questions. You only need two of them.
These are not discovery questions in the usual sense. Each one is built to make the client describe an experience rather than a room, and each has a tell you can listen for.
"Who walks through here, and what do you want them to say afterward?"
"Is there a moment in this space that has to land?"
"Who else is already working on this?"
"Has anyone written down what this has to do yet?"
"What happens to this space in three years?"
Insist on two, not five. An AM who tries to run all five turns a conversation into an interview and the client feels handled. Question four is the one that should always be in the pair.
Have the room write their two on paper. The act of choosing is what makes them portable.
You will not freeze because you lack knowledge. You will freeze because you are about to be found out.
There are six moments where it happens. Each one has a sentence that costs you nothing to say and keeps the conversation open.
Six moments. Six lines.
These exist because admitting the limit of what you know is more persuasive than covering it, and every one of these lines does that while moving forward.
Moment 01 · they use a word you do not know
Projection mapping. Media server. Show control. Pixera. Content strategy. Blend. Anamorphic. Any of these, and the instinct is to nod.
That is outside what I do day to day, and I would rather get you someone who lives in it than guess at it. Can I bring in our experiential team?
Moment 02 · it is bigger than you came for
You came to talk about a floor of meeting rooms and they started describing a building.
That is a bigger idea than the rooms we came to talk about. Let me make sure the right people hear it while it is still an idea.
Moment 03 · they ask what it costs
The most dangerous moment in the conversation. A number invented on the spot will follow you for eighteen months.
I could give you a number today and we would both regret it. Give me two weeks and a short call with our team, and I will come back with a range you can actually plan against.
Moment 04 · there is already a designer
An architect, an exhibit designer or a brand agency is already engaged, and it feels like you are late or unwelcome.
Good. We work best alongside a design team rather than instead of one. Who is leading it, and would it help if we spoke to them directly?
Moment 05 · you realise you are late
The requirements are written, the budget is set, and you are being invited to price somebody else's thinking.
If the requirements are already written, I want to be straight about where we can still add something and where we are just another bid. Can we look at that together?
Moment 06 · the ask itself
Everything else in this programme exists to get you to this sentence.
Would it make sense to put thirty minutes on the calendar and bring in our experiential technology team? They do this every week, they will ask better questions than I just did, and it costs you nothing but the half hour.
Have the room read moment six aloud together, once. It feels ridiculous and it is the single highest-return ninety seconds in the session. People will not say a sentence to a client that they have never heard in their own voice.
Pairs. Three rounds. Three minutes each.
One of you is the Account Manager, one is the client. Swap after each round. The AM must land two questions and the thirty-minute ask. Nothing else counts.
The friendly vague one
The client likes you, agrees with everything, and gives you nothing specific. "Yeah, we've talked about doing something with the lobby at some point."
The AM's job: get one concrete thing. A date, a name, or a moment.
The one who already has someone
"We've got an agency working on the concept, so we're probably covered." Said pleasantly, and meaning the door is closing.
The AM's job: moment four, then the ask. Do not argue with the agency.
Your actual account
The account you named in Workshop 1. Your partner plays the person you identified, as best you can brief them in thirty seconds.
The AM's job: all of it. This is the rehearsal for the call you are going to make.
Do not debrief round by round. It halves the reps and doubles the self-consciousness. Run all three, then ask one question: which moment was hardest. It is almost always the price question, and that tells you what to reinforce at the clinic.
What is the one sentence you will say this week?
Write it down in the words you would actually use, not the words on this page. Bring it to Workshop 3, where we work out whether you are early enough for it to matter.
Say it to one client. Any client. Even the wrong one.
The first time is the only hard one, and a client who says "not really" costs you nothing. If they say something else, email xtg@avispl.com and you will hear back inside twenty-four hours.