Where you sit, and why it decides the meeting
Where everyone ends up sitting is usually decided by accident, by whoever pulls a chair out first, and it then shapes the next ninety minutes more than most of what anyone says. Sitting across a table from someone puts you in the posture of a negotiation, with two sides and a surface between them. Sitting beside them, both looking at the same photograph or the same quote, puts you in the posture of two people examining a problem. Same people, same information, materially different conversation. This is the cheapest adjustment in the whole course and the one most reps have never thought about.
Why the geometry does work
Opposite is the arrangement of an interview, a negotiation and a border crossing. It has one person on each side and an object in between, and it makes the document on the table something that passes between two parties rather than something you are both looking at.
Beside is the arrangement of two people reading the same map. The document is in front of both of you at the same angle, and disagreement about it becomes disagreement about the thing rather than between the people. When the price appears, this matters more than at any other moment in the appointment.
None of this overrides substance. A bad quote presented beside somebody is still a bad quote. But you get the choice for free, it costs nothing, and the default that accident produces is usually the worse of the two.
Getting the seat you want without being strange about it
You cannot direct furniture in someone's home. You can make one small request and take the option that follows.
- Ask where they would like to sit
- It is polite, it is what a guest does, and it usually produces an invitation rather than an instruction, which leaves you free to choose. Reps who sit down unasked in a customer's kitchen lose something small and real.
- Take the corner, not the opposite side
- At a rectangular table the corner seat is the compromise: you are beside them enough to share a document, angled enough that nobody is being loomed over. It is available at almost every kitchen table in the world.
- Stand for the walkthrough, sit for the numbers
- The diagnosis part of the appointment happens on your feet, at the problem. Sitting down is the signal that you are moving to what it costs, so do it deliberately, at the moment you choose, rather than drifting into it.
- Put the document where you both are
- If you have paper or a tablet, orient it for them rather than for you and let them hold it. A rep reading a quote to a customer from their own side of the table is presenting; a customer holding it while you point is examining.
What it sounds like
The same moment, presenting a written quote at a kitchen table, in two seating arrangements.
What to notice. The opposite version produces a question about the rep, addressed to the rep: is this your best price. The corner version produces a question about the work. Only the second one is answerable in a way that helps anybody, and notice that the customer in the second version is reading rather than being read to. Neither rep did anything clever; the difference is which way the paper was facing.
The mistake: managing the room instead of being in it
Once a rep learns that seating matters there is a strong pull toward staging it, and customers notice being handled far more reliably than they notice geometry. Moving a chair, steering someone to a particular seat, or declining the one they offered is worse than sitting in the wrong place cheerfully.
This applies to the whole family of body-language advice, most of which is oversold. Mirroring someone's posture deliberately, holding eye contact past what is comfortable, and the various trained handshakes are all noticeable, and being noticed doing a technique is worse than doing nothing. The seating point survives only because it is invisible when done right: taking the corner seat is simply where a person sat.
The other error is treating the whole appointment as a seated event. A rep who sits down at the kitchen table on arrival has skipped the part with the most persuasive power in it, which is standing in front of the actual problem with the person who owns it. That is module 3, and it does not happen sitting down.
The first minute, and the moment you sit
- Did I ask where they would like me to sit, rather than choosing for myself?
- Am I opposite them or beside them, and is that on purpose?
- Is the document facing them, or facing me?
- Am I sitting down before I have looked at the problem?
- If there are two decision makers, am I positioned so that neither is being addressed over the other's shoulder?
Is this not just body-language pseudoscience?
A lot of body-language coaching is oversold and we would leave most of it alone. The seating point is narrower than that: it is about where a document physically sits and whether two people are looking at it from the same angle. That is not a claim about posture or subconscious signalling, it is about whether the thing under discussion is between you or in front of you both.
What if they put me opposite them?
Sit there and do not manage it. You can still turn the document toward them and move to point at something, which recovers most of the effect. Being visibly comfortable in the seat you were offered is worth more than the geometry.
What about two decision makers?
Aim for the arrangement where you can see both without turning away from either, which usually means the corner or the end. Watch for the setup where one partner ends up behind the other's shoulder, because the person at the back stops participating and they are frequently the one who decides.