What can business development leaders learn from the best restaurants in the world about customer experience? Avoid the thumb.
I recently went to lunch with four of my colleagues who helped conduct research and edit The Growth Engine, our recent book on building and growing a thriving business development function in professional services. There were five of us, and we were seated at a six-top—two on one side, three on the other. This meant someone had to be the straggler with no one across from them. I quickly asked if we could remove the small table that had been pushed against the four-top, and instead just seat our fifth person at the head of the table. “Right, we definitely don’t want to leave a thumb!,” said my colleague, Caroline. We all intuitively know that is the worst seat at the table—it’s hard to feel as involved in the conversation when you’re stuck at the end—but I had never known there was a name for it. And what a perfect description: four diners are close together and happy, and the fifth is off on the side.
The concept of a ‘roundtable’ has been around for hundreds of years—and for good reason. King Arthur wanted all of his knights to feel equal around the table—no one relegated to the ‘bad seat.’ When you want everyone to have a positive, engaging experience—֫whether out at a meal, or sitting in a meeting—the set-up matters. The thumb is more likely to miss parts of the conversation, therefore contribute less to the conversation, and perhaps even disengage altogether—maybe they pull out their phone because it’s too exhausting to keep leaning over to try to hear. Not to mention, they might be offended.
While the thumb is the worst-case scenario, even having a long table is inevitably less fun for those seated at the end. So don’t have an ‘end.’ Make it a fully closed circle, seating someone at either head of the table. No one was ever offended for being seated at the ‘head’ of the table!
While you may not always have control over your seating arrangements, you probably have more than you think. This rule of thumb (forgive the pun) applies both to the actual physical set-up of a room for a conference or a meeting as much as it applies to the philosophy. Consider the network of people you know are important to the future of your business but perhaps half of them don’t have budget right now and a quarter are on the verge of switching firms or being subject to a major re-organization in their business. It would be easy to de-prioritize 75% of those key relationships to focus on the 25% where you believe there is real opportunity. The problem with that strategy, is that you just made 75% of your key relationships feel like they are the ‘thumb.’ When their positioning changes, the market turns, or they land in a new role, winning work with them will be much harder than if you invited them to the circle even when there was no work to be won. One key to business development success? #NoThumbs!
