Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, stood up at the University of Arizona commencement and talked about the transformational impact of AI.

His audience was a football field full of brand-new graduates who are stepping out into the workplace for the first time. They are thinking about their immediate future.

At the first mention of AI, people started to boo. even when Schmidt tried to backtrack and talk about how everything is screwed up and it's not their fault, everybody kept on booing. Schmidt didn't understand what his audience was facing. He wasn't ever able to put himself in their shoes.

In another shocking case of not reading the room, the President said in response to a question about the economic impact of the Iran war on American citizens, “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody.” Regardless of what you think about the President, tossing that answer back to a reporter while the latest Ipsos poll says 73% of people think Trump isn’t handling escalating prices well is a huge misstep. (NOTE: I do understand that the President was answering as if the question was about his Iran war-making decisions, but his answer, regardless of the context he had, showed that he didn't understand what was going to hit the ears of the American people.)

So these are two guys who have reached the apex of corporate and governmental leadership, and they weren't able to fully understand the needs of the audiences they were addressing.

I don't want you to run into these “READ THE ROOM” gaffes when you are talking to prospects and clients.

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Sometimes I think, as agency leaders and business developers and client managers, we sometimes get confused about what is actually going on. You've set your agenda, you've created your deck, and you are going to walk your prospect or client through your points. So you take center stage and start performing…

But here's the deal, you aren't up on a stage. You are in a room or on a Zoom with another person. they didn't buy a ticket to your solo show. They hopped on the call to have a conversation.

When you are in performance mode. You are delivering a monologue.

But a conversation is bilateral. There are questions and answers and clarifications. There are agreements and disagreements and confusions. There is a balance of power in a discussion.

You you might set the agenda and have an idea of where you want the conversation to go, but don't forget that it's a conversation.

DISCOVERY CALL DISASTER: A client shared a discovery call recording where it was so clear that they got excited about the opportunity with this prospect. They didn't spend very much time understanding the situation or probing because they were following the stars in their eyes…

At one point, the prospect asked for more specifics about the process and about how they would actually create the results that the prospect needed. Rather then listen carefully to the question, the founder gave the question a 7-second lip service answer, and then started talking about the things the excited them - adding additional channels, additional markets, etc.

HERE’S THE FUCK UP: The founder didn't understand why the prospect was asking for a process review. They didn't understand the real question and the real message behind the question, which was “Can you go over that one more time because what you said does not fill me with confidence that this is going to work.”

The founder missed the “I don’t trust you yet” signal. There was no next call….

ACCOUNT AVALANCHE: Another client shared an account management call that went awry. The account manager started talking about ad creative changes that were generating more clicks. The client was very focused on a drop-in landing page conversion rate. Each party got frustrated with the other because they were not addressing the area of focus that the other had. The client asked several times for the cause of landing page performance decline. The account manager kept on talking about the changes to the Ad Creative that may have broadened the audience too much. The call got a little testy…

HERE’S THE FUCK UP: In this case, it was two fuck-ups because nobody was listening to the other person, even though they were actually talking about the exact same issue. Each I was trying to drill into a performance decline. The account manager was focusing on traffic quality changes whereas the client was focused on landing page performance. Each came to the call with an agenda that put each of them in performance mode rather than conversation mode.

Your CFO opens Slack. There's a weekly Stripe revenue recap in #finance with a churned-accounts flag and a net-new breakdown. She didn't ask for it.

Your head of product opens Slack. There's a GitHub summary in private channel: PRs merged, PRs stale, Linear tickets that moved. He didn't ask for it.

Your marketing lead opens Slack. There's a Google Ads performance comparison in private channel, with a note: "Meta CPA crept up 18% this week. Might be worth pausing the broad match campaign." She didn't ask for it either.

All-hands at 10am. Everyone already knows the numbers. The meeting is about decisions, not catch-up.

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Jumping into one person show mode, where you start performing when there is a group involved is another form of NOT READING THE ROOM. It can be really challenging when you are faced with multiple decision makers or influencers to not step into performance mode where you are having a one-way monologue with the audience.

Each of the people in the audience are coming to the discussion with a slightly different agenda. A discovery call might happen with three people - a CMO, a Product Owner & a Data Specialist. Each of them have a different perspective:

If during the Discovery Call, you start performing and tell a single story without asking and addressing the different focal areas of each of your audience, YOU AREN’T READING THE ROOM.

We keep doing this because conversations are less controllable. You only know your part of the script. If one of your audience members starts to improv, you are going to lose your place. You stop inviting them into a discussion and ask them to buy tickets to your performance.

Eventhough public speaking and performing on a stage are two of the things that people secretly fear the most, it's not nearly as scary as having a conversation where you might have to go off script. If somebody in your audience starts to improvise, you might have to address something that isn’t in your script.

When you get off script and are put into reactive mode, you have the opportunity to create something magical - VULNERABILITY.

READ THE ROOM isn't a soft suggestion to listen better. It’s a foundational mandate for openness and flexibility. When you can participate in a dialogue rather than a monologue. You create a shared vulnerability with the other party. You are both stepping into a space that is not scripted, where subjects can change, information can change, outcomes can change.

READ THE ROOM is the outcome of actually showing up. In the agency heyday, that time just pre- and during the pandemic, the prevailing wisdom was that your offer is the most important thing in your business development arsenal. During that time period, many sales processes were actually monologues with a binary question at the end: yes or no. But we are in a better and more sophisticated time where you need to show up so that you can understand & respond to the needs, wants, and concerns of your prospects and clients.

READ THE ROOM is another way of thinking about what's at the heart of the WTF Sales Method, which is trust.

READ THE ROOM it's the way that you maximize your RETURN ON UNDERSTANDING and set yourself apart as someone who is working collaboratively, closely, and powerfully as a partner rather than as a vendor with an offer.

So, go ahead - STOP PERFORMING & READ THE ROOM - I dare you.

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