You go into a client meeting with a carefully crafted plan of action, something that you believe will work well. The questions and analysis begin, and then the best thing happens: you're wrong.

Yes. Wrong. By taking a closer look at certain aspects of the plan, the client and you decide -- TOGETHER -- that one part of it can wait till further down the road, but another part of it needs strengthening and more focus now.

The light bulb goes off and it's like, "Yes, you're right. If we concentrate more on X then we'll have a better XX and that will lead to a more successful XXX." [Feel free to insert your own X's if that's happened to you.]

Time and again you push forward because you think you know everything that is needed, and you just don't. Until you're sitting across from the client, brainstorming and discussing other great ideas that are spinning off from the "new" plan, then you're failing them.

They know things that you don't and vice versa. Unless you bring those out in discussion and look at the pros and cons of each strategy, then you're already on different paths at that point and it won't be a happy result.

So, in your next pitch meeting just ask yourself, quietly in your head ... "Am I wrong?"

John.