Advantages are earned. They are tied to the volume of business.

For years I thought it had simply been a fair answer to a legitimate and expected request.
Today I am no longer so sure.

I was a sales manager, trying to develop an important client. Or rather, a client who had the potential to become one.

We had known them for some time and they were already doing business with us, but buying far less than their potential suggested. So every meeting was an attempt to build something more.

That day we discussed commercial terms. He asked me for better conditions.

It was not an unexpected request.
In fact, I had been expecting it. I had already imagined that conversation and, in my head, I had even prepared my answer.

Advantages are earned. They are legitimate, but they are tied to the volume of business.

I said it naturally.

There was no irony.
I did not want to sound arrogant.
I was not trying to teach him a lesson.

It seemed to me the clearest way to explain a rule I considered simple and, if not shared, at least understandable: as the business relationship grows, so do the special terms available to the client.

What I remember instead is his look.
He did not reply.

The conversation continued without any visible tension. We talked about other things, shook hands and said goodbye with the same courtesy as always.

And yet, by the time I walked out of that office, something had already changed. I simply did not know it, or had failed to notice it.

I continued to be received.
Always with availability.
Always with courtesy.

But the relationship never made the leap I had imagined. Orders remained more or less unchanged. Every attempt to grow ran into an invisible wall.

For a long time I looked for the explanation elsewhere.

The market.
The competition.
The price.
Company policy. It was, and still is, a business deeply rooted in the local area that “likes” to work with “everyone”.

I began to notice how reassuring it was to blame missed opportunities on external factors: it spared me from having to return to my own words.

Then, one day, that sentence came back looking for me.

Not to ask whether it was true. I still believe it was.

Something, even years later, was still asking for an answer, for a reasonable why.

What had he heard while I was talking about commercial terms?
Had he perhaps felt that I was measuring his value as a client?
Or had he heard something like: “First show me what you are worth, then we can talk”?
Had he felt judged?
Or had none of this happened at all?

The truth?
I will never know.

What I do know is that I was talking about criteria.
He was probably talking about recognition.
I was responding to an economic request.
He may have been asking a completely different question.

That is what I could not see at the time.

I believed that being transparent was enough for the other person to perceive transparency too. I thought that if a sentence was fair, it would inevitably be heard that way.

I was confusing what I meant with what the other person would hear and understand.

Over time I have learned that a professional relationship does not always crack because of an argument.

Sometimes a word is enough. A sentence.

Even when spoken with the best intentions, if it takes on a different meaning for the other person, not necessarily a wrong one, simply a different one from mine, that is where the crack can begin.

Silent.
Invisible.

Thin enough not to end a relationship, but deep enough to stop it from growing.

Looking back at that meeting, I would not change the commercial policy today, and I probably would not offer a discount either.

But I would ask one more question.

“Which terms matter to you, and why do they matter to you, to your company?”

At the time I was convinced I had already understood.
Today I know that I had understood only the request.

I had not stopped to ask myself what might lie behind it.

Perhaps he was looking for recognition.
Perhaps he wanted to know how important it was to us to work with him, with his company.
Perhaps he was testing whether I was willing to invest in the relationship before investing in turnover.

I will never have the answer.

Because I answered the question I had heard, without stopping to understand what question he was actually asking.

Since then, in the more delicate negotiations, I sometimes slow down.

Not to build a better answer.
To listen better.

I try to remember that words never land on neutral ground. They pass through experience, expectations, pride and fear. And the person listening gives them a meaning that rarely matches exactly what the speaker intended.

I still fall into the same trap sometimes.

And even today, I sometimes realise too late that we were not talking about the same thing.

The journey continues

Before we even speak, what do we bring with us when we enter a room?

Can I understand you without agreeing with you?

Coming soon on L’Agorà.

To learn about her path and the other contributions published in Emozioni, discover Stefano Bosia.